Andrew: Has GoT become a female-centric show? That’s what Nina Shen Rastogi says at Vulture, and based on last night’s episode she may be right. Arya, Cersei, Danaerys, Brienne—most of the people who really move the story forward are women. Partly this is because so many of the men have been killed off. Who are we left with, really? Jon Snow in the North, Jaime Lannister, Tyrion. Stannis Baratheon, but he’s not one of the characters we identify with, really. Littlefinger. But other than that it’s the women who are really making things happen, and I for one am delighted, because these women are awesome and fascinating. Each, last night, was faced with a choice of sorts, a fork in the path where they’d have to decide who they were going to be and what they were going to do. And each chose, for good or ill. We’ll talk about those choices soon—but first, Chris, I’m dying to hear what you thought of last night’s episode!
Chris: I thought this episode featured some really fascinating developments…and a few instances of the same old characters. I understand it’s probably hard to be a Queen of a city you conquered, but jesus Dany is terrible at being Queen. The only possible outcome for Brienne’s interaction with Sansa is to see Brienne vow to protect Sansa forever and Sansa to reject Brienne. Meanwhile, Jon Snow is too noble to do anything that might bring his character into conflict or growth. And I LIKE Jon Snow. For some of these characters, it’s been seasons since they’ve shown any change and their beats are becoming too damn predictable. That’s why I was so happy to arrive in two new locations: Braavos and Dorne. New characters, new stories. I’m very excited about what he Sandsnakes will be up to in Dorne after the death of Oberyn Martell and the prospect of Arya training to become an assassin is a tantalizing (if quite sad) part of her own story.
Andrew: Arya’s story is interesting and promising—but I actually thought that her first encounter with the House of White and Black was a little…I don’t know, expected? The young student reporting for training by a mysterious group is a well-worn trope, and this episode embraced every cliche. Of course Arya wouldn’t be let in right away, of course they’d leave her out on the front steps as a kind of test. It would have actually been more original for them to have let her in immediately and get down to business. That said, the way things ultimately turned out—that Arya had to discard the coin before she could be let in, perhaps a lesson about having to empty herself of her previous identity, her name—that’s interesting.
If I was underwhelmed, at first, by developments in Arya’s story, I was perhaps more impressed than you were with the choices that Brienne made. Yes, there was little else that could have happened other than Sansa rejecting a complete stranger’s offer of protection. But that Brienne would effectively reject Sansa’s rejection, kill a bunch of Littlefinger’s knights, and follow them anyway—well, there’s something interesting going on there. As Podrick said, why not just give up? Isn’t your oath done? But Brienne’s identity is tied up in her role as protector. She failed to protect Renly, she wasn’t there to protect Catelyn, the next person she swore allegiance to, and now she’s failing to protect the Stark sisters. But she hasn’t given up on her oath—if anything, Sansa’s rejection seems to have renewed her resolve. That’s not exactly rational. But it’s very human, and could be potentially interesting in the future.
Chris: Well, Brienne is not going to quit because she promised she would do this and she has no other outstanding promises to dead former leaders. I’m coming off more harsh on Brienne than I intend. I think her story will be great this season-largely because it is intertwined with Sansa and Little Finger, who are, in my estimation, the most unpredictable characters in Westeros.
Last night’s most pleasurable moment came, of all places, in King’s Landing, where Cersei Lannister is trying to fill in for her dearly departed father. After successfully shaming Jamie for his failures as a father to their incestuous children, and fuming over the threat of Margaery Tyrell, Cersei calls the Small Council together to mete out roles and responsibilities to the new king. Tywin was the King’s Hand, a seat now vacant and one that Cersei, as a woman, cannot fill (she reminds the men of this with delicious scorn). But she tries anyway to strong arm the council to her will. And it would’ve worked too, if not for that pestering Uncle Kevan, who refuses to recognize Cersei’s authority. “You are the Queen Mother,” he says, “and nothing more.” Point to Uncle Kevan.
This was great Game of Thrones. Cersei’s role has become so complex and divided, her need to adapt constant. She’s watching the Lannister power slip away, her children’s lives ruined, or endangered, and her capacity to intimidate even her own family is now dwindling. Look at Cersei’s face as Kevan tells her “I do not recognize your authority…” What Lena Headey is doing with Cersei, Andrew, is wondrous to behold.
Andrew: In many ways, this may be Cersei’s season. The premiere episode began with a flashback to when she was a girl, signalling that we’d be spending some time excavating her motivations. And now she is, in effect if not in fact, the one sitting on the Iron Throne. Tommen’s still too young to rule, Tywin’s gone, Jaime’s not really a ruler at heart, so it’s down to Cersei. She’s the one ruling, keeping the Lannister family together and keeping threats to their power at bay.
Well, maybe she doesn’t care so much about threats to the Lannister family, per se—Cersei’s main thing is that she loves her children and wants to protect them. “Gold will be their crowns,” said the witch last week, “and gold their shrouds.” No wonder Cersei’s so keen to get Myrcella back from Dorne.
Speaking of, I’m super-pumped about seeing some stuff happen at Dorne—Bashir from DS9 is the ruler there! Though, so far I don’t get a great sense of what things are like there. It looks a lot like King’s Landing at the moment. The scene last night felt a little small, and it was the one time during last night’s episode (there’s always at least one) where I was taken out of the fictional dream and was reminded that these are just actors wearing goofy clothes on sets. Still. Dorne. Let’s keep expanding this world!
Chris: The scene in Dorne felt entirely introductory, and as such, left little impression. It did introduce (in name only) the Sandsnakes and I’m quite excited to see this group in action (partially because Keisha Castle-Hughes plays one, and I’m a fan). Dorne, though, is yet another city with a ruler who is faced with the difficulties of reacting to a high-profile killing. That Oberyn’s wife Elia wants to see Oberyn avenged is no surprise. That she wants to start a war for it is something that the Prince Doran cannot abide. Okay, okay. Tune in next week on that one, I guess.
I think that the Dorne scene brings up a major struggle that Game of THrones is going to have to deal with going forward. Last night introduced two new locations, on top of at least seven or eight regular cities or castles. They’ve done a great job managing the through lines in this show-a must for so many characters and stories. But last night things just didn’t feel whole. I want to expand the world. Westeros, Essos, Braavos; I love the cities and the landscapes and the people, but each time we land in a new city, it feels like a diminishing return. The creators are smartly relying on the weight of King’s Landing and The Wall to anchor all the movement (the two “biggest” scenes last night were in each), but its a constant conundrum Weiss and Benioff have to deal with.
Andrew: If there’s a third anchor point, it might be Mereen, the city where Danaerys has camped out and is attempting to be queen. As you said, Chris, she’s not a particularly good queen at the moment. But she’s trying. I’ve made no secret of my impatience with events in Mereen. I tend to view them as a distraction keeping Dany and her dragons from making a play for the Iron Throne in Westeros. But last night’s action was the rare development that actually felt interesting to me.
Dany’s struggled, in the past, with a bit of a savior complex, and she has a tendency to become too enamored of herself as a mighty ruler. A week ago, she said, “I’m not a politician, I’m a queen.” But this week her tune changed, with some help from Ser Barristan’s report of her father’s corruption by power. Now, when one of the slaves she’s freed pleads with her for vengeance against a killer working on behalf of the masters, she refuses. “You are the law,” he said, to which she has the quick rejoinder: “The law is the law.”
It’s a smart line, but it’s not enough to keep Mereen from devolving into chaos, as the slaves and masters lash out against each other in a riot. Watching this scene, I actually got a sense of Mereen as a real place with complex political dynamics, and not as a blank background against which Dany practices her savioring, for the first time. How can one change a society that’s been built on injustice without letting it devolve into lawlessness? What’s the difference between justice and vengeance? Should Dany have had the masters pay reparations to the freed slaves? (This was an actual thought I had last night.) It’s all very complex—and that complexity, in Dany’s story, is quite welcome.
Chris: Agreed. The people of Mereen are completely at odds in a society where slavery was recently ended. It’s a time of reconstruction, and the actuality of that has always been off-screen and out of sight for Dany. It’s nice to see some of that reality reach the Queen. The political consequences of the former slave’s execution are what you would expect. They called her mother, and she killed one of her children.The fear that she feels after, when the hsssss comes from the onlookers is real and warranted. Her escape is necessary and, for my memory, it’s the first moment of actual threat that Dany has faced in a long, long while. Events in Mereen are only going to continue to get more complicated and fun, as the dragons return to action and Tyrion and Varys arrive to attempt to woo her back to Westeros.
Finally, we cannot leave without mentioning that Jon Snow is now an elected official! Stannis reminded Jon Snow that he is at heart a Stark, and even offered to give him the name he’s always wanted. For a brief moment I was hopeful to see Winterfell back under the Stark rule. Alas. Snow is too good to let good things happen to him, so instead he got elected to a leadership position. Congratulations Jon Snow! You’re now in charge of a bunch of assholes (and Samwell Tarly). That’s going to be a terrible fucking job you have, especially given that half the Night’s Watch voted against you. The spoils of victory.
