When you play this game of spoilers, you win or you lie.
Basically, you can sum up this episode with one sentence: The writers got sick of being attacked for the betrayal of women and decided to have all the sisters have the balls for at least one episode. Summary by location follows:
King’s Landing
This one combined sister, mother, and grandmother: Cersei (sister and mother of Tommen) has a plan because Tommen is a wuss listening to an old wuss. She presents it to the Old Council and the grandmother on the council is the only one with any balls.
Anne Boleyn/Margery is allowed to see her brother, who is a simpering pansy. I’m waiting on the GLAAD folk to complain about the one homosexual character left being such a whiner (note: they removed at least two instances of lesbianism from the show). Unless they’re tormenting Loras in a much more sadistic way than they are Margery, his reaction makes no sense. This guy squared off against the Mountain, and had the balls to use a dirty trick!
Dorne
There are no brothers to be rescued by sisters in Dorne, so we skipped it.
The North
Ramsay did what we all knew he would: no way anyone with any sense thought Osha could knife him before he got her. The only surprise was that she didn’t get tortured first.
Then Sansa and Jon re-unite and we get a great moment there. Except… Jon came back from the dead as a pacifist? Where the fuck does he think he can go? Then Sansa has to remind him that he’s got balls before he decides maybe he does have some fight left in him.
The Iron Islands
This is the one place where the sister having more balls makes sense. Theon is a tortured, castrated soul.
Dany, Tyrion
Tyrion’s deal was stupid, in my opinion. He’s trying to politic and I think he needed to have those hookers kill the slave masters the way Osha intended to kill Ramsay: distract and gut. They won’t honor it, they won’t get rid of slavery in seven years, and Dany won’t go for it.
The scenes with Jorah and the other guy (Dario?) were all right.
The scene with Dany in the temple was all-right. Her plan was pretty good assuming she’s fireproof. This would have been a good opportunity for the show to throw a curve ball, though — and have her burn to death, too.
The stupidest part to me was that when she emerged from the flames the horde of rapist savages (that they’ve spent the entire season reminding us are awful misogynists) would instantly bow. What she did looks like witchcraft and we just had one of the foremost Dothraki talk about how bad witches are.
I can get some of them going along with it, but unless there’s some old Dothraki rule about burning Khals alive I don’t see why they’d suddenly follow her when they seem really hesitant to even let widowed Khaleesis out of the nunnery.
Also, she just destroyed this temple/fort thing in their most holy city. Sure, she didn’t spill blood. But she murdered a ton of their leaders and burned their temple down.
It just felt pandery all around. I liked the episode, I even get where they are going with that scene, but I feel like a lot of characters are acting outside of their personalities in ways that don’t make sense.
Predictions:
– Sansa is not going to be friends with Littlefinger, and she’s a damned idiot if she believes his inevitable denial about Ramsay.
– Jon is going to need Davos, Brienne, and Melisandre to help him even the odds for the upcoming “Bastardbowl.” I’m not sure the Vale will add enough. (HEY HOUSE MORMONT!)
– Tommen is such a puss. If Margery does have to do the walk, or if anything happens to her, he will either: grow a spine, mope, or get himself killed. We’re actually due for him dying (we lost Joff in season 4, Myrcella in season 5, so…)
– We may well get a civil war in the capital. Which is just softening it up for the Dothraki or the Northerners, or Dorne. There is nobody on the show more fucked than the Lannisters.
– Jorah is somehow getting cured, I still say.
– No way both Rickon and Sansa survive the season. My guess is that Rickon is fucked given where he is. Somehow Sansa ends up as Wardeness of the North, because I think Jon ends up sitting his ass on the Iron Throne.
– I think Dany is going to end up staying in Essos. She’ll probably lead a Dothraki horde through Slaver’s Bay, but…
– Euron will win the Kingsmoot, and he might even try to bring Dany over.
– Off the wall idea: a lot of Dothraki turned into those blue-eyed wights.
– What would happen if Jaqen asked Arya to kill Jon?