Book-Reader’s Recap—Game of Thrones, Episode 605—”The Door”

Spoiler Note: This post is intended for those who have read the books in the Song of Ice and Fire series. As such, the post itself and the comments will contain spoilers. If you haven’t read the books yet, you can discuss this episode in our non-book reader (Unsullied) recap. Thanks!

Time to open “The Door.” See what I did there? Actually, considering what happens at the end of the hour, puns on the title may be in bad taste. Let’s just begin…

…at Castle Black, where we’ve begun every episode this season! Don’t fix what ain’t broke, I guess?

And actually, this is a nice opening bit. Sansa is sewing a garment, which harkens back to the very first time we met her. A Night’s Watchmen gives her a letter sealed with Littlefinger’s mockingbird sigil. She reads it. “How far is Mole’s Town?” she asks, mostly for the audience’s benefit.

Cut to: Sansa and Brienne meeting Littlefinger in a dilapidated shack, possibly the remains of the tavern that Tormund, Ygritte, and company tore up in Season 4. Littlefinger announces that he’s ridden north with the Knights of the Vale, who he left behind at Moat Cailin. Wasn’t Moat Cailin taken by the Boltons back in Season 4? Maybe they’re camped near it.

The meat of the conversation is about Littlefinger leaving Sansa at Winterfell to marry Ramsay last year. She is upset. “Did you know about Ramsay?” she asks. “If you didn’t know, you’re an idiot. If you did know, you’re my enemy.” That line kind of sums up their talk, and addresses what a lot of fans were saying about Littlefinger last year. Does hanging a lampshade on it after the fact mean that it makes sense? That’s the real question here.

For his part, Littlefinger claims that he didn’t know what kind of person Ramsay was. As per usual with this guy, it’s unclear what he actually believes. In any case, he offers to join his strength to Sansa’s, but she refuses him. I know some fans think that’s a mistake, and in the long run, maybe they’re right. But after what Sansa suffered at Ramsay’s hands as a result of Littlefinger’s manipulation, I completely understand why she would never want to see him again. Sansa puts it very powerfully. “I can still feel it,” she says. “I can still feel what he did in my body standing here right now.” That’s not something you just forget or move past easily.

Littlefinger plays his crappy hand well, though. He doesn’t come with any guards in tow, and offers to die right then and there for what he’s done. That’s might be why Sansa lets him live. Having Brienne stand behind Sansa the whole time is a nice touch—knowing that she could slice Littlefinger in two at any moment adds tension.

Before he goes, Littlefinger offers Sansa some intel: Brynden “the Blackfish” Tully, last seen narrowly avoiding death at the Red Wedding, has assembled an army and retaken Riverrun. That’s a change from the books, but okay. She may want to seek him out. Finally, he implies that Jon Snow might not be entirely trustworthy, which seems like a non-starter of an argument, but then again…

Once Sansa’s returned to Castle Black, Tormund makes bedroom eyes at Brienne…I’m sorry, let’s start again. Once Sansa’s returned to Castle Black, she and Team Stark talk strategy. They want to gain the alliance of as many Northern Houses as possible, but disagree over how to proceed. Sansa, for example, is all for reaching out to the Karstarks, since they joined the Boltons without knowing they had another choice (the Umbers, who turned Rickon over to Ramsay, “can hang”). Davos, however, doubts whether many Northern houses will remain loyal to the Starks when faced with live flaying. Debate club is in session.

Promisingly, Jon points out that there are a whole mess of smaller houses in the North that might join the fight on the Stark side, giving me hope that we’ll see a proper uprising this year. (At this point, both Ramsay and Jon have mentioned House Manderly. Make it happen, producers.) Also, Sansa suggests contacting the Tullys, but lies about how she learned that their army is reformed—there’s a Littlefinger-shaped hole in her explanation.

Later, Sansa bids Brienne go to Riverrun and win the Blackfish to their cause, and loathe as I am to see the Sansa-Brienne partnership sundered, that seems like a good use of Brienne’s time. Before she leaves, Brienne offers her opinion of the people she’s leaving Sansa with, and pretty much everything she says is worth noting.

First up, she has a line that, to me, confirms that she and Sansa know about Jon Snow’s death and resurrection. She describes Jon as “[a] bit brooding, perhaps. I suppose that’s understandable, considering.” “Understandable” doesn’t cover the half of it.

Still, Brienne thinks Jon’s trustworthy, something she can’t say for Davos and the Red Woman. She still wants blood for their part in Renly’s death, and we will pry that grudge from her cold, dead hands. Most importantly, Brienne starts to rail about “that wildling fellow with the beard.” Don’t fight love, Brienne. Just let it in…

The ship sails on.

Brienne also asks Sansa why she lied about the Riverrun tip, and Sansa doesn’t seem sure of how to answer her. Dammit, Littlefinger got in her head again.

I’m intrigued to see if the show could convincingly pull off acrimony between the newly reunited Stark siblings. At the moment, warm fuzzies still reign, especially when Sansa presents Jon with a homemade cloak modeled after the one Ned used to wear—she also made herself a dress with a bitchin’ direwolf sigil on it. Jon, clearly pleased with the gift, smiles like a little kid with a new bike. New Jon is adorable.

Team Stark prepares to depart Castle Black. Jon gives Edd a manly bro-hug goodbye, Tormund gives Brienne another leering look, and the gang is off to win the North, leaving Edd behind as the reluctant warden of the Wall. Interestingly, Stannis and company left Castle Black at this exact time last year. Melisandre in particular must be feeling the déjà vu.

“I better have lines next week.”

Next, we visit Braavos, where Arya and the Waif duel with staves. I’m not quite sure how to recap this. They fight. There are parries, and lunges, and much clack-click-clacking. The Waif has the upper hand, but Arya hangs in there, ninja-jumping off the ground after she’s knocked on her back and rejoining the fray. It’s well-choreographed, especially once the Waif ditches the staff and hands some whoop-ass out to Arya using only her fists. As it did last year during Meryn Trant’s murder, the show does a great job of making these little women—Maisie Williams is just a hair over five feet tall—actually look dangerous.

The Waif is not gracious in victory. “You’ll never be one of us, Lady Stark,” she says. Jaqen H’ghar, who’s watching from the door (The Door!), seems to agree, but gives her a mentor-mentee walk through the Hall of Faces anyway. He talks about the origins of his order—the first Faceless Men were slaves in the Valyrian mines, until they started killing the overseers. That pretty much jives with what we’re told in the books, but the part that threw me was when Jaqen said that “they founded the Free City of Braavos.” That makes it sound like the Faceless Men specifically founded the city, whereas I thought it was lots of runaway slaves from different walks of life. He may have just been talking generally, though.

Anyway, he’s decided to give Arya a second chance at professional murder “if a girl desires.” “A girl has no desires,” Arya replies. Nice one, Arya—that should throw him off the trail for a minute. He gives her a vial of poison. She is to kill an actress named Lady Crane.

And we’re off to the theater! This scene is fun, and after watching it twice, I’ve decided that it isn’t self-indulgent, although it comes very close.

As in The Winds of Winter, a troupe of mummers in Braavos puts on a play based on what happened in King’s Landing in A Game of Thrones. Unlike in the books, Arya isn’t starring in the play (in the role of Sansa), but instead watches from the audience. We see actors playing King Robert, Joffrey, Cersei, Tyrion, Ned Stark, and Sansa prance across the stage and give exaggerated readings of terrible verse. One of Robert’s lines: “Oh, murdered by a boar/The great big hairy whore!” You get the idea.

It’s funny stuff, and it’s interesting to see how the rest of the world views what happened back in Season 1 (Tyrion is a conniving lecher, Ned Stark’s a moron, and Joffrey is sweet and gentle). Still, the scene goes on for a good long while, and considering that we literally saw all this play out for ourselves, some of it could have been cut. What saves the scene from becoming fan service are Arya’s reactions. She is clearly not okay with her father being portrayed as a buffoon, and almost seems like she’s biting back tears when he’s mock-executed. Arya’s still in there, no matter how much she claims to be No One.

Cut to: a penis. Who says this show only features gratuitous female nudity (although they have that, too)? The actors are backstage, and the one who plays Joffrey is complaining about warts on his uncircumcised dick. Arya appears to be working as a stage hand. One actor—he looks like he was playing Tywin or Jaime—chews out Bianca, the actress who played Sansa, for doing a crap job. Meanwhile, the actor who played Tyrion sidles up to Lady Crane, who played Cersei, and hits on her. Like character, like actor.

Arya takes all this in and reports back to Jaqen. She plans to poison Lady Crane’s rum, but Jaqen denies her the use of one of the faces from the hall—we’ll see if that stops her—and impresses upon Arya her duty of service when she seems hesitant to kill what appears to be a nice lady. Tune in next week for Arya’s adventures in morality.

But for now, let’s head to the Iron Islands, where the Ironborn are trying their hand at democracy. Aeron Greyjoy asks anyone who would claim leadership of the Iron Islands to step forward. (And yes, that is Aeron Greyjoy, at least according to HBO’s subtitles.)

Yara Greyjoy steps forward and starts to make her stump speech, but is almost immediately interrupted by a guy who doesn’t think the Iron Islands can be ruled by a woman. Gemma Whelan has a very commanding public speaking voice, but her actual speech is odd. “We’ve never made our mark upon the world,” she says. So the show is omitting the bit where the Ironborn built Harrenhal, the biggest castle in the Seven Kingdoms? It sounds like she wants to conquer more of Westeros—she talks about building a fleet—but her message is vague. I guess that makes her an ordinary politician. (Insert rim shot here.)

Anyway, she’s interrupted again, this time by a guy who thinks Theon should be king, so Theon takes the stage. As always, I dig Alfie Allen’s performance. He looks more like the Theon of old than he has in seasons, but his eyes have a faraway look, and he doesn’t smile nearly as much as he used to—he’s still Reek inside. He talks eloquently about what a badass Yara is, making good on his promise from last week. Yara looks like she’s touched—late in the show’s run, Game of Thrones has suddenly become all about brother-sister teams, which I can get behind.

The good vibes don’t last, though, as Euron Greyjoy tromps up to the speaking stool and takes a seat. He immediately starts to undercut Theon’s credibility by pointing out what a giant screw-up he was back in Season 2, and also that he has no penis, which will matter in a hyper-masculine society like this one. Yara tries to regain the crowd’s attention by accusing him of murdering Balon. Somewhat surprisingly, Euron owns up to it, and says that Balon was a bad king who led the Ironborn into wars they couldn’t win, which…yeah, good point. Later, he says that he “paid the iron price” to be king, which strikes me as the kind of thing this crowd would respect.

Really, it’s not surprising that the masses choose Euron. Yara’s plan is to “build the largest fleet the world has ever seen.” Okay? And then? Euron actually has a plan: he’s going to build that fleet, and then sail it to Meereen, where he’ll marry Daenerys Targaryen and join forces with her to conquer Westeros. I wish the show had stuck closer to the books, and had Yara make a plea for peace with the rest of Westeros. That way, the masses would have had two different options to choose from. As it stands, Euron just has a better version of Yara’s plan, keeping in mind how no one there could know how unlikely Daenerys is to want to marry Euron. I’d have voted for him, too.

And now, a montage! Aeron submerges Euron in saltwater, drowning him in one of this religion’s more ridiculous practices, so that he might be reborn. (Are he and Jon Snow destined to meet, now that they’ve both died and been brought back?) Meanwhile, Theon, Yara, and a bunch of men loyal to her steal away in longboats, and take “our best ships,” as one Ironborn lord puts it to Euron later. “Let’s go murder them,” Euron says. Tough talk coming from a guy with a little circle of sticks on his head.

Euron Greyjoy wearing the Driftwood Crown

Euron wants everyone on the Iron Islands to set to work building him “a thousand ships.” It’s interesting that, in this version of the story, the Iron Fleet apparently has yet to be build. In the books, it already exists, and starts sailing for Meereen almost immediately after the Kingsmoot. Is this a stalling tactic on the part of the writers? Will the Iron Fleet not sail into Meereen by the end of the season?

We’ll contemplate that when we have further information. For now, let’s hop back across the Narrow Sea to Vaes Dothrak, and to one of the underdog contenders for best scene of the episode. Fresh off her pyromaniacal victory over the khals, Daenerys confronts Jorah Mormont. After everything he’s done to prove his devotion to her, she’s at a crossroads as to how to deal with him, but he makes the choice a little easier by showing her how quickly his greyscale is spreading up his arm. Daenerys is honestly sad for him, and it’s surprisingly affecting to watch her break down. You get the idea that Dany has wanted to reconcile with Jorah for a long time, but as queen, couldn’t allow herself to. Now that he’s at death’s door, they’re both feeling more honest.

“All I’ve wanted was to serve you,” Jorah says. “Tyrion Lannister was right. I love you. I’ll always love you.” Oh god, they’re being so forthright with each other. It’s unexpected and it’s getting to me! “Good-bye, khaleesi.” Go to him, Dany!

Luckily, she doesn’t let him walk away, but instead commands him to find a cure for greyscale, and then return to her. “When I take the Seven Kingdoms, I need you by my side.” You unzipped me, Game of Thrones! You unzipped me!

Jorah watches as Dany leads her new khalasar out of Vaes Dothrak. He trots off, hopefully to look up the guy who cured Shireen.

Not far away, in Meereen, Tyrion and the gang discuss the success of last week’s pact with the slavers. There have been no murders by either side since it happened—hooray for detente. Tyrion isn’t satisfied, though. He wants the people of Meereen to know that Daenerys is responsible for their security as well as their freedom, and turns to an unlikely corner for help: Melisandre’s Lord of Light.

Tyrion and Varys receive Kinvara, the High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis, in Daenerys’ throne room. Does that mean Kinvara has a higher place in the church than Melisandre? Who outranks whom, here?

This is another underdog contender for best scene of the episode. The gist of the conversation is that Tyrion wants Kinvara and her red priests and priestesses to preach loyalty to Daenerys. She’s on board from the jump—as Melisandre now thinks that Jon Snow is the “prince who was promised,” Kinvara is pretty sure it’s Daenerys. Okay? Okay.

But Varys, who you may remember has a grudge against magic-types ever since a sorcerer chopped off his balls, can’t leave it there. He gets up in Kinvara’s face, pointing out that another Red Priestess (he doesn’t use Melisandre’s name) thought Stannis Baratheon was a savior, and that she was very, very wrong.

Hilariously, Tyrion tries to smooth things over (“My friend has a healthy skepticism of religion, but we are all loyal supporters of the queen.”), but Kinvara doesn’t need his help. She pulls out a super-creepy trump card and reveals that not only does she know about how Varys became a eunuch, but that she knows more about it than he does. “Do you remember what you heard that night when the sorcerer tossed your parts in the fire?” she asks. “Should I tell you what the voice said? Should I tell you the name of the one who spoke?” Varys is thoroughly rattled, and to be honest, I’m a little wigged out, too. Still, Kinvara says she’s on their side, and considering the kind of knowledge she has, they’d best hope it stays that way.

Finally, we’re off to the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave. We spend a lot of time here in this episode, and all of it is pretty important. Let’s dive in.

First, the Three-Eyed Raven and Bran take a trip far back in time, to when the Children of the Forest were fighting the First Men for control of Westeros. The land north of the Wall was green then, so clearly there was some kind of environmental cataclysm that threw everything out of whack. We get an idea of what it might have involved here.

In Bran’s vision, several Children of the Forest are gathered around a large weirwood, looking like so many creepy porcelain dolls come to life. They’ve tied a guy (it’s the same actor who plays the Night’s King) to the tree. One of them approaches and shoves a big black knife (a dragonglass dagger?) into his chest. His eyes turn ice blue. Dun dun duuuuuun.

Bran wakes, aghast, and accuses the nearest Child of creating the White Walkers, a crime to which she readily admits. It was war, and the Children needed an edge. Thanks a lot, kids.

Later, Bran contemplates this turn of events and notices that the Three-Eyed Raven is…sleeping? Busy having a vision? It’s hard to tell. Anyway, he’s not paying attention. Bran, being a curious teenager, drags himself across the ground and grabs a tree root, hoping to take this time machine out for a spin without the old man cramping his style.

Bran finds himself standing at the same weirwood where the Children of the Forest made the White Walker in his last vision, only this time, the ground is covered in a thick layer of snow. We’re not sure exactly when this is taking place, but the White Walkers have been busy in the intervening time. There’s a vast army of wights surrounding the place, and beyond them, four White Walkers astride dead horses. The Night’s King is among them. The soundtrack tells us that this is all very portentous. I believe it.

The show has been clever enough not to give away exactly how Bran’s visions work, se we can’t say it’s cheating when the Night’s King looks right at Bran with his ice-blue eyes. “Oh, s**t,” the world cries out collectively. Things get worse when the army of the dead turn to face him, and then the Night’s King is behind Bran, and he grabs his arm, and we’re suddenly in a horror movie we can’t stop watching. Get out of there, Bran, before you get eaten and/or frostbit!

Bran snaps out of the vision. The Three-Eyed Raven, who seems curiously calm (was he only pretending to be asleep earlier?) informs Bran that the Night’s King can now enter the cave, since he left his creepy blue handprint on Bran’s forearm. Bran and company have to get outta there, post-haste. But before that, Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven must make one more trip together…

…back to Winterfell, around the time Young Ned was setting out for the Eyrie. While they’re under, Meera and Hodor chat about how awesome it will be to get out of this damn cave and eat eggs. We have three seconds of good vibes before Meera’s spider sense tingles and she runs outside to see…an army of wights like the one from Bran’s vision. Everyone is screwed. The Night’s King and his White Walker lieutenants lead the wights forward, and despite the Children bombarding them with “nature grenades” (TM Katie Majka), they keep coming. I think the Children may have bought themselves some time when they make a wall of fire in front of the mouth of the cave, but the flames part like curtains before the White Walkers, although they stop the wights in their tracks.

At the moment, Bran is blissfully ignorant of all this—he’s too busy enjoying scenes from the life of a Young Ned Stark, which include our first glimpse of Ned’s father Rickard. Young Hodor is there as well. Back in the present, Meera starts screaming at him to snap out of it—she needs him to possess a panicking Hodor and make use of the man’s wight-busting strength.

The calls seem to get through to Bran, and not a moment too soon, as wights are falling from the ceiling faster than Meera and Summer (making his first appearance of the season) can stop them. “Warg into Hodor now!” Meera yells. The Three-Eyed Raven, who presumably has known this was going to happen for a while, implores Bran to listen.

I won’t pretend to understand exactly how bodily possession across time works, but Bran, who’s still having a vision of the past, is able to warg into present-day Hodor, who removes Bran’s body from the fray. Meanwhile, Meera becomes the third person we’ve seen kill a White Walker when she chucks a dragonglass spear into one’s neck. Rock on, Meera Reed.

Eat it! Eat it and choke on it!

But that moment of triumph is incredibly short-lived. To buy the others time to get away, Summer sacrifices himself by jumping into a wall of wights. No, not Summer! Stop killing all the direwolves, show! And then, as Bran, Meera, Hodor, and Leaf (the one Child of the Forest important enough to be named) flee the scene, the Night’s King confronts and stabs the Three-Eyed-Raven. Back in Bran’s vision, Max von Sydow gives a heartbreaking final line reading (“Leave me”) before disintegrating in a striking special effect. This is getting brutal!

And the worst it yet to come. The wights pursue Bran and company down a dark hallway, looking the way the zombies from The Walking Dead wished they looked. Leaf jumps aboard the self-sacrifice express and carries a live nature grenade into the thick of the wights. Kaboom! But that won’t stop them for long.

Finally, the gang reaches the back entrance of the cave. Hodor throws himself against the door, which opens onto a snowy expanse. The three of them tumble out and close the door behind them, but Hodor has to remain behind to “hold the door” shut against the wights. Back in Bran’s vision, something strange happens. Because Bran is warging into present-day Hodor while in the presence of Young Hodor, the possession seems to ripple back through time, and Young Hodor feels the effects. His eyes gloss over and he falls to the ground. He screams out Meera’s command over and over. “Hold the door! Hold the door! Holdadoor! Hodador! Hodor…”

So Wylis has lived most of his life as a near-monosyllabic simpleton because Bran Stark couldn’t wait until the Three-Eyed Raven woke up from his nap to go snooping around the past. I like Bran, but that’s going to be a heavy burden for him to carry, and it sheds a whole new light on Hodor, who’s story has become a tragedy. He dies, torn apart by wights, as he buys Bran and Meera the time to steal away into the snow-covered night. What an ending.

Odds and Ends

The amazing teleporting Littlefinger! Last year, people complained that Littlefinger hopped between locales with impossible speed. I didn’t really buy that at the time—there was at least an episode’s worth of gap between when he was at Winterfell, for example, and when he was in King’s Landing. That’s the same amount of time it took Ned Stark to make the same journey back in Season 1, and we don’t know how much show-time passes between each episode.

Hopping from the Vale to Mole’s Town in the space of a single episode, though…that takes talent. He could have shortened the journey if he traveled by sea, but still…

But do we want to have incremental check-ins with Littlefinger on every step of his journey? Maybe a ton of time passed between “Book of the Stranger” and “The Door.” It was enough time for Sansa to sew two new garments, at least. An episode’s worth of gap would have been appreciated, but if it means the story moves along at a nice clip, I’m inclined not to complain too much about Littlefinger’s teleporter.

The twisted world of the Faceless Men. Arya’s last scene from “Mother’s Mercy” is still confusing me. There, the man Arya thought was Jaqen H’ghar killed himself, and the girl she thought was the Waif turned into Jaqen H’ghar. So…who exactly are the people she’s interacting with now? We talk about the Waif like she’s a separate character, but what if she’s just another random Faceless Man who can change his/her appearance, and apparently his/her personality, at will? How does that change the nature of her rivalry with Arya? Identity is frustratingly fluid in this place.

The unburnt, queen of Meereen, reciter of titles. We’ve heard Daenerys’ titles ticked off a lot this year, and the show is starting to have fun with it. I enjoyed Tyrion giving us the short version: “Mother of Dragons. Breaker of Chains. All that.” Kinvara’s long list of titles seemed like a nod to this, as well.

As long as we’re talking about Tyrion, I liked him quoting Varys’ line back at him. ‘We need a hero.’ ‘Where will we find him?’ “Who said anything about him?” Boom. Tyrion is really, really enjoying being in power again—his wit is back in full force.

Blackfish singing in the dead of night. On the page, the Blackfish has been holed up at Riverrun ever since the Red Wedding, holding it in the name of the King in the North. The Lannisters and Freys start to besiege the place almost immediately afterward. On the show, it seems that he took some time to gather an army first, which will help the show explain why Jaime wasn’t needed at the siege last year—it wasn’t happening yet.