Book-Reader’s Recap—Game of Thrones, Episode 606—”Blood of My Blood”

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!

Welcome to “Blood of My Blood,” aka “Game of Thrones takes a breather.” The show has been breathlessly paced of late, so I’ll not begrudge it some time to do a little transitional work.

And it’s not like there isn’t good stuff here. Case in point: in the very first scene, we watch Meera drag Bran away from the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave immediately following Hodor’s sacrifice. He’s still in a greenseer coma, and sees flashes from “the entire history of the world,” to use David Benioff’s words. A lot of it is shots we’ve already seen—Craster’s baby being turned into a White Walker, Ned getting his head chopped off, stuff from the Massacre at Hardhome—but because the producers love us, they’ve also included some brand new shots of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen ordering the destruction of King’s Landing.

“Burn them all!”

It’s pretty sweet. And I note that it must have taken a lot of effort to shoot new material just for a couple of inserts, although that’s not beyond the resources of a show like Game of Thrones. Still, if the show wants to get further use out of that actor and those setups, this might mean we’ll return to Aerys’ final moments later in the season.

Back in the present, Bran’s sled gets caught on a root, and try as she might, Meera can’t dislodge it. She’s crushed—it’s emotional, and will probably be even more emotional when people rewatch this episode immediately after “The Door.” Bran makes it worse when he wakes up and gives Meera an appraisal of their situation: “They found us.” Crap.

Indeed they have. Wights surround the pair, but out of nowhere, a mysterious stranger on a horse comes to their aid! Then the show has a lot of fun killing zombies mercilessly. The stranger has a weapon…I’m not sure how to describe it. It kind of looks like that thing Catholic priests swing back and forth while spreading incense around. I’m making this harder than it is; it’s a ball on the end of a chain, and the ball is on fire. The stranger rides into wights and smacks them with it, and they go up in flames. He also dashes one against a tree and drags another across the snow until it busts open on Bran’s sled. It’s fun, and I want one of those things (which I am calling a fire thurible) for my birthday.

After the stranger is done with the wights, he turns to Bran and Meera and says, “Come with me if you want to live.” Well, that’s the gist of what he says, and you know the writers had to force themselves not to lift the Terminator line. Seeing as there’s a new gang of wights on the way, Bran and Meera are happy to hop up on the stranger’s horse and gallop out of there. That’s a strong horse.

Much later in the episode, we catch up with the newly formed threesome as they dine on rabbit. The stranger reveals that he knew the Three-Eyed Raven, and that he knows Bran’s destiny. According to him, the Night’s King will eventually “find his way into the world of men,” and Bran will have to be ready for him when that happens.

Also, the stranger reveals that he’s Benjen Stark, confirming fan theories that have been circulating since Season 1. Are you happy now, people?

It ends up that Benjen was killed by a White Walker during that fateful ranging back in Season 1, but the Children of the Forest got to him before he was turned into a wight and allowed him to keep his mental faculties by doing the same thing they did to create the first White Walker: shoving a thing of dragonglass into his heart. So that technique creates both White Walkers and sentient zombies? Okay…

Next, we go almost as far south as south goes (but not quite as far, thank god). Gilly and Sam ride in a carriage to Horn Hill, the ancestral seat of House Tarly, located in the Reach (aka Tyrell country). Sam’s plan is the same one he makes in the books: tell his father that Little Sam is his biological son in the hopes that Lord Tarly will take him in. The difference is that, in this version of the story, Sam hasn’t told his family that Gilly is a wildling. Writer Bryan Cogman would rather have that detail come out dramatically at dinner.

Incidentally, the carriage conversation between Sam and Gilly is adorable, as is almost everything about these two this week. Gilly’s fascination with the world south of the Wall is very charming—she stares out of the carriage like a kid pressing her nose to the window of a plane in mid-flight. Sam’s nervous stammering about different kinds of trees is endearing, too. I wasn’t a fan of Sam early on in the series, but he and Gilly have won me over.

As Sam promised back in “Oathbreaker,” his mother and sister are “lovely.” They greet Sam and Gilly in one of courtyards at Horn Hill, which is enormous. Sam is moneyed the hell up—if Randyll Tarly hates wildlings as much as he seems to, Jon Snow should have hit him up for a donation back when he was running the Night’s Watch. Anyway, Sam’s mom and sister fawn over him, Gilly, and the baby, but you can tell Sam’s nervous. His mom says that Randyll and Sam’s brother Dickon will be joining them for dinner, and Sam starts to turn green.

Ultimately, Sam’s reunion with his father goes down as we all knew it would: badly. But before we get to that unpleasantness, we have the sight of Gilly waddling down a corridor in a dress borrowed from Sam’s sister. She doesn’t look quite as ridiculous as Brienne did wearing a gown, but her halting, careful steps are pretty hilarious.

Okay, the show is done being cute. On to dinner.

The meal really is the prototypical awkward family dinner scene. At first, there is much rattling of silverwear on plates as everyone tries to act pleasant in the face of Randyll Tarly’s towering disapproval. The conversation turns to hunting, and Sam takes a stab at bragging about the game he caught beyond the Wall. The rabbits. And sometimes squirrels. And mostly it was his friend Jon who did the hunting. Oh, Sam, you’re dying, here.

The claws come out when Sam is about to help himself to more bread. “Not fat enough already?” Randyll asks. And it’s just downhill from there. Randyll digs into Sam for his interest in books, which sucks, since that’s exactly what makes Sam unique and useful. Remember when Stannis told Sam to keep reading? Stannis was a better dad than Randyll, and Stannis was a terrible dad.

Gilly, being awesome, sticks up for Sam, and talks about him killing a Thenn and a White Walker. (Dickon, who doesn’t seem cruel so much as thick, thinks that’s pretty funny, since “[t]here’s no such thing.”) Unfortunately, she also lets slip that Sam killed the White Walker north of the Wall, and it doesn’t take Randyll long to figure out that means Gilly is a wildling.

Randyll is scandalized to be hosting one of Westeros’ ancestral enemies, and says more horrible, horrible things. “I took you for a Mole’s Town whore when I saw you and I made my peace with that,” he says to Gilly. “Who else would have him? But I overestimated him. No. It was a wildling whore that seduced my son.” It’s great that Randyll can be so efficient and violently insult multiple people at once. The most heartbreaking thing about the scene is the way Sam just sits there and takes it, with the beginnings of tears forming in his eyes. No one ever really gets over childhood abuse, and being blasted by his father at point blank range is making Sam regress hardcore. It’s uncomfortable television.

Still, Randyll will allow Gilly and Little Sam to remain at Horn Hill, but makes clear that Sam is not welcome. Later, Sam appears to make his peace with this as he says a tearful goodbye to Gilly. “You’re not what he thinks you are, Sam,” she says. “He doesn’t know what you are.” These two really are becoming the rock of the show.

And it looks like they’ll stay that way for the immediate future, as Sam hasn’t left Gilly’s room for 10 seconds before he bursts back in and announces that they’re leaving together. And what’s more, he’s taking Heartsbane, his family’s Valyrian steel sword, with him. Obviously, Sam knows where it can be put to good use, but I wonder at his being so cavalier about it. It’s nice to see Sam be bold, but he’s one guy and Randyll is a military commander with a lot of wealth and presumably some soldiers. How far is Sam going to get with that sword in tow?

Over in Braavos, Arya is once again taking in the terrible play about what happened in King’s Landing during the first four seasons. They’ve gotten to the bit where Joffrey dies, and Arya is enjoying it waaaay too much. If the rest of the episode didn’t make clear that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a Faceless Man, this moment should. She’s moved by fake-Cersei’s speech, though, since she knows she’ll be murdering the actress soon. (Also, Essie Davis looks like she would have made a decent Cersei if Lena Headey hadn’t been available. #PathsNotTaken)

Overall, I’m glad the show did this play-within-a-play bit. It was fun on a few levels, and since Arya experienced real emotions while watching it, it never felt like pure fan-service. Also: stage farting.

As fake-Tyrion kills fake-Tywin on the fake-toilet, Arya sneaks backstage, bold as you please, and poisons Lady Crane’s rum. (Unsullied recapper Katie Majka had some awesome thoughts on how fake-Tyrion’s final speech reflects Arya’s journey.) The actors come backstage, and apparently no one gets too bent out of shape about the fact that Arya shouldn’t be there. Theater folk, man: they know how to take it easy.

In fact, they’re flattered. Well, Lady Crane is. She’s noticed Arya in the audience during the past few performances and starts to bond with the girl over what she assumes it a shared love of the theater. (I imagine Arya’s inner monologue at this point is something like this: Oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t). Arya bluffs well, though, and even suggests a script change: she thinks that Cersei should be angry rather than sad in the scene where Joffrey dies, and “would want to kill the person who did this to her.” First of all, good call, and second of all, considering that Lady Crane is dressed as a woman Arya actually wants to kill, there are a couple of layers of irony here. Arya’s scenes in general are good this week.

Lady Crane seems on the verge of offering Arya a spot in the troupe when she excuses herself so the actress can drink poison and die in peace. There is backstage squabbling among the actors, who throw shade at Lady Crane for being better than them and bitch about how bad the audience was. Obviously, Bryan Cogman has hung out around actors. Richard E. Grant, who’s playing the troupe leader (his name is Izembaro, but unlike in the books, he’s not working with the Faceless Men), gets incredibly defensive when Lady Crane starts to broach the idea of a script change, and I reflect that, yes, I’d watch a show where these people travel around Essos sniping at each other.

But back to the plot, Lady Crane is about to drink her poisoned rum when Arya knocks it out of her hands. “Careful of that one,” she says, pointing at fake-Sansa. “She wants you dead.” So Arya has made her choice, and it isn’t a life in the theater. The Waif was on hand for all of this, and runs back to the House of Black and White to tattle on Arya to Jaqen H’ghar. Arya must die, and Jaqen promised the Waif she could do it. We’ve got a showdown in Braavos town!

Also, I have to mention that we get some close-ups of Jaqen peeling a face off a corpse before we leave the House of Black and White. I suppose, since this might be the last time we see the character, the producers wanted to do something disgusting to send him off. Congrats, you sickos.

So the Waif is coming after Arya, but Arya’s getting ready. She retrieves Needle from its hidey-hole, and there’s an intriguing shot of her hiding in a dark, undisclosed location, possibly a sewer, while the music swells dramatically. For me, the biggest disappointment of the episode was that we didn’t get to see what happens next. I have a feeling that all of Arya’s training is about to pay off in a major way, and this episode could have done with something like that.

Because even though the King’s Landing stuff was well-done, it kind of ended with an anti-climax. We begin our time here in the Sept of Baelor, where the High Sparrow and Tommen are…wait, Tommen let himself be alone with the High Sparrow again? Oi, this kid. I dig how he thinks he’s following through on the pledge he made to Cersei back in “Home”—he told her he wanted to be stronger—but by taking the initiative, all he’s done is open himself up to manipulation. Oi, this kid.

Anyway, Tommen is worried that Margaery will be in danger during her Walk of Atonement, but the High Sparrow assures him that she’ll be protected, and also that the commoners like Margaery a whole hell of a lot more than they like Cersei, so they’ll be less likely to accost her…which, yeah. The High Sparrow seems pretty confident that he has Margaery well in hand, and even allows Tommen a visit.

Margaery awaits Tommen while reading from the Seven-Pointed Star. Oh, Margaery, you clever minx. Tommen walks in, and embraces her with a puppy-like eagerness. “I missed you more than you could know,” he says like a teenager who’s first and only sexual partner has been locked up in prison for weeks.

As always, it’s harder to read Margaery. At first blush, she appears to have converted to the High Sparrow’s way of thinking. She makes vague compliments about the man. “There’s something about him,” she says. (Note that she never pinpoints exactly what that something is.) She also brings up her PR work with the poor. “Ah, yes, I visited their hovels and I fed them soup and I made sure I was seen doing it.” It’s true that her motives for doing that weren’t entirely pure, but it’s far from certain she thinks they were a mistake.

While I could be wrong, I think Margaery is faking her religious conversion. Note that the producers included her conversation with Loras in the “Previously on” segment. Loras, truly broken, entreats her to “Let [the Sparrows] win,” and I think that’s Margaery’s game here—let the Sparrows think they’ve won her over, and bide her time until an opportunity to gain back the high ground presents itself.

But on the other hand, if she’s keeping up a facade, why didn’t she drop it in front of Tommen, who’s supposed to be in her camp? But back on the first hand, Tommen’s malleable enough to fall for the High Sparrow’s arguments in earnest. I think she can sense that Tommen is sliding into the man’s trap, and doesn’t want to risk him reporting anything she said back to the High Sparrow.

We’ll see how that all shakes down later. For now, we have to deal with Margaery’s own Walk of Atonement, which the Lannisters and Tyrells will stop at nothing to prevent. The plan is for Jaime and Mace Tyrell to lead the Tyrell army up to the Sept of Baelor, where they’ll collect Margaery and Loras by force if necessary. Mace, resplendent in a very silly feathered hat, makes a speech full of mixed metaphors (madness doesn’t have claws, Mace), but still, someone could have cheered for him.

On the steps of the Sept, the High Sparrow bleats about Margaery needing to atone for her sins when the army shows up. Jaime rides his horse up the steps and gets right in the High Sparrow’s face, threatening him and his with death, and the High Sparrow basically says to bring it on. Lancel Lannister, making his first appearance of the season, looks like a jag-wagon.

But just when it seems like things are gonna get bloody, the High Sparrow declares that there will be no Walk of Atonement. Instead, the doors of the Sept open, and out walks Tommen Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Rhoynar and the First Men and all that, flanked by guards (I don’t know if it’s the Kingsguard or members of the Faith Militant) all decked out in Seven-Pointed Star armor. Tommen holds Margaery’s hand, and the High Sparrow presents, for the first time as a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Religious Fanaticism. “Together we announce a new age of harmony,” he says. “A holy alliance between the Crown and the Faith.” The assembled smallfolk eat it up like it’s dripping in chocolate.

I have questions about exactly what was happening in that scene, but check the “Odds and Ends” section for that. For now, we head to the Red Keep throne room for the first time in ages. Tommen, letting his newfound religious bent guide him, dismisses Jaime from the Kingsguard for attacking the Sept of Baelor, which is a big no-no under the new, Faith-based order. Somewhere, Barristan Selmy is laughing his ass off.

Tommen still seems nervous giving orders, but he’s trying to get the hang of it. He tells Jaime that, instead of guarding the king, he’ll be going to the Riverlands to help Walder Frey retake Riverrun from the Blackfish. Later, Jaime reveals to Cersei what he’d like to be doing instead: hiring Bronn and all his murderer pals to massacre the crap out of the High Sparrow and his followers. So has Bronn left King’s Landing? I’m still unclear on that.

For the first time in a while, Jaime is the emotional one in this relationship (“He has our son! He stole our son!”), which brings out the strategist in Cersei. They complement each other that way. She encourages him to go to the Riverlands and give the Lannister army something to fight for. Meanwhile, she’ll send the Mountain into her trail by combat, where he’ll be certain to nab an easy victory.

Buoyed by all this speechifying, Jaime and Cersei suck face. It’s the first bit of twincest we’ve seen in a long time, and while it’s still uncomfortable…actually, I think I’ll just leave it there.

Just as we returned to the Red Keep throne room for the first time since Season 4 (I think), we return to the Twins for the first time since Season 3, and find Walder Frey in fine form. He’s chewing out a couple of his sons for letting the Blackfish retake Riverrun, and while the point of this scene is to give exposition about the coming conflicts in the Riverlands (the Brotherhood Without Banners is mentioned), David Bradley has so much fun railing and ranting that I don’t really care. He should have come back sooner.

Also, Old Walder Frey has another trick up his sleeve: he’s still keeping Edmure Tully hostage, and will use him as a bargaining chip to get the Blackfish to yield the castle. If we’re lucky, the producers will stick to the books and the Blackfish will see right through the Freys’ empty threats to kill his nephew, but the dramatic strings upon Edmure’s reentrance make me think they’ll take it in a more traditionally dramatic direction.

The final scene of the evening takes place in Essos, where Daenerys is marching her new khalasar to Meereen. Dany’s spider sense starts tingling, and the army stops so she can talk strategy with Daario. “How many ships will I need to take all my peeps to Westeros?” she asks. “One thousand.” Somewhere, Euron Greyjoy jumps and down with his hand in the air.

After a minute, Dany’s spider sense becomes unbearable, and she leaves the group to go chase that feeling. Daario is about to go after her when we hear a dragon’s roar, and Dany swoops in on Drogon’s back, looking pretty damn impressive.

Thus mounted, Dany makes another one of her signature rousing speeches. And it is rousing. It always is, but it still kind of feels like we’ve seen it before. In this case, we literally have, since she basically repeats Khal Drogo’s big speech from “You Win or You Die.” Considering that her big moment at the end of “Book of the Stranger” was basically a super-sized version of her final scene from the Season 1 finale, the repetition is wearing a bit thin.

But it’s still good watching, and Drogon looks terrific. Dany makes every Dothraki in attendance her bloodrider—they’re gonna ride wooden horses across the Great Salt Sea, kill men in iron suits, and tear down their stone suits. Sounds great, Dany! Make it happen!

Odds and Ends

New places and faces. For the first time this season, an episode neither began nor ended at Castle Black.

Absent friends. Speaking of structure, a lot of plotlines sat this episode out. There was no Team Jon, no Ramsay (I’m okay with that in the abstract, but if we don’t spend time with him, it’ll make his inevitable defeat less satisfying), no Meereen, and no Iron Islands shenanigans. Last year, it seemed to me that the episodes written by Bryan Cogman kept the jumping around to a minimum, and this one appeared to continue that trend.

Mercy mercy me. The fact that Arya goes by the name “Mercy” in this episode is a nice nod to book-readers, but the fact that she’s wearing the same costume she had on when pretending to be “Lana” last year undercuts the idea that she’s trying to assume a disguise.

Call him Coldhands. Tonight, the show introduced Coldhands, a character fans have been wanting to see for a long time. In the books, his identity is a mystery, but the show wasted no time in revealing that he was Benjen Stark.

Before fans jump to conclusions, we should note that this in no way means that Coldhands is Benjen in the books as well as the show. In fact, George R.R. Martin has made it fairly clear that this isn’t the case. This seems like another example of the show streamlining things. Interpret it as you will.

On the steps of the Sept. I want to try and unpack the motivations of two characters during that big Sept of Baelor scene. First: the High Sparrow. Did he always plan to give over Margaery without a fight? Did he know the Tyrell army was coming (remember, Olenna and company tried to mount their attack without Tommen’s knowledge)? He seemed to be preparing the crowd for another Walk of Atonement, but his language was loose. If he knew he had Tommen on standby, it seems like his plan was always to announce him as Baelor the Blessed come again, and not to force Margaery to take a Walk. If that’s the case, then the arrival of Jaime and Mace made him look like a do-gooder being oppressed by the man. As Olenna said, “He’s beaten us.”

But then again, Margaery may still be playing games here. She seemed surprised when the army showed up (she wouldn’t have gotten information about that while in prison), but I couldn’t quite read her face. Assuming that she is indeed faking her religious conversion and knew that there wasn’t going to be a walk, she would have known what a bad move the Lannisters and Tyrells were making by coming to get her. Also, did Loras get sprung, too?

As long as we’re talking motivations, what do you think Kevan was thinking during the scene where Tommen stripped Jaime of his white cloak? He was giving Jaime some saucy looks, but it’s also possible he was the one who convinced Tommen that Jaime would be of more use at Riverrun than in holy jail.