We’re in uncharted territory on Game of Thrones. There are no books to work from — even George R.R. Martin might be surprised with what’s happening on the HBO series — and things could get confusing. To help you out, after every new episode, our Thrones experts will answer your six most pressing questions.
1. Who burned their rival better, the Queen of Thorns or the Blackfish?
Josh: In one corner, you have Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns, who was at her thorny best in this episode. I’m not sure which line was better: “I wonder if you’re the worst person I’ve ever met” (I say this at least four times a day), or “You lost, Cersei. It’s the only joy I can find in this misery.” She cuts Cersei to the core — her barbs slice deeper than any sharp object thrown at her during her Walk of Atonement. Cersei doesn’t respect the dirty commoners who linger outside her shelter, but she has a begrudging sense of appreciation for Olenna, whom she recognizes (and fears) as another powerful woman.
In the other corner, there’s Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, caretaker of Riverrun. Jaime and his army try to intimidate Cat’s uncle into abandoning his castle, but he and his men aren’t going anywhere. They have enough supplies for two years, and nothing but time. The only reason the Blackfish — who deserves a better rival than the blundering idiots Lothar Frey and Walder Rivers — decided to meet with the Kingslayer is because “sieges are dull.”
And the winner is… the Queen of Thorns, who not only had the better stinging witticisms, but she’s on her way to safety in Highgarden, semi-content in the knowledge that Margaery hasn’t been turned into a brainwashed slug by the High Sparrow. The Blackfish is a surly bastard, but his options right now are fight and die, or wait it out and eventually die. I don’t like those odds.
Ryan: As Tyrion once said, “Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.” It’s those possibilities the Blackfish is referencing when he asks Jaime if he’s got two years to sit around and starve him out of Riverrun. As we all know, Brienne is about to show up on the scene. The Brotherhood Without Banners may be vicious murderers now, but that’s not always a bad thing because they hate Freys and Lannisters.
All this is to say that the Blackfish’s frank assessment of his situation and direct crapping on Jaime’s honor was the Burn of the Week for me. Sure, Lady Olenna hurt Cersei’s feelings, but the Blackfish and Kingslayer are facing off for bigger stakes than that. This is the beginning of a struggle that will end with one or maybe even both of them dead. And the Blackfish just took round one via devastating mental warfare.
2. Will Yara’s tough love bring Theon back from the brink and earn him redemption?
Ryan: Theon better hope it does because Yara’s already getting sick of his mopey post-traumatic stress disorder. This week she reminded him that suicide is always an option. Next week she might put a dirk through his heart, reassurances of safety be damned. It didn’t take much for her to abandon Theon to Ramsay when he revealed himself to be Reek. I don’t think he’s got a generous amount of onscreen time to get his sh*t together.
But can he? Or is he too broken to ever come back? Given that he still follows commands like a whipped dog, I’m thinking this is just too big of a chasm for him to come back from. That doesn’t leave many positive outcomes for Theon on his journey through the east. I doubt he’ll end up taking a knife to his wrists, but the guy hates himself and wants to die. The first opportunity he gets to sacrifice himself for his sister or his house, and he’s liable to try and take it. The follow up question is… would Yara let him?
Josh: I think she would. And maybe that’s for the best. I get that Game of Thrones is setting Theon up for redemption, even though he probably doesn’t deserve it. Neither does the Hound (who we’ll get to soon), but he’s a more interesting character than Theon, and I’m a monster. Anyway, Theon will achieve his atonement by sacrificing himself to save Daenerys from Euron, or something, and if that’s the route the show’s going down, I have a suggestion: Make Theon the leader of the Unsullied. It’s a perfect fit. He’s been emasculated, they’ve been emasculated… I guess that’s the only thing they have in common, but at least it would give him something to do, other than look bug-eyed and drink beer, which, according to Yara, is the solution to all of life’s problems. Well, beer, and the kind of asses you don’t find on the Iron Islands. Maybe the Greyjoys are smarter than we give them credit for.
3. Who was that little Mormont kid and how awesome is she?
Ryan: That was Lyanna Mormont, the 10-year-old Lady of Bear Island, current ruler of House Mormont. Her family name should sound familiar: Her uncle was Lord Commander Jeor Mormont of the Night’s Watch. So how did a pre-teen end up ruling a respect house? Funny story on that.
Jeor was the head of the family, but abdicated his lordship and left for the Night’s Watch when his son came of age. That son’s name was Jorah Mormont, and he ran the house into the ground trying to keep his high maintenance wife happy. After being sentenced to death by Ned Stark for selling poachers into slavery, Jorah fled east, lost his wife to a richer man, and ended up in the service of Daenerys Targaryen. The rest is greyscale history.
That left Bear Island to Maege Mormont, Jeor’s fierce sister. If you look closely during season one, you can see her in the background when Robb assembles the Northern lords to respond to the Lannisters imprisoning his father. Anyway, don’t worry too much about her because she died at the Red Wedding, leaving her daughter Lyanna in charge. So that’s who she is and what she’s all about. Now onto how awesome she is!
Josh: She’s awesome.
When Sansa tried to flatter her with a comment about her burgeoning looks, Lyanna responded, “I doubt it. My mother wasn’t a great beauty, or any other kind of beauty. She was a great warrior, though. She died fighting for your brother Robb.” Not only did Lyanna deny a shameless compliment, she also seamlessly turned the conversation around on Sansa by making her feel guilty. Well played. She’s unsentimental, but understanding, which is what a ruler should be. If Lyanna and the Queen of Thorns ever sit down in a room together, they’ll take over the Seven Kingdoms, and the world. I guarantee it.
4. Let’s not panic, but how the hell is Arya supposed to survive that?
Josh: Let’s get this out of the way now: Arya isn’t going to die. I mean, eventually she’s going to pass away, and hopefully it’s on a nice comfy bed with Nymeria at her feet and Needle in her hands. It won’t be next week, though. How do I know this? Common sense, for one. Also, you can see A Girl running away from the Waif in the preview for episode eight. But more importantly, she has a renewed purpose. Arya came to Braavos angry, confused, and out for revenge — she’ll leave it Ned Stark’s daughter.
Her father preached honor and mercy. Arya abandoned any pretense of either the moment she didn’t kill the Hound, leaving him to suffer and die (yeah, about that…). Karma repeatedly stabbed her in the gut, so to speak, as she walked through the streets bleeding profusely, and no one offered to help. They just stared and judged. It was her very own Walk of Atonement, albeit without a Mountain waiting for her at the end of the tunnel. Arya’s on her own, but at least she’s found herself again.
Ryan: This isn’t the same as a certain Walking Dead character surviving a certain unsurvivable situation in highly suspect fashion, but if Arya just limps along for an hour or two before bandaging her stomach and beating the Waif at parkour, I’m not going to be a happy Game of Thrones viewer.
And yet I also feel like the Stark family has already used up all their revives, so a magical solution would also be cheap. I’m not saying I want Arya to die. But if the show starts killing its characters only to deke us out with some bogus nonsense solution, it’s not a good sign for quality moving forward. May next week’s episode will sparkle and delight us with an appropriately stunning outcome for this really bad situation they’ve put her in.
5. What happened to the Brotherhood Without Banners that turned them into such monsters?
Josh: The Brotherhood Without Banners are like the friend you idolized in high school. Let’s call him BWB. You and BWB graduate, but you go to college, and he stays in the small town where you grew up. The years go by, and you eventually forget about all the good times you had together. Then one Thanksgiving, during your junior year, you head home, and guess who shows up at your mom and dad’s front door, unannounced: BWB, except now he’s a dangerous meth addict holding a knife and begging for table scraps.
That’s the Brotherhood Without Banners.
They were created by Ned Stark to protect the smallfolk who have no rooting interest in the War of the Five Kings. They just want to live out their innocent lives in peace. The Brotherhood, led by Lord Beric Dondarrion, was supposed to keep that peace. But not anymore, apparently — now, instead of being outlaws who occasionally sell youngsters (Gendry) to red women (Melisandre), they’re ruthless savages who kill placid hippies. What the hell happened? Did the septon’s followers just happen to run into three bad apples, or has the entire group turned evil? Do I dare mention the initials LS?
Ryan: The three members of the Brotherhood mentioned R’hllor in their meeting with the peasants, and the Lord of Light has never struck me as a particularly peaceful god. Melisandre burned every half-baked royal she could get her hands on. And the new Red Priestess Kinvara was all aglow at the prospect of Daenerys “purifying nonbelievers by the thousands, burning their sins and flesh away.” Why should these fanatics be any different? It almost makes you pine for the High Sparrow and his pervy atonement walks.
I don’t know if I’m ready to hope that LS shows up (trust me, show-only people, we’re protecting you for your own good), but my theory on what happened is as follows: Their original jolly priest, Thoros of Myr, died in some skirmish and was replaced by a dour zealot whose traumatic experiences in the Riverlands transformed the Brotherhood Without Banners into a gang every bit as terrible as the Mountain’s men they came to defeat. Who’s running things now and the details on this transformation remain to be seen, probably seconds before people start getting axe-murdered by the Hound.
Josh: Tits, dragon, and axe is the Westeros equivalent of rock, paper, scissors. (Dragon always wins.)
6. Is the Hound about to become the Jason Voorhees of Westeros?
Ryan: As appealing as that sounds given the dickery perpetrated by the Brotherhood Without Banners, we’d much rather Sandor Clegane get his ass to King’s Landing, because there’s a Cleganebowl a-brewin’! Book readers have speculated that the Hound would return to face off against his undead brother the Mountain for years, what with his rescue by a septon and all.
And let’s face it — George R.R. Martin may be the kind of writer to leave Sandor in some dusty monastery living the quiet life, but David Benioff and D.B. Weiss proved with Benjen Coldhands that they love to make everything connect and give the fans what they want. And as much as I want the Hound to put an axe through the heads of these Brotherhood scumbags, I want him to make it to the Cleganebowl alive by the end of the season, too.
Can a man dream for both?
Josh: He can, and a man can also dream for only one. If Sandor wants to get his revenge on the Brotherhood, that’s fine. They deserve it for killing Ian McShane, and I guess all those other people, too. But I don’t want him back in King’s Landing, fighting another man’s war. The whole point of Sandor’s scenes in “The Broken Man” is exactly that: He’s Sandor now, not the Hound.
He’s trying to retire from a life of violence, but like Magneto in X-Men: Apocalypse, he can’t. The world won’t allow him to. From a character perspective, that’s a little frustrating and, frankly, kind of depressing. What’s the point of seeing Sandor in Septon Meribald’s flock if he’s just going to end up the Hound again? The possibility of a Cleganebowl hype is intoxicating, and I totally understand why people are hyped for it. It’s the Mountain vs. the Hound! Brother vs. brother! The crown (Mountain) vs. the Faith (Hound). But if we’re playing Celebrity Deathmatch, I’d much rather see the Mountain take on Wun Wun, and let the Hound enjoy his chicken in peace.
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