Game Of Thrones delays its climax long enough for its characters to reckon with their inevitable demise (experts) – The A.V. Club

Written by Bryan Cogman and directed by David Nutter, “A
Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms” is a partner to last week’s “Winterfell,” but
with a very different feel. Like the premiere, it’s low on action—no one
important dies, and Jaime’s arrival and the return of the group from Last
Hearth create another round of reunions. But with the initial tension of the
various groups coming together at Winterfell out of the way, it gives way to a
castle-wide existential crisis, as everyone discovers what they would actually
do in the scenario that they were fairly certain they were not long for this
world. Some, like Arya, are more than happy to come right out and ask for it;
others, like Brienne, are steadfast in their belief this is just another day
until they accept the stakes at hand. But there is not a single soul in
Winterfell who believes this to be anything less than the last stand for
humanity, and their collective understanding creates an hour that made this
particular fly on the wall even more emotional than he was during last week’s
reunions.

That’s weird, when you think about it: last week felt almost
hopeful, the culmination of such a long journey, and this week is downright
elegiac by comparison. After Jaime survives his makeshift trial with the help
of Brienne’s testimony, he pushes Bran (pun unintended until I chose to leave
it here while editing) on why he didn’t reveal that he had been the one to push
him from the tower. His answer is basically that Jaime couldn’t help them if he
was dead, which suggests Bran sees Jaime’s future as valuable compared to
Littlefinger’s, given how quickly he ratted out the latter. But when Jaime
asked him what happens afterwards, Bran doesn’t mince words: “How do you know
there is an afterwards?” It’s another
in a long line of Bran’s cryptic statements, but this is an episode built for
his existential bullshit, because everyone else is thinking the same thing.
Only a few characters talk about death directly, but everyone is basically
acting like they’re likely going to die, and that should be much more of a
downer than it ends up being.

Part of this stems from the central focus on Jaime, whose
presence at Winterfell is the last in a long line of personal atonements. Jaime
knows that he’s arriving as a one-handed soldier, and that he might well die in
the process, but like Theon he wants to die righting the wrongs of his past.
Jaime insists that he’s a changed man, but he hasn’t necessarily had the same
opportunities to show it as Theon—he went back to Cersei’s side, delaying the
redemption that his arc has been building toward. And so to see Jaime so
willing to come to a place where he knew he might die before ever seeing the
army of the dead is a pivotal and triumphant moment for the character, even if
it means his eventual death: it’s a relief, really, to see Jaime’s full
potential as a character being realized.

Jaime is also central to the episode’s finest moment, which
gives it its title. It’s the scene that feels the most meta, as a group of
soldiers—Tyrion, Jaime, Davos, Tormund, Podrick, and Brienne—with no ties to
House Stark gathers together around a fire contemplating how it is they came to
be here, just as we as an audience are piecing together the oddity of the
group. Most fought the Starks, as Tyrion, notes, but the one exception to this
is Lady Brienne of Tarth, who has resisted any suggestions that this is
anything but another battle. She talks of Podrick’s training as if it will
continue on after the battle is done, and pushes back against Tyrion’s planned
boozing as if to reject the effort to acknowledge the gravity of the equation.
And when Jaime visits her to ask to serve under her command on the left flank,
she gets furious with him when he hasn’t insulted her, realizing that his tone
has shifted in light of the stakes at hand. But as Tyrion holds court, his slip
of the tongue regarding “Ser Brienne of Tarth” creates an opening, something
she has always wanted but would never ask for. And then, without much
hesitation, Jaime decides: a Knight can make a Knight, and thus Ser Brienne of
Tarth came to be.

It’s the perfect example of a scene that’s constantly
shifting point of view, taking advantage of the untethered perspective: the
scene jumps into Tormund’s incredulity, then Brienne’s stubbornness, then Pod’s
“What are you talking about?” look, followed by Jaime’s determination, and then
finally the complete wave of emotion that comes over Brienne when she realizes
that this is real. By the time Brienne is kneeling, the scene has created the
kind of interiority that the books have by default—we are only with her in that
moment, right through until Gwendoline Christie’s smile at the end, which
speaks more words than any inner monologue could have. It’s also something that
only happened because of the existential dread hanging over everything and
everyone in Winterfell, her knighting a byproduct of the feeling that now is
the time to do the things you feel you need to before you die. (Update: It’s
also a scene that carries even more weight the second time around, apparently,
because I just got even more emotional rewatching it than I did the first time.)
(Update to the update: Third time was even worse, honestly.)

Not everything is quite as emotional. We might ‘ship Arya
and Gendry, but there’s nothing emotional about her choice to skip the small
talk with Gendry and get right to the sex-having, lest she never get the chance
to know what it’s like. But it’s an example of a scene that creates the
possibility for more emotion in the future, as the foreshadowing becomes much
more prominent heading into next week’s climax. Bran wonders if there will be
an “afterwards,” but we know there will be: there’s still going to be three
episodes left in the season. But we know that not all these characters will see
this afterwards, and for me I’m conditioned to read everything we see as a sign
of who lives and who dies. The fact that Arya and Gendry slept together wasn’t
played as particularly emotional, but it raises the stakes if something were to
happen to Gendry. Similarly, the choice to pair Sansa with Theon adds to the
likelihood of Theon sacrificing himself while defending Bran from the Night
King, and Grey Worm and Missandei’s talk of a future back in her homeland
certainly creates a stronger likelihood that they don’t see the end of the
battle. I’ve never been one to participate in “Death Pools” for the show, but
this was an episode filled with scenes of characters preparing for their likely
deaths, and there’s thus plenty of fodder for those conversations.

But for me, the episode’s biggest “contribution” was the
first efforts at trying to articulate the actual goals of the Night King. The
Night King’s actual motives have always been vague, but here Bran is clear that
his only goal is to kill the Three-Eyed Raven, and in so doing plunge Westeros
into darkness by wiping out its history. While we’ve always known that the
Night King has shown a particular interest in him, it’s the first time I’d
argue the show has been explicit about what the Night King wants, even if the
“why” remains sort of half-heartedly attributed to the torture he was subjected
to by the Children of the Forest.

The plan is for Bran to serve as bait in the Godswood, with
Theon and the Ironborn protecting him, while everyone else tries to buy time
for the Night King to fall into their trap. What struck me about this was the
choice of location—the Godswood has long been an iconic presence in the show,
dating back to Ned in the pilot and returning in full force with Jon and Arya’s
reunion last week and Bran and Jaime’s meeting here. But it’s also a simple of
the Old Gods, and this week offered a fairly interesting cross-section of the
various religions floating around Winterfell. Jaime knights Brienne using the
New Gods, the Seven, while Beric is about to launch into a sermon about the
Lord of Light before Sandor cuts him off. In moments of existential crisis,
religion is often where people turn, but it’s the last bit that makes me wonder
what role R’hllor might have to play in this conflict. If the Night King’s goal
is to plunge Westeros into an(other) endless night, is it not the Lord of Light
who represents the opposing force? Melisandre’s parting words to Varys as she
traveled back to Essos were that they were both doomed to die in Westeros, and
I spent the last half of the episode wondering if her own existential moment
will converge with this one soon enough.

Or maybe Melisandre is part of the “afterwards.” I
appreciated that the episode doesn’t entirely suggest that the sense of doom
has united everyone together with bygones being bygones. While Jorah convinces
Daenerys to forgive Tyrion, his attempt to help her smooth over her
relationship with Sansa doesn’t go as planned. It’s a crucial scene for
articulating that whatever drama they have, it is not as simple as two women
who can’t get along. They resolve the initial coldness, born out of a lack of
niceties that they’ve both struggled with in light of being women in power in a
patriarchal society, but then they discover a fundamental disagreement over the
future of the North in any “afterwards.” Their disagreement has nothing to do
with Jon, as Dany seems to believe, and everything to do with Sansa’s desire to
reclaim the North after the region had rallied around the idea that they would
never bow to another monarch. Theon’s arrival interrupts the conversation, but
they leave far from the “verge of agreement,” but on matters of policy, not
matters of personal relationships.

And we see an echo of this scene when, finally, Jon comes
clean to Daenerys about his true identity, and its implications. It’s the one
bit of existentialism that doesn’t come even close to being resolved: she has
time to question the source of the information (his brother and best friend),
and realize the implication that he is the last male heir, but then the battle
horns sound out. Every other character got to have a moment of solace before
the battle came: they got their goodbyes, and their fireside chats, and their shags,
and their wine. But Jon and Daenerys (and to a lesser degree Sansa and
Daenerys) didn’t get to resolve their situation before flying their dragons
into battle, meaning that they’re carrying a heavy weight into the fight ahead.
And it also means that however this battle goes down, their points of view will
be both critical and clouded, creating a most conflicted climax for the two
characters whose fates seem the most central to the story, if not necessarily
the points-of-view I find most compelling as a viewer.

Perhaps that’s why I feel like these opening two episodes,
despite the absence of spectacle, are going to resonate with me so much more
than any battle that comes after. Sam’s speech equating memory and life is a
bit on-the-nose, but the show’s weaponizing of memory in these opening episodes
has been deeply effective. In this episode alone, you have Jon, Sam, and Edd
“on watch” on the parapets of Winterfell, remembering Pyp and Grenn. You have
Brienne, retelling the story of Jaime saving her from being raped. You have
Tyrion, remembering back when he and Jaime had been visitors at Winterfell.
And, of course, you have the show finally remembering that Ghost isn’t dead. Tyrion
asks Bran to tell him his story, and notes that they’re stuck in a castle, in
the middle of winter, with nowhere to go—what else are they going to do? But
the truth is the show could have rushed itself forward to the “climax” of this
story, and skipped over what is essentially a bottle episode by the show’s
standards, but the show and its story are better for it. And whatever is to
come in the Battle of Winterfell, its ultimate value to this story will be
better for having been preceded by two confident and contained episodes
exploring the breadth of humanity on display in the series as a whole.

Stray observations

• Podrick Payne gets his Peregrin Took moment for the montage
  that brings the episode to a close, breaking out into “Jenny Of Oldstones,” as
  the show has renamed what the Wiki of Ice and Fire identifies as “Jenny’s Song.”
  You can find Florence + The Machine’s version, played over the end credits,
  above. A beautiful moment for Daniel Portman as Podrick, who certainly feels
  rife for a tragic death.
• It doesn’t often fit into a paragraph of a review
  comfortably, but man I love Tormund Giantsbane. The complete lack of tact in
  his origin story; the aggressive chugging of ale; the confusion at why women
  can’t be knights; the purely earnest affection when he gives the standing
  ovation for Brienne? Just a delightful collection of moments brought to life by
  Kristofer Hivju.
• So Jon isn’t questioning Sam and Bran’s story because he
  just has a feeling that it’s true—I suppose that’s fair, but the episode skips
  over Jon processing the information, instead using Dany’s perspective on Jon
  for much of the episode as he avoids her. It’s not helping the feeling that the
  group of characters who spent the episode by the fire is in fact the emotional
  core of the show, despite the narrative continuing to argue for these two
  unsuccessfully.
• Gendry was a little turned on when he saw Arya twirling the
  spear he made her, but he went from aroused to alarmed when he saw her scars as
  she undressed—no one truly understands how much death Arya has seen, and how
  willing she is to face death despite the long life that could be ahead of her.
• A nice beat with Jorah trying to convince Lyanna Mormont to
  stay behind, followed by a nice beat of Sam letting Jorah wield Heartsbane—we
  were talking last week how they skipped over the possibility of the Mormonts
  meeting, so it was nice to have an extra hour to explore some of these smaller
  relationships in a bit more detail.
• Grey Worm and Missandei think there’s nowhere in Westeros
  where they’ll be accepted, but given that Dorne has apparently been wiped off
  the map, at least put it in the “Maybe” pile? They have beaches there too! Just
  saying!
• “Dragon fire will stop him?”—this has long been the theory
  of sorts as to what can kill the Night King, but it was nice that Bran
  acknowledged that he doesn’t actually know if it works, since no one has ever
  tried. Looking forward to the Night King no-selling some dragon fire next week.
• Last week was all about setting the dragon flight to songs,
  but I’d love to see Edd, Tormund and Beric’s return set to “The Boys Are Back
  In Town,” if the internet will oblige.
• “She never fooled you—you always knew exactly what she was,
  and you loved her anyway”—this line from Tyrion was really critical in terms of
  refusing to let Jaime claim ignorance drove his actions. I don’t know if the
  show fully sold me on him standing by Cersei’s side after she destroyed to Sept
  of Baelor, but at least they’re not pretending he didn’t understand the gravity
  of his choice.
• Bran dropping “the things we do for love” into Jaime’s trial
  was such a flex, and I imagine created a stream of GIFs on the social media,
  which seems to be something these episodes were built for.

How much of this is going to happen in the books?

My biggest question coming out of this episode is how,
precisely, Martin would intend to introduce the Night King and subsequently
articulate his motivations. Obviously Bran would still be the likely source of
that information, but I actually feel like this might be a space where Martin
would have something of an advantage. While the show has consciously kept us
out of Bran’s head, Martin is going to have
to enter it, and it’s possible that there will be more space to explore the
history of the Night King and his rivalry with the Three-Eyed Raven in ways
that delve into a bit more exposition. But perhaps Martin has the same
intention of leaving his readers in the dark until the threat is on
Winterfell’s doorstep, but that seems unlikely to me. Thoughts?

Let’s block ads! (Why?)