The seventh season of Game of Thrones is rapidly coming to a close, and this season has seen the show keeping up its attention to detail and piling up the references to its own past. This episode featured a couple of brief moments packed with bombshell revelations and political machinations. But beyond that there were a lot of other nice touches that you might have missed if you haven’t recently re-watched the past 64 installments of the series. Here’s a handful of those meticulous details.
Through The Breach
This season has been full of reunions, but one you might not have known about was between Jorah Mormont and Thoros of Myr in the Eastwatch cells. Before Thoros and his resurrected buddy Beric Dondarrion became known in the Riverlands as the Brotherhood Without Banners, they were part of King Robert’s forces during the Greyjoy Rebellion. At the siege of Pyke, Jorah and Thoros were the first men through the breach when the walls came down.
“Thoros of Myr went in alone waving that flaming sword of his,” Jorah recalled in season three.
You’d assume that moment would make those two men friends, but even the camaraderie of old battles is no guarantee people will get along. Two other men who fought on the same side at Pyke: Jaime Lannister and Ned Stark’s captain of the guards, Jory Cassel. They shared some memories from the siege early on in season one… a few episodes before Jaime put a dagger firmly through Jory’s eye.
For A Better World!
This isn’t an election and Daenerys Targaryen isn’t running a campaign to control Westeros, but if she was her slogan would be “Together, we will leave the world a better place than we found it.” That’s the line she used while trying to convince captured Lannister army members to join her, and it probably would have been a lot more convincing if she didn’t follow it up by literally annihilating Randyll and Dickon Tarly with dragonfire.
She’s used almost the exact same messaging in the past. In season six episode nine she told Yara and Theon “We’re going to leave the world better than we found it.” She also brought back the wheel, another talking point from season five. “Lannister, Targaryen, Stark, Tyrell. They’re always just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, and then that one’s on top. And on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”
“All I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over rich and poor, to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world,” she told the defeated Lannister army. Again, not the most believable statement coming from someone demanding everyone must kneel or die.
Still Rowing
Game of Thrones is pretty good about its fan service, providing book readers and hardcore show watchers with lots of inside jokes and pleasant surprises. But this may be the first time they’ve lifted a running joke from the online community and stuck it in the show largely untouched. This has to do with the return of Gendry, who we last saw at the end of season three being loaded into a rowboat off Dragonstone by Ser Davos. Four seasons later, and Davos runs into Gendry at King’s Landing.
“I wasn’t sure I’d find you,” he said. “Thought you might still be rowing.”
Fans have been making that same quip for years now. It’s one of the more popular running memes from the show, and #StillRowing regularly comes to life on Twitter with questions wondering what Gendry is up to. Even the actor who plays Gendry got in on it.
Still rowin'…#GoT
— Joe Dempsie (@joedempsie) June 18, 2014
So while the Game of Thrones showrunners are quite firm on viewer feedback not affecting any plot points or character developments, it seems like they aren’t above integrating jokes from the masses into the show from time to time.
Sheep Shift
How did Arya think to check underneath Littlefinger’s mattress like she did to find the letter he’d ‘hidden’ there? Maybe it was her elite Faceless Men training. Or maybe it had to do with pranks she used to pull as a child before the Starks headed south to King’s Landing in season one.
“We could sheep shift Lord Desmond’s bed,” Sansa suggested to Tyrion as a revenge for nobles laughing at him back in season three. “You cut a little hole in his mattress and you stuff sheep dung inside and you sew up the hole and make his bed again. His room will stink but he won’t know where it’s coming from. My sister used to do that when she was angry with me. And she was always angry with me.”
“Why sheep shift?” Tyrion asked.
“That’s the vulgar word for dung!” Sansa replies.
Oh, season three Sansa. So innocent.
Good Fortune In The Wars To Come
Game of Thrones has an entire lexicon of expressions and sayings from Westeros and beyond. “Words are wind” and “Dark wings, dark words” come to mind. Then there’s “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come,” which we hear from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen as he leaves Dragonstone on his quest to acquire some concrete proof that the Others are real. We’ve heard this expression twice before: in season six, Ser Arthur Dayne says it to Ned Stark outside the Tower of Joy before they fight. And in season five, Mance says it to Stannis Baratheon.
Both men die shortly after uttering the expression, which isn’t a great sign for Jon. But the high death rate may be attributed less to superstition and more to the context in which the expression is used. “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come” seems to be a greeting / farewell that inherently suggests the speaker assumes they’re going to die soon… the grim ‘Aloha’ of Westeros, if you will.
