Game of Thrones with SPOILERS

**Crazywolf** · 05-24-2016, 05:53 AM

I actually thought it was a bit hard how what's her name just told him to hold the door and left him behind. I know she was trying to save Bran and all but even so it seemed a bit off character to just leave him. I thought she could at least have looked for a stone or something to try and wedge it.

**Azazeal849** · 05-24-2016, 09:16 PM

It was a pretty good episode all told, although I agree that it did seem a bit cold of Meera to sacrifice Hodor (and I can't decide if it's worse if Bran was still warging him at the time, or gave him his own consciousness back at the last moment). To me, it also seemed a bit excessive to have Hodor AND Summer AND Leaf pull almost identical "I'll hold them off!" sacrifices one after the other - and the latter two felt somewhat avoidable from the way they were staged. There are other ways to give characters heroic deaths than "covering the escape", after all (e.g. maybe Leaf could have tried to protect the Greenseer from the Night's King?). Otherwise it was a well-staged battle scene, with some good irony in how badly Bran's repeated screw-ups punish almost all of his allies. One question though: since when did the wights start hissing and snarling like stereotypical zombies? In most previous appearances I seem to remember them being silent, which is arguably creepier.

The Pyke plot was pretty well handled - like I predicted earlier they pretty much wrapped up the Kingsmoot in one scene, and if they wanted to bring Theon into the picture it worked fairly well. Euron is simplified from his book counterpart (and has no eyepatch!) but he works within the context of the show's version of the story. I was actually assuming that the priest was Aemon Damphair, so I was surprised when he offered no resistance to Euron's crowning (unless leaving him to recover on his own from drowning instead of, you know, giving him compressions counts). Though maybe that conflict will come in a later episode.

I was very glad to see Sansa giving Littlefinger a much-needed calling out. She almost seemed to be channelling the audience when she said "If you didn't know about Ramsey you're an idiot. If you did then you're my enemy." Not killing him does keep to Sansa's character - she isn't bloodthirsty - but I was kind of hoping she'd throw him in the Night's Watch's ice cells instead of just sending him away unharmed. I haven't decided yet if it's reasonable to claim that she doesn't know how he betrayed her father, or any of his other dodgy schemes. Likewise, I can't tell if the suspiciously convenient story of the Tullys retaking Riverrun is a Littlefinger lie, or a plot contrivance that we're supposed to just accept.

Not a lot to say about Dany's progress this episode - while it's nice to see her and Jorah reach an understanding, I'm wondering if he will fill in for Jon Connington from the books and be Dany's greyscale-infected crusader in Westeros or if he's now going off somewhere else entirely (maybe he'll meet Melisandre, and she'll burn away his wound a bit like Moqorro did for Victarion in the books...with a similar implication that it gives the red priest power over him...).

Meereen still seems to be on a slow burn while they move the characters into position.

Overall verdict: Generally impressed, especially by the insights into the world's backstory - now how much of the book will match?