Identity politics ruled the realm this week. So did the words “anti-climactic” and “unsatisfying” as descriptors of “No One,” the eighth episode this year and the last one with a regular runtime. The majority of the conversation in this direction focused on Arya, though there was also some thematic discussion with the Lannister siblings (Cersei and Jaime specifically—the Meereen scenes were too short to warrant any significant exploration).
Alan Sepinwall at HitFix succinctly describes the general sense of frustration at the seemingly dead-end nature of Arya’s storyline:
"Maybe she’s a better fighter than she was when she was apprenticing under Syrio and the Hound, but it feels like the series needed to park Arya in an out-of-the-way place for a couple of seasons so she’d be available and relatively undamaged until the endgame. The show never convincingly sold us on the idea that she might really abandon her true identity to be No One, and so we got some nice action beats and amusing Jaqen doublespeak, but otherwise could have kept her off-camera for as long as the Hound was absent."
The Washington Posts’s Alyssa Rosenberg similarly questions the need for this storyline to drag on as it did:
"I’m not sure this conclusion was worth Arya’s Braavosi sojourn. If Arya needed to earn her way home by proving she can’t escape her name and her personal connection to this conflict after abandoning her family, she did that multiple beatings, blindnesses and stabbings ago. But if nothing else, I’m glad she’s headed back to Westeros, where perhaps a more satisfying storyline, one with fewer gouged-out eyes, awaits her."
The A.V. Club’s book-reader reviewer Myles McNutt found the mechanics of the storyline puzzling; his review uses the disappointment about Arya’s storyline as a launchpad for how “no one” is an effective phrase for exploring identity. He writes:
"As with the books, the basic thematics of Arya’s time with the Faceless Men makes sense to me[…]But the actual mechanics of it have been muddled in the show, such that when Jaqen claims that killing the Waif has somehow made her “no one” I have legitimately no bloody clue what he’s going on about. This was the moment the story was building toward[…]but the procedure of it ended up feeling lost in the opaque logic that governs the Faceless Men and Arya’s training. “No One” should not mean nothing, and yet it does in the context the show has presented it in…"
Myles also found the Riverrun siege conclusion to be a hollow dead-end point (and Alan Sepinwall agrees), but other reviewers found some resonance in both Lannister siblings’ storylines. “Brienne tried to give Jaime his sword back, which, yes, was obviously a very erotic metaphor. But Jaime wanted Brienne to keep his sword, and if your computer screen doesn’t get fogged up by this steamy turn then I don’t even know what to tell you,” writes Price Peterson at Yahoo!.
"“The things we do for love,” is a phrase that may have started life as Jaime Lannister’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) justification for throwing a small child (Isaac Hempstead Wright) out a window[…]But in the parlance of “Game of Thrones,” it’s become a way to say, in riff on the second-wave feminist slogan, that the personal is political, and the political is inescapably personal.[…]Whether Edmure surrenders Riverrun because he truly wants to see the wife and child Jaime promised him, or simply because he believes the cost of fighting honorably would be too great, it’s an appeal to love that ends the stalemate on the riverbank. It’s just that love and violence often go hand in hand in Westeros."
(And speaking of Jaime/Brienne, everyone was right back on that ship again not two or three weeks after the Brienne/Tormund fics started rolling out.)
Myles McNutt discusses Cersei’s descent into just another “lady of the court” as part of his riff on identity politics:
"While on the surface the greatest setback for Cersei here is the fact that Tommen bans trial by combat[…]the fact that Kevan forces her to join the gallery with the other “ladies of the court” is a greater indignity. As someone who was once queen of Westeros, and then Queen Regent, and even then Queen Mother, she has now been reduced to “no one,” at least as compared to her previous position. And as someone who has been fighting her whole life for the respect owed her father and brothers, being dismissed as “a lady of the court” is a particular humiliation…"
The A.V. Club’s Unsullied reviewer Brandon Nowalk concurs with yet more praise for Lena Headey:
"Watching Lena Headey process the events of the throne room is the draw of the episode. She acquiesces to the indignities of not having been informed Tommen was making an announcement and having to watch it from the gallery. She gets visibly unnerved when she processes the news that The Mountain won’t be able to defend her—not legally, anyway. And she’s finally lost when she chases after her son only for him to dodge her."
And here’s James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly with the stinger to end all stingers:
"See the look of shock, hurt, and betrayal ebbing across her face. Her own son just likely condemned her to death. As bad as Cersei is — and, let’s face it, she’s legitimately a terrible person, Olenna was right about that — she would never leave her kid at the mercy of a religious cult who wants to kill him. Does this mean that Tommen is now officially worse than Joffrey?"
Lastly, some brief thoughts on The Hound‘s emotional journey from Alyssa Rosenberg:
"Personal vengeance, it seems, can get in the way of seeing that even torture or wounds pale in comparison to putting a man to death. No one other than themselves and their convictions may be keeping the members of the Brotherhood decent. But they’re in a sight better shape than Sandor is, or ever really was. And their fellowship and conviction that he “can help a lot more than you’ve harmed” is oddly touching."
"Sandor Clegane has no such qualms about embracing his rep as a killer[…]However, he ends the episode wondering whether to embrace his status as below-the-radar and beholden to no one, or to join in the Brotherhood Without Banners as they prepare to face the threat beyond the Wall. Berric Dondarrian assures him that he has a purpose, and that this purpose is to offer enough help to balance out all the bone-breaking, blood-gushing hurt he’s doled out."
And from Laura Hudson at Wired:
"Although it seemed like the Hound had a one-way ticket back to Villainville, he gets another shot at redemption—and perhaps one better suited to him than the pacifism that his short-lived septon buddy offered him. Despite trying to kill him the last time they saw him, Beric and Thoros nonetheless offer him a place in their ranks, and a chance to put his combat skills to more positive use. He’s skeptical about the idea of joining up with another large organization—“lots of horrible shit gets done for something larger than ourselves,” he observes wisely—but he doesn’t say no, exactly."
“He doesn’t say no, exactly” was another oft-repeated phrase—as was the never-ending references to the Waif as the Terminator. I’m personally bummed no one pointed out the Assassin’s Creed-esque feeling of the chase scene, but maybe we’ll all be feeling less charitable towards that franchise when the film adaptation finally reaches theaters.