The Game of Thrones Death Watch is a weekly roundup of who died and who looks like they might be headed for death, written by me, a person who has not read the books and will go a long, long way to make a very stupid joke. This is what we’re doing here. This is not science. Please do not yell at me
Season 7, Episode 1 – “Dragonstone”
Who Died This Week?
A few dozen Freys via poisoned wine
Game of Thrones, bless its heart, wasted no time in getting to the mass murder this season. We opened on a feast held by Walder Frey (“Walder Frey”) and within a few minutes all of his garbage sons were dead via poisoned wine and Arya had ripped off her disguise to reveal that it was she, not Walder Frey (because she had recently tricked the real Walder Frey into eating two of his other garbage sons and then slashed his throat), who had orchestrated their demise. Dudes were bleeding from their orifices and dropping left and right like sacks of mulch being heaved off a landscaping truck and we had yet to even see the opening credits. Game of Thrones is still and always be Game of Thrones. Never worry about that.
But all of this does bring up an interesting point: Before Arya went all Gene Parmesan and pulled off the Walder Frey face, she/he made reference to this feast being the second in the last fortnight. And that point brings up two interesting questions:
- How much time transpired between Arya killing Walder Frey and Arya killing his sons?
- Was… was Arya pretending to be Walder Frey that whole time?
The answer to the first question is “a period of time up to two weeks in length, depending how long it takes to gather ‘every Frey worth a damn.’” Probably something between one week and two, because if it was less than a week there would have been no need to use “fortnight.” Let’s peg it somewhere in there. I’ll go with, oh, let’s say 10 days.
And this is what makes the second question so fun. It means, unless she orchestrated some sort of ruse to explain his absence, Arya was running around pretending to be Walder Frey for 10 consecutive days to pull this off. Think about the amount of effort that went into that. She hadn’t even spent that much time around him. You ever see interviews with SNL cast members where they’re like “And then Seth came running in and told me I had to do an impression of Tony Blair the next day, so I watched YouTube clips for an hour and then threw something together”? This was probably like that, but she had to do it for 10 straight days and if she screwed up someone would have tried to kill her. This is fascinating to me.
In hindsight, I’m livid that the premiere gave us an extended poop montage instead of a montage of hilarity ensuing as a teenage girl pretended to be an evil elderly man. Over a year off and it couldn’t even give us that. Borderline disrespectful, in my opinion.
Whoever this guy is/was
“Good news, guys. I got a role on the most popular show on television!”
“That’s great news. Who are you playing?”
“A nude corpse on a slab who gets his gross inflamed guts pulled out while two nerds talk about books.”
“Oh. Well… congrats?”
Who Might Die?
Cersei
Cersei isn’t dying anytime soon. I mean, probably. Maybe. I suppose we can’t rule out anything with this show. She could be walking down the street in the next episode and BLAMMO some angry peasant could push a big rock off a roof and crush her. But she’s pretty important to the plot for now so let’s file the “murderous peasant with big rock” theory under “long shots.” For now.
The reason she’s first on this list after the premiere is that there are just so many people who want her dead or would benefit from her dying. Daenerys is coming with dragons and ships. Arya literally said she’s planning to kill her, out loud, to Ed Sheeran, and we should know by now not to underestimate Arya. Even Jaime was looking at her with his “I have already assassinated one monarch” eyes for a second there. Her pending alliance with noted pirate and possible Motörhead cover band frontman Euron Greyjoy will help her by giving her a navy and reinforcements, but that’s still a lot of people gunning for her head on a show where the people in charge do not tend to last very long, especially when they are Lannisters. Again, she’s not going down soon, but she’s the person on the show with the most guns pointed at her. That counts for something.
Jorahhhhh
Hey, look, it’s our buddy JoraOH GOD the Greyscale is getting worse and he’s locked away in a dark cell. Another one that’s not necessarily imminent, but when you’ve got an incurable mythical disease and are kind of a drip in the personality department, I have no problem tossing you on my “gonna die” list. Sorry, bud.
Euron Greyjoy
With the demise of both Joffrey and Ramsay, Game of Thrones is lacking a true villain. There are bad people, sure. Lots of them. Cersei blew up half a city not all that long ago. I don’t think you should blow up cities. Just my take.
Enter Euron. He’s certainly more charming — in a dirtbag way — than either Joffrey or Ramsay, but he’s the first character so far who seems to delight in being bad. Just unapologetically, gleefully bad. This is good. It’s fun to have a douchebag villain out there running around insulting and/or killing people. He’s sort of like what Theon thought Theon was. But it also means someone will probably be killing him at some point, because unapologetic villains rarely survive TV shows, even when they are infuriatingly charming and look like the somehow even less successful older friend of an unshampooed human zero Audrina dated on The Hills.
Jaime Lannister
The Jaime Lannister Redemption Tour has been going on for a few seasons now between the thing with Brienne and the buddy cop movie he was making with Bronn, but let’s also please remember that he has he also shoved a child out of a window and forced himself upon his sister-lover less than six feet from the corpse of their recently deceased son. Jaime Lannister is not a great dude, all things considered. And if he does have intentions of squaring off with Cersei, he’s gonna need to watch out, considering:
- Many people have squared off with Cersei and most of them are now dead or are suffering repeated unspeakable horrors in a torture room
- Cersei has a large undead killing machine as her personal bodyguard and a possible alliance with a greasy sex pirate who doesn’t seem to care for him very much
- Cersei seems a liiiittle cranky about him helping Tyrion
My mostly uneducated guess is that this ends one of two ways: Jaime dies or teams up with Daenerys and company. Or a third, different way that I haven’t considered and probably should have thought about. It’s good to hedge your bets.
Probably a few dozen people at the hands of the giant white walker
I said “Yesssss” when this guy showed up, even knowing he’s a bad guy and is hellbent on killing everyone, even the characters I like. What can I say? I’m a sucker for giants.
