Hey guys. Jon Snow is ALIVE. More news: “the worst-kept secret in history” is now a nonsense phrase to me. In fact, between discussion of the secrecy of Jon Snow’s resurrection and the dull brutality of Ramsay Snow, it’s hard to remember that Bran gave us an awesome flashback to young Ned Stark and—wait for it—LYANNA STARK. She of the fabled R+L=J.
So, Jon Snow’s resurrection came as a shock to absolutely no one. (Sonia Sarayia even quoted herself from last year, ably predicting the obvious method of bringing him back to life via Melisandre.) What did surprise people was the scene where Davos attempts to convince Melisandre to do the thing the Internet predicted she would do. Sonia continues:
"He even stumbles over the word “magic,” when he’s hovering by her, because it’s that distasteful to him to acknowledge her Red God mumbo-jumbo. But it’s enough for her to re-center herself and go to Jon Snow’s corpse. That decision is where the drama is, not the unseen magic that follows. It’s those little character beats of revelation and wonder that will end up selling whatever ending Benioff and Weiss have in store for the rest of us."
Alicia Lutes at Nerdist also notes the sweet talk Davos gave: “Leave it to Ser Davos to know all the right things to say, you guys.” Perhaps even more intriguing is how delaying the Iron Islands subplot to this season enhanced the experience of Melisandre’s crisis of faith. EW’s James Hibberd notes:
"…Not only was Balon kept alive until the Thrones producers could use his death for a more interesting story line moving forward than what would have been possible a couple seasons back, there’s also that tie to Melisandre. In one sense, Balon dying is an affirmation, if you can call it that, of her curse from years ago. Yet at the same time, Robb, Joffrey, and Balon all clearly were killed due to the apparent free-will decisions of others."
Myles McNutt, the book-reader reviewer at the A.V. Club, also notes how the Thrones writers were potentially waiting for the right time to bring Balon Greyjoy back into the show:
"By returning to the character at this stage, and seeing Melisandre’s curse be fulfilled right before she is asked to revive Jon Snow by Davos, it pulls the audience into her sense of self-doubt. She no longer believes in her own power, and yet we have just seen evidence of either a cosmic coincidence or the potential that she could do as Thoros did and bring a man back from the dead."
Sadly, the only other part of the episode to make significant waves this week was Ramsay Snow’s vicious table-turning in Winterfell. Alyssa Rosenberg registered legible disgust at the use of audio, forcing us to listen to Ramsay’s dogs devour mother and child as Ramsay looks on; that disgust was echoed by most reviewers and recappers. Alan Sepinwall, Hitfix: “This episode is far from the first time something horrible has happened to a baby on this show…but whenever Ramsay’s involved, both he and Game of Thrones seems to be taking perverse pleasure in it all, without in any way enhancing our understanding of him at this stage of things.” Both Sonia Sarayia and, over at Vox, Todd VanDerWerff discuss how anticlimactic the episode felt, nodding to both Jon Snow’s resurrection and Ramsay continuing to be a giant d***.
Those two scenes pretty much dominated the conversation, aside from excitement at seeing Lyanna, learning Hodor’s real name (and being unable to decide how to spell it), and watching the resurrected Mountain do stuff in King’s Landing. But Brandon Nowalk, the newbie reviewer at the A.V. Club, points out a potentially positive aspect to Yara Greyjoy’s situation as she sets her sights on the Seastone Chair:
"…The point is that the story has made severe underdogs of a whole gender from the start. For the entire run of the show, it’s been triumphant to watch the women take over. But at least since Cat took Tyrion hostage, that triumph has been bittersweet. The women either have to lose and struggle and endure to achieve agency, or they wield it with the same selfishness and short-sightedness as the men. However impressive it is for Cersei and Ellaria to attain their respective thrones, they’re not great leaps forward. They’re steps back. Yara might not be."
Time will tell if this proves to be true. In the meantime, we’ll still have Peter Dinklage, Dragon Trainer Extraordinaire. (Alan Sepinwall, echoing several other reviewers: “Peter Dinklage: so great he doesn’t even need human co-stars to make a scene work.”)