Review Roundup: Season 6, Episode 3: “Oathbreaker”

This week on Game of Thrones: Qyburn gave candy to children like a creepy old man, Arya filmed an ’80s-style training montage, and Peter Dinklage proves once again that he needs no one but himself to carry an inert scene. But while most critics generally appreciated the pace of the episode while feeling a bit bored by most of the proceedings (there’s not a single good quote about King’s Landing, which took up a healthy chunk of the running time), the focus was on the two major water-cooler scenes: Jon Snow’s post-resurrection scenes, and the much-anticipated (for book readers) Tower of Joy flashback through Bran’s eyes.

And no surprise, people are very invested in what comes next for Jon Snow. Matt Fowler at IGN writes:

"So a lot of my own focus as a viewer is on him right now. In the grand scheme of – well – everything. Many fans have believed that Jon is the key to unlocking a huge piece of the Westeros conflict. The “Ice” in the Song of Ice and Fire. With Dany perhaps taking the “Fire” side of the title.[…]All the injustice, false hope, ruined plans, unavenged atrocities, loved ones just missing each other. All the things that drove us mad would eventually make sense. And that’s what we started to get here in “Oathbreaker.” The seeds of payoff."

Alan Sepinwall at HitFix addresses something even more exciting for him than payoff: uncertainty. “He may feel that he’s failed, but he now has the freedom to go fail wherever and however he wants, and that creates all kinds of possibilities for the series going forward. The fact and nature of Jon’s resurrection may have been predictable, but whatever’s coming next is not.” And Sonia Sarayia at Salon touches on how affecting the first scene was for her:

"The moment where he rises up from the slab is shot beautifully, putting him in a kind of ghostly silhouette that makes him look, briefly, like the demigod that the other Night’s Watchmen believe him to be. Jon Snow is also, understandably, completely terrified, both uncomprehending of what has happened to him and barely able to appreciate its import."

Brief moments of praise for Kit Harington also rang from Alyssa Rosenberg at the Washington Post (“Harington has never been stronger than he was in “Oathbreaker,” as the breath returned to his body and he responded to the fact that he had returned from the dead with as much shock and disappointment as wonder”) and Tim Surette at TV.com (“Kit Harington hit all the right stunted breaths here with a great piece of physical acting, really conveying the sense of confusion, shock, and whaaaaaaaaa? of coming back from the dead”).

Unquestionably, the most talked-about scene of the night was the Tower of Joy, both for the excitement of the fight itself (which Alyssa Rosenberg praises as “one of the few scenes of violence this season to earn the sobriquet of choreography”) and for its narrative implications. It was also a huge tease, which was the favorite word to describe it. Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd describes it so:

"Bran tells him he doesn’t want to grow old in the cave, and the Raven assures him he won’t but has to learn. Learn what? “Everything” — that sounds like an awful lot and is rather annoying coming from somebody who just halted Bran’s vision right before he was supposed to find out something potentially super informative."

Hammervision’s Julie Hammerle was less diplomatic: “WHAT COULD BE IN THAT TOWER? OMG, RAVEN, JUST LET BRAN GO UP THERE WE ALL KNOW WHAT HE’S GOING TO FIND. HOLY S***.”

But The A.V. Club’s book-reader reviewer Myles McNutt points out that, though the teasing was a little too cheeky for its own sake, it was also necessary:

"…The decision to continue to withhold absolute confirmation is a smart one. As much as it would be efficient to use Bran to let the audience know that Jon Snow is the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, that information ultimately means nothing to Bran, and the show has not yet made the connections it needs to make between Bran and the rest of the story for his visions to contribute to the main narrative."

(Suffice it to say, however, that Ser Arthur Dayne made an impact, most notably on Nerdist’s Alicia Lutes, never shy with the italic caps-locks: “…it was badass to see Ser Arthur Dayne in action. Because Ser Arthur Dayne AIN’T NOTHIN’ TO F*** WITH, Y’ALL. Those two broadswords, man.”)

Lastly, though the big flashpoint of Arya’s story was “ROCKY BALBOA TRAINING MONTAGE #647”, Sonia Sarayia, writing for Salon, took the opportunity to point out how complicated Arya’s character arc is:

"She went from a little spitfire badass to a pint-sized sociopath in a rather short amount of time. Now, she’s been in a training montage for what feels like two years; except every brutal inch of that montage has been laid bare to us and made decidedly unromantic.[…]She’s been blinded and interrogated for days on end. She is being transformed, and there is nothing pretty or aspirational about it."

And Myles McNutt drew a comparison between Arya and Bran’s character arcs: “Bran’s story, more than serving as an engine for flashbacks, also mirrors Arya’s as far as training montages are concerned: we are watching the show’s characters gain perspective and experience that is eventually leading them to a central conflict, and that work is not quite done…”

So in summary, Jon Snow’s resurrection manages to still surprise people, and Bran’s return is starting to facilitate some discussion about his role in the days to come, and the kind of all-encompassing information the Three-Eyed Raven seems to think he will need. And Olly is dead and no one cared, the end.