Book-Reader’s Recap—Game of Thrones, Episode 705—”Eastwatch”

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 “Eastwatch,” aka “Game of Thrones takes a break from action scenes so it can do some setup.” And frankly, the setup didn’t exactly work like clockwork. Let’s get into it.

Things start off with an anticlimax. Look, cliffhangers are dangerous at the best of times. The cliffhanger that started the series — Bran getting pushed out a window — was terrific. By that point, we didn’t know that Bran was a main character yet. Would he survive? Would Jaime and Cersei get away with what they did? We were honestly unsure of the answers to those questions (I mean, book-readers knew, but not the audience at large), and we tuned in to find out.

Seven years later, it’s harder to pull that kind of thing off. We’ve moved past the books, but I don’t think anyone out there expected Jaime to bite it, and he didn’t. And to just have him wash up on shore glosses over several questions I think we had a right to have answered, namely: how does mere mortal Bronn of the Blackwater drag a man weighed down by heavy armor and a gold hand out of what looked like the Mariana Trench? I know Jaime’s his meal ticket, but come on, now.

Macall B. Polay – HBO

Basically, I thought that was a waste of a cliffhanger, regardless of how prettily Matt Shakman photographed it. (Points for the tower of smoke in the background as they wash up on shore.)

After they catch their breath, Bronn questions Jaime on the finer points of dragon-slaying. “What the fuck were you doing back there?” is how he puts it. Jaime answers that he was trying to end the war, and Bronn gives a rejoinder that pretty much makes me forgive him for whatever part he played in this stumble of an opening. “Listen to me, cunt. Until I get what I’m owed. You don’t get to kill you. Only I get to kill you.” That’s right, Bronn — get paid.

Jaime, having seen what the dragons are capable of, is understandably worried that the Lannisters won’t stand a chance against them. Walking through the wreckage of the battlefield, Tyrion is looking more than a little unsettled himself. More beautiful photography here — the shot below looks like something from a Civil War battle…if they had flamethrowers in the Civil War. Are Benioff and Weiss preparing for Confederate?

Tyrion’s in an interesting position right now, and Peter Dinklage, dependable as always, is selling his inner conflict. At the moment, he’s conflicted about his queen, who is giving a much more violent version of the Sermon on the Mount to the Lannister soldiers who survived the Loot Train Attack. “I know Cersei told you I was some sort of crazy firestarter,” she tells a group of soldiers who still have the ashes of their dead friends on their faces, “but I’m actually super-nice. Now follow me or die.”

It’s not that simple, of course. We know Dany well enough to know that she’s being sincere when she says she wants to destroy “the wheel that has rolled over rich and poor to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world.” But the optics of the situation are rough. She’s standing in a black supervillain gown with her fire-breathing monster behind her, and while she offers the men a choice as to what to do with their lives, is a choice really a choice when there are only two options and one of them is to die? Notice that most of the men only kneel after Drogon roars at them — whether Dany means to or not, she’s ruling through fear.

But Randyll Tarly and Dickon Tarly are not cowed. They refuse to kneel, and Daenerys resolves to execute them with dragonfire, despite Tyrion’s advice to let them take the black. Given how his recent advice has backfired, it makes sense that Dany wouldn’t be in the mood to listen to Tyrion right now, doubly so because she’s pumped from winning her first big battle of the war. But again, the optics…Shakman continues to do what he did last week by highlighting the fear and humanity of the Lannister soldiers. Daenerys, standing there like a vengeful god, seems less sympathetic than Randyll and Dickon, a father and son who clasp hands in the face of the end. I also liked the moment where Randyll shouted at Dickon in an attempt to keep him out of the line of fire, so to speak. It’s a great dramatic strategy: give an antipathetic character a moment of real vulnerability right before you take them away forever. And in this case, it’s a strategy that makes us wary of Dany. I’m not saying she’s going to become the Mad Queen, but the show is leaving open that possibility.

Macall B. Polay – HBO

Anyway, after the Tarlys are burned to a cinder, the rest of the Lannister soldiers kneel right quick. Her methods may be suspect, but Daenerys gets results, dammit.

Meanwhile, Jaime tromps into Cersei’s bedroom looking a mess. Already informed of his loss on the battlefield, Lena Headey does that thing she does where she barely moves her face but somehow conveys a world of emotion swirling under Cersei’s exterior. I love Lena Headey.

But that’s incidental. The point of this scene is for Jaime to inform Cersei that, despite the mercenaries she plans to buy with the Tyrell gold, no army is likely to win a war against Daenerys Targaryen, her Dothraki cavalry, and her three dragons. Predictably, Cersei is unwilling to back down. (“So we fight and die or we submit and die,” she badasses. “I know my choice.”) Also predictably, her feelings on Tyrion are not changed by the knowledge that he didn’t actually kill Joffrey. Like Tywin, she made her mind up about Tyrion a long time ago.

We leave Jaime to stew in his discomfort and head to Dragonstone, where we watch Jon watch Dany swoop in on Drogon. He is appropriately gobsmacked. That wonder quickly turns to fear as Drogon makes a beeline for the King in the North and gets right up in his face, toothy grimace and all.

From a special effects perspective, the sequence is fantastic — I love all the close-ups we get of full-grown Drogon. He truly does look terrifying. Story-wise, it’s fascinating that Jon deals with his fear by taking off his glove and giving the dragon a good pet…and that Drogon lets him. This should ring a bell for book-readers — in the novels, Dany’s dragons are known to be fond of Brown Ben Plumm, who claims to have a bit of Targaryen blood. We know that Jon has rather a lot of Targaryen blood, so it makes sense that Drogon would be affectionate towards him.

If Dany is impressed, she doesn’t let on, although she has to be a little impressed, right? Maybe she steered Drogon to Jon hoping he’d be cowed into bending the knee? If so, he acquitted himself well.

The pair of them talk about what the dragons mean to Dany — they’re her children — and Dany gets close to getting Jon to talk about his death and resurrection. Happily for him, he’s saved by the arrival of Jorah Mormont, who’s reuniting with his queen for the third time in as many seasons.

The reunion is sweet, particularly the part where Jorah and Dany, now free from having to worry about greyscale, embrace, but like the reunion between Sansa and Arya last week, there’s something kind of muted about it. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re both wearing thick wooly clothes, or that Dany has been much more above-it-all since coming to Westeros, or that you can only reunite so many times before it gets old. My favorite thing about the scene is Jorah giving the eye to a befuddled Jon Snow. Great, Jorah thinks. Another handsome guy I have to hate.

North we go to Winterfell for an interesting sequence where we see the Three-Eyed Raven in action. (The timeline of this episode is more strictly organized than usual, by the way. Usually I can break scenes up by location, but there’s a clear action-and-reaction structure here that makes that difficult.) Bran is sending out a conspiracy of ravens to spy on the Night King. We get some juicy atmospheric shots as the ravens cruise over hill and forest, pass Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and fly into the wilds beyond the Wall. (I’m betting some of these landscape shots show up next week — clever job of geographic setup here, show.) Finally, they crest a hill and see the army of the dead in its multitude, the Night King sitting atop a plateau. He looks at the conspiracy, which instantly dissipates. Creepy, that guy.

The battle of wills between the Night King and Bran is getting juicy and personal, isn’t it? That has potential.

Back at Winterfell, Bran snaps out of his greensight trip and orders Maester Wolkan to send out ravens informing the lords of Westeros of what he saw: the army of the dead is marching on Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. We cut immediately to the Citadel, where a council of elderly archmaesters is discussing the letter while Sam putters around stacking books in the background. (For the record, this sort of time jump doesn’t bother me, since Sam’s story is pretty isolated from the rest of the goings-on this season.) They’re dismissive of it, and of the North in general, which seems to have a reputation as a land of hicks and bumpkins.

But Samwell sticks up for it, and for Bran, whom he met back in season 3. Sam, action-scholar, is fed up with these do-nothing ivory tower dwellers, and implores them to marshall the forces of Westeros to fight the army of the dead. But they’re more interested in talking about repairs to the ravenry. Sam storms out, mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore. But hey — one of the maesters made a Jenny of Oldstones references, so that’s nice.

So the show has decided to depict the maesters as bureaucrats too up their own asses to recognize real danger when it’s right in front of them, which has a basis in the books. What I wish we’d gotten more of is the maesters’ alleged opposition to all things magic — that they’re not just slow to respond to things like dragons and wights because they’re set in their ways, but because they may have an agenda for Westeros that doesn’t include them.

In fact, I wish the Citadel plot in general had been stretched out. Later, Sam decides to get out of dodge, and shoves Gilly, Little Sam, and all the restricted scrolls he can carry into the back of a mule cart. There’s a nice moment where he looks wistfully at the Citadel library and all the knowledge he’s leaving behind, and while it lands, I wish we’d spent a little more time seeing him actually enjoy what the Citadel has to offer before he split. It’s a casualty of speeding up the plot so we can arrive at a resolution.

Let’s see, what else happens at the Citadel? Oh, yeah — before Sam and Gilly leave, there’s a brief scene where she’s helping him copy scrolls and off-handedly reads one about how High Septon Maynard annulled Rhaegar Targaryen’s marriage to Elia Martell so Rhaegar could marry Lyanna Stark in a secret ceremony.

Wuzzat? Kudos to HBO for slipping that enormous revelation in so casually. Basically, that means that Jon, as the son of Rhaegar in Lyanna, is not only not a bastard but actually the trueborn heir to the Targaryen dynasty. Watch for that bomb to go off sometime in season 8.

Back on Dragonstone, Varys has also received Bran’s letter. It’s sealed, but naturally, Varys has read it anyway. (Tyrion: “What’s it say?” Varys: “Nothing good.”) But before they can deal with that, they have to get drunk and discuss the state of Daenerys Targaryen. Tyrion is bending over backwards to convince himself that he’s okay with Dany’s choice to burn the Tarlys alive, but Varys pours some cold water on his denial with some very vivid descriptions of his own internal struggles back in the days when the Mad King was lighting people up. Again, I’m very intrigued by where this Mad Queen plot is going, because they’re laying too much groundwork for it to go nowhere.

Helen Sloan – HBO

After Varys delivers Bran’s message to the group, all the principal players gather round the Painted Table for a plan-hatching session. We get Jon’s all-too-brief reaction to the news that Arya and Bran are alive and at Winterfell (again, that’s the price of expediency), before the Avengers get to chatting about the army of the dead. Tyrion, ever the idea man, suggests a way to unite the Seven Kingdoms against the threat beyond the Wall: rather than take Cersei out before marching north, get her to join in the fight by bringing a wight south.

There are several things going on here. First, notice that everyone seems pretty on board with the whole the-army-of-the-dead-exists thing now. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about that. I know some fans wondered why Dany didn’t believe Jon earlier, but I wasn’t one of them. Who cares if you have dragons? You don’t just believe in zombies because a stranger with great hair tells you they’re real. But of course, Dany has gotten to know Jon better since then.

As for the wight-hunting plan…I guess I buy it, in the abstract. And I definitely buy that Jon and Jorah would volunteer to lead it — you can’t keep those two away from where the action is thickest. The whole thing has something of a cheesy overlay to it, but we’ll get to that after the show assembles the rest of its dream team.

The most entertaining sequence of the night is probably Davos and Tyrion’s trip to King’s Landing. If Team Targaryen wants to show Cersei that the army of the dead is real, you see, they’re going to have to set up a meeting with her, but she’s not likely to respond to a simple invitation. Tyrion’s solution: pass a note to Bronn, who facilitates a surprise meeting between Jaime and Tyrion in the dungeons below the Red Keep, the ones where the dragon skulls are kept. And since Davos is a former smuggler, he can sneak Tyrion in. And bippity boppity boo, we have hijinks.

The scene between Jaime and Tyrion is a good one, in large part because of Dinklage’s acting. He’s badly trying to connect with his big brother, but Jaime — who once promised to split Tyrion in two if he ever saw him again — isn’t having it. Tyrion is here to plead with Jaime to set up a meeting with Cersei, but ends up poring out his heart about his crappy relationship with Tywin, or at least he comes near to doing it. I know I’m saying this a lot in this recap, but I wish the show had time to make this scene longer. These characters, and these actors, deserve it.

While Tyrion and Jaime catch up, Davos heads to Flea Bottom in search of Gendry Waters, who’s smithing his life away making weapons for the Lannisters. “I wasn’t sure I’d find you,” Davos says. “Thought you might still be rowing.” Everybody laugh.

Helen Sloan – HBO

Gendry and Joe Dempsie are in fine form. Beyond the producers wanting to have Gendry on the show again, it’s not really clear why Davos comes to get him, but Dempsie somehow sells it. “What do you think I’ve been thinking about with every swing of the hammer?” he asks. “How happy I am making weapons for the family that killed my father? The family that tried to kill me? I’ve been getting ready. I never knew what for, but I’ve always known I’d know it when it comes.”

It comes out later that Davos wanted Gendry to smith for Jon Snow, but was this kid really that amazing that Davos would risk wandering the streets of a city where he’s a wanted man to collect him? He advises Gendry to keep his royal bastardy to himself, so apparently that wasn’t part of his calculation. It’s all pretty muddled, but Dempsie’s enthusiasm is charming enough that I buy it in the moment.

Gendry also has a fun moment later, when Davos brings him back to the boat he and Tyrion snuck into the city with. A couple of gold cloaks happen by, and Davos — smooth as silk — tries to bribe them into letting he and Gendry leave peaceably. He’s planned ahead, Davos has, and is ready with an elaborate story about smuggling fermented crab (or as Unsullied Recapper Katie Majka called it, Seafood Viagra) out of the city. His bluffs are working until Tyrion arrives back on the scene — smooth as Davos is, it’s hard for the Gold Cloaks to ignore a dwarf who matches the description of the guy their queen wants dead more than anyone in the world.

The Gold Cloaks get hostile, but before they can make a move, Gendry whips out his homemade war hammer and pulverizes their faces. Like his convenient willingness to go with Davos back to Dragonstone (and Davos’ convenient desire to find him), Gendry’s convenient ability use the war hammer is kind of…convenient. But dammit if he doesn’t look cool swinging it. I’m all kinds of conflicted about the Gendry scenes.

Later, Jaime heads back to Cersei’s bedchamber for another arresting conversation. Again, I have to give Lena Headey oodles of credit here. She knows of Jaime’s meeting with Tyrion before he admits to it, but instead of leveling with him immediately, draws out his discomfort with Mona Lisa smiles and contemplative chuckles. And later, when she reveals that she’s pregnant with Jaime’s child, she allows some genuine happiness to creep into her eyes. I’m starting to sound like an obsessive, but Headey is just…so, so good.

As for the plot, Cersei agrees to meet with Daenerys, since the Dragon Queen has the numbers and they’ll have to be “clever” if they want to beat her. I take this to mean that Cersei is trying to buy time while her army of mercenaries makes its way across the Narrow Sea…or maybe she plans to go all Sept of Baelor on their asses. Never stop surprising us, Cersei.

Back at Dragonstone, Davos introduces Gendry to Jon Snow. Gendry immediately goes against Davos’ advice and tells Jon of his real lineage, and again, I’m of two minds — his enthusiasm is infectious, but when was Gendry ever boundlessly enthusiastic? I feel like they’re pushing his character to do things he wouldn’t normally do so they can write some dialogue where he and Jon bond over their fathers’ friendship. That’s kind of how I feel about the Gendry scenes in general, like he’s back because the producers want him back, not because the story needs him back.

On the other hand, I like Gendry, and he calls Jon short, which is funny.

Macall B. Polay – HBO

Oh, and Gendry’s going along with Jon and company to hunt wights. He’s not a soldier, but he’s “a fighter.” Oh, since when? But I’m being a broken record here. Two minds. Too convenient. Gendry is cool, etc, etc.

On the beach at Dragonstone, the characters bid goodbye to each other. Tyrion gives Jorah the coin the slaver paid them back when they were sold outside Meereen, Jorah and Dany clasp hands (“We should be better at saying farewell by now” is a good line), and Dany and Jon stare deeply into each other’s eyes before parting ways. But Jorah is the one who looks back at Dany as they leave, because…

Before our final scene of the night, let’s stop by Winterfell again, where things are…divisive. First, we get a slice of one of the town hall meetings we saw in the first two episodes of the season. Some of the lords of the North and the Vale — including Lords Glover and Royce — have assembled to wonder aloud if Sansa, who’s been doing a bang-up job of running things in Jon’s absence, shouldn’t have the job permanently. (It goes without saying that Lady Mormont isn’t present. If she were, Glover and Royce may have died.) Sansa demurs, saying that Jon is the king. Her explanation satisfies me, but not Arya, who watches from a distance.

Later, the sisters walk to Sansa’s bedroom, which happens to be Ned and Catelyn’s old chambers — remember that Jon requested that she take it back in “The Winds of Winter.” And then Arya starts attacking Sansa for reasons that are…unclear. She wonders how Sansa could listen to the Northern lords disparage Jon for being an absentee king without sticking up for him…or beheading them for speaking out of turn. Sansa gives a well-reasoned answer about needing to keep a coalition together (she points out that cutting off heads isn’t the way you get people to work together, providing a counterpoint to Daenerys’ strategy earlier in the episode), but Arya seems convinced that Sansa is keeping the North together not for Jon, but for herself.

I like the bit where Arya divines that Sansa is thinking about ruling the North herself, however reluctantly. We know that Sansa has flirted with that idea, and we know that Arya has the ability to read people thanks to her time with the Faceless Men. She’s basically doing to Sansa what Jaqen H’ghar and the Waif did to her when they played the game of faces, only Arya isn’t smacking Sansa with a switch every time she lies. But here’s the thing: even if the thought has crossed Sansa’s mind, she isn’t trying to pull off a coup. Arya should be able to read Sansa’s sincerity, but for whatever reason, she’s choosing to focus on the few mutinous thoughts rattling around in Sansa’s head. I know these two didn’t have a great relationship earlier in the series, but I think Arya owes Sansa the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe this plotline would work with a little more support — I think Arya needs a bit more of a reason to be suspicious of her sister. As it is, it feels like Benioff and Weiss are trying to insert drama for the sake of drama, and that’s not a good thing.

One thing Arya does have right: Littlefinger is a rat. To this end, she follows him around Winterfell, waiting for him to do something shady. It takes about three seconds. She sees him slip something to an unidentified woman, sees him confer with Lords Glover and Royce (we can infer that Littlefinger had something to do with their call for Sansa to replace Jon), and sees Maester Wolkan give him a letter from Maester Luwin’s archives. Whatever could it be?

Naturally, Arya breaks into Littlefinger’s room to find out. After searching around for a minute, she finds the letter tucked inside Littlefinger’s bedding. It’s the letter that Sansa wrote to Robb back in season 1, the one where she disavowed Ned as a traitor and asked Robb to come to King’s Landing and bend the knee.

I think we can all see where this is going. Arya, who’s already suspicious of her sister for some reason, will take this as proof that Sansa is untrue to the Stark family, which seems forced. Arya is now practiced at separating lies from the truth, so if Sansa told her the truth — that she wrote that letter under duress when she was much more naive than she is now — wouldn’t that solve the problem before it starts? Also, recall that Maester Luwin intuited that Sansa was forced to write the letter the second it arrived. “It is your sister’s hand,” he assured Robb, “but the Queen’s words.”

Then again, Robb apparently needed some convincing, and Arya does value loyalty. But I’d like to think she’s smart enough to see that this letter doesn’t mean anything, particularly in light of what Sansa went through since she wrote it.

I dunno. What do you guys think of this? Do you buy this tension between the Stark sisters or does it feel forced? I’d be curious to hear.

One more layer: after Arya leaves Littlefinger’s room, we see him creeping in the shadows like a creeping creeper, implying that he wanted Arya to find the letter, probably so he can drive a wedge between the Stark sisters. I like that Littlefinger is a making a play — it was starting to look like he was just going to sit back as more and more enemies swarmed around him — but I’m not 100% convinced this storyline makes narrative sense. This is a time I really wish we could compare what’s happening to the source material. Is this something that will happen in George R.R. Martin’s novels? Only when Martin writes it, will he fill in the details it needs to be convincing? Or is this something fabricated for the show?

Whatever happens, I’ll reserve judgment for the moment. Let’s see where this goes.

Lastly, we stop by Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, which looks rather magnificent. And check out that winding stair carved into the Wall!

Inside, Jon fills Tormund in on the plan to hunt a wight. They mention that Jon didn’t bring many men, and that’s as good a point as any to interject my complaints about this scenario.

The wight hunt kind of feels like Gendry’s reappearance: something that the producers want to happen because they think it will be cool, rather than something the story demands. I mean, it makes sense in outline form, but the bit about not bringing enough men is an example of what’s irritating me. If you want more men, go get more men. The only reason Jon wouldn’t do that, so far as I can tell, is because it’s cooler to have him go beyond the Wall with a ragtag group of fighters who don’t get along but have to put aside the differences to survive. I can see the writers’ handprints on this plotline, and I don’t want to — I just want to see the characters.

Also part of that ragtag group: the Hound, Thoros of Myr, and Beric Dondarrion (and the rest of the Brotherhood Without Banners, one assumes), who have been sitting in cells at Eastwatch since sometime after the Hound saw a vision of the place back in “Dragonstone.” There’s bad blood all around. Gendry doesn’t like the Brotherhood because they sold him to Melisandre. Tormund doesn’t like Jorah because Jorah’s father commanded the Night’s Watch, and the Hound just hates everyone — as least his beef doesn’t come off as contrived.

The last shot is the lot of them passing under the tunnel and going through the Wall, which might as well be a cue card that reads “tune in next week.” I dunno…the whole thing feels like it’s trying too hard to be “Game of Thrones does The Wild Bunch.”

This was one of my more acrimonious recaps. Parts of this episode annoyed me. I adore the show, and can’t wait for it to prove me wrong next week.

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Odds and Ends

• Sansa mentioned Ghost, y’all! He exists!
• Davos mentioned that Tyrion killed his son with wildfire. Matthos exists, too!
• The show curtailed important scenes like the one between Jaime and Tyrion, but it had enough time to go into detail about the aphrodisiac properties of fermented crab. I don’t say that as a criticism, actually — I love that this show has a sense of whimsy, but I wish everything had a bit more room to breath. This episode felt rushed in a way the last four didn’t.
• Davos: “As my father used to say, ‘It’s better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life.'” So Davos’ father was either very stupid or had a good sense of humor.
• I’m just gonna say it: I kind of hate the phrase “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.” Everybody says it. Mance Rayder said it. Arthur Dayne said it. Now Jon says it. Is it like the Happy Birthday song? Does everyone in Westeros just know it?
• I enjoyed seeing Arya pull a Batman. She’s there, watching Littlefinger go about his business, but when he looks in her direction…poof! She’s gone. Fun every time.
• Tormund asks Jon if he brought “the big woman” to come along on the wight hunt. Tormund-Brienne FuckWatch 2017 is still on.

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