‘Game of Thrones’: Dragon ex machina

“Game of Thrones
“Beyond the Wall”
August 20, 2017

New rules for killing wights! Witty banter! Out-of-control sibling rivalries! Blue-eyed ice dragons! Super-sonic ravens! Fabulous coats! Tons of eye-fucking! And more deus ex machinas than you can shake an ice spear at! Let’s go!

Winterfell

Sansa finds Arya staring purposefully into the courtyard at Winterfell, reminiscing about the time she taught herself how to use a deadly weapon and their dad was totally cool with it on account of being a feminist ally. And look where it got him: killed by the Lannisters … and with Sansa’s help.

Sansa:

YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, SISTER, ARYA KNOWS ALL ABOUT YOUR MESSAGE TO ROBB ABOUT BENDING THE KNEE TO THAT LITTLE TURD JOFFREY, AND SHE IS HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLA PISSED ABOUT IT. And Sansa was like, “Dude, I was the Lannister’s prisoner, and a kid, they forced me to write that. OBVIOUSLY.”

But Arya is NOT INTERESTED in your bullshit excuse: she was a kid too, and she would have let the Lannisters kill her before she betrayed her family. And anyway, she remembers seeing Sansa up on that platform with Joffrey the day of Ned’s execution and how Sansa did fuck all to help save their father.

After reminding Arya that she didn’t do much to save Ned, either, Sansa gets all huffy with her sister, insisting that she should be on her knees thanking Sansa for saving Winterfell while she was out “traveling the world.”

Sansa then goes and messes up, showing her hand by asking Arya what she plans to do with the message. Arya realizes her sister is worried she might share it with the Northern lords, turning them against her, and is all, “I should totally run this past Lil’ Lady Badass, what’cha think?”

Sansa discusses this whole mess with Littlefinger who is all, “WHO EVEN KNOWS WHERE SHE COULD HAVE FOUND THIS SCROLL??? WHAT A MYSTERY!!”

Curiously, Littlefinger then reminds Sansa that Brienne swore to protect both of the Stark daughters, presumably even from one another. WHAT ARE YOU GETTING AT, SHIFTY MCSHIFTERSON?

Later, Sansa summons Brienne and explains that she has been invited to King’s Landing, and Brienne will be going in her stead. “The fuck I will!” Brienne essentially responds, but Sansa is insistent because we have to have Brienne and Jaime in the same room together one last time somehow. Brienne continues to protest that Littlefinger is a dangerous asshole and can’t be trusted — which is entirely true! — and that at the very least, Podrick should stay behind and protect Sansa.

But Sansa is NOT INTERESTED and DOES NOT NEED TO BE PROTECTED because she is AT HOME and SAFE even though she is living with the world’s most manipulative manipulator and her sister, a magic assassin who happens to be super pissed at her right now in a home that is the only building standing between the rest of Westeros and thousands of angry ice zombies. Super safe! What could go wrong!

Sansa then rummages through Arya’s things, and discovers her faces just as Arya walks into the room and is like, “Cool, huh? I picked them up in Braavos while I was training to be a Faceless Man.” Poor Sansa is all, “FIRST BRAN TELLS ME HE’S A BIRD AND NOW YOU’RE SAYING THAT YOU DON’T HAVE A GODDMANED FACE? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING AROUND HERE?”

But Arya is in no mood to explain and instead begins playing the “Game of Faces” with Sansa, asking her how she really feels about Jon being named King in the North? But Sansa is more interested in WHAT THE FUCK THESE FACES ARE? WAIT, ARE THEY REAL FACES? HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?

Arya explains that when they were younger, they both wanted to be someone else: Sansa wanted to be a queen sitting next to a handsome king on the Iron Throne and Arya wanted to be a warrior. Sadly, patriarchy is an asshole who doesn’t allow girls to decide who they will be. However, with the faces, Arya can be whomever she wants, she explains while fondling the catspaw dagger, even Sansa herself. Arya then hands the dagger to Sansa and skips out of the room.

Dragonstone

While waiting for news on Team Let’s Go Kidnap a Dead Man, What Could Go Wrong?, Daenerys and Tyrion have a fireside chat where Daenerys explains that she likes Tyrion because he’s not a hero.

Daenerys laments that heroes do “stupid things and they die”: Drogo, Jorah, Daario, Jon Snow. Tyrion points out that she just named a bunch of dudes who happen to be in love with her (only one of whom has actually died), and Daenerys turns all schoolgirly, insisting that Jon doesn’t like her in that way. “I suppose he stares longingly at you because he wants a military alliance,” Tyrion snarks. Daenerys then declares Jon Snow “too little” for her.

Daenerys then declares Jon Snow “too little” for her.

Changing topics, Daenerys discusses her upcoming meeting with Tyrion’s sister and how Cersei would like to see them both dead. So that should be fun! Tyrion reminds Daenerys that they will arrive at the meeting with two armies and three dragons, so if anyone were to touch a single silver hair on her pretty head, they are in a position to burn it all down. Daenerys notes that Cersei is certainly laying traps for her, and asks if they have any traps in mind for Cersei. Tyrion tries to talk her out of that particular play; while Daenerys does need to inspire a degree of fear, it can’t be the only weapon in her arsenal. His family only has fear on their side and look how well it has worked out for them so far:

Daenerys pouts that Aegon the Conqueror used fear to his advantage, but Tyrion tries to remind her that Aegon also built the very wheel she claims to want to break, so.

Tyrion assures her that Jaime promised to keep a grip on Cersei’s forces, as long as Tyrion promises to keep Daenerys’ temper under control, and Daenerys is all “WHAT TEMPER, ASSHOLE!?!” Tyrion gently reminds her that she did set a father and son on fire with her dragon when she did not have to go quite so far, and Daenerys is all, “I DO WHAT I WANT!! STOP BEING SUCH A LANNISTER, GUH!”

Tyrion explains that to win this thing, she needs to think like the enemy so as to anticipate what they are going to do. And, by the way, just spitballing here, once she has won this thing, what are her succession plans? Yes, yes, the dragons are her “children” but since she can’t actually have human babies and the last he checked, dragons can’t sit on the Iron Throne, does she have something in mind for when it’s time to pass the crown to someone else? He’s just trying to think long term here. “YEAH, WELL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THINKING MORE SHORT TERM AND WE WOULDN’T HAVE LOST DORNE AND HIGHGARDEN,” Daenerys rages back.

Eastwatch

Meanwhile, The Hound, Tormund, Dondarrion, Thoros, Gendry, Jorah, Jon Snow and several red shirts whose names we never learn and will never learn, embark on Mission Wait, That’s Really Our Plan? Kidnap an Ice Zombie and then Transport Ice Zombie More than Two Thousand Miles to Convince a Sociopath that Ice Zombies Are a Thing? We’ve got Nothing Better than that?

On their miserable HATLESS march through the Northern expanse of ice and nothingness, the men trade witticisms: Tormund saying that the South smells like pig shit, and by the “South,” he means Winterfell; The Hound calling Gendry a pussy for whinging about Melisandre wanting to kill him with sexytimes when Dondarrion HAS ACTUALLY DIED SIX TIMES; Tormund telling The Hound that he wants to make giant babies with Brienne; The Hound explaining to Tormund that dick = cock, mostly to clarify for all the book nerds out there who have been loudly bitching that “Dickon” shouldn’t be a joke in Westeros since “dick” is not a slang term that Westerosi use; Many suggestions that Wildlings will pretty much fuck anything and anyone. You know, “locker room talk.”

Jon Snow has some Serious Conversations, because of course Jon Snow has Serious Conversations, that’s the only kind of conversation Jon Snow is capable of. First, he has a Very Serious Conversation with Tormund about how Jon Snow is being too stubborn about this bending the knee business. Remember how Mance refused to bend the knee and how the cost of his pride was an untold number of his own people? Good times, good times.

Then Jon Snow and Jorah have a chat about how Ned Stark wanted to cut Jorah’s head off SO MUCH. Jon tries to return Longclaw, the Mormont family’s Valyrian steel “bastard sword” to Jorah. But Jorah is all, “No, you keep it. Seeing as Longclaw is a giant penis symbol, and you and Daenerys — the woman I love, but whom I will never have — are clearly going to make the dragon with two backs, it’s only appropriate. And then one day you can give the sword to y’all’s babies that Dany keeps foreshadowing!”

Finally, Jon Snow and his fellow fire wight Dondarrion have a conversation about the Lord of Light bringing them back. Jon Snow has an existential crisis about his resurrection…

… but Dondarrion is like, “Don’t over think it, dude. Death is the enemy, and Valar Margulis, motherfucker. In the meantime, we do what we can to protect everyone else.”

The Hound then sees the mountain that looks like an arrowhead from his fire vision, so, I guess they’ve arrived at their destination: a series of battle sequences. And the welcome committee appears to involve a giant zombie bear. Fight fight flame swords fight. After killing some red shirt, the Zombie Bear, now on fire and REALLY angry, sets upon Thoros and is only killed when Jorah gets close enough with a piece of dragonglass to kill it.

Thoros is pretty banged up, but refuses to return to Eastwatch: it’s nothing that can’t be patched up with a few swigs of whatever is in his flask, and a touch from Dondarrion’s fire sword.

As they continue along, the group spies a White Walker and his bevy of wights, and light a campfire to draw their attention so that they can set upon them. Fight fight flame sword fight. And when Jon slices through the White Walker with Longclaw, cool trick! the great majority of the wights die with him, all but conveniently one. As they wrestle with the wight, it lets out a terrible scream alerting all of its wight buddies before they can shove a pillowcase over its head.

Jon Snow orders Gendry to run back to Eastwatchto send a raven to Daenerys because he knows, somehow, that Gendry is “the fastest” of them.

Just …  I mean … I have so many questions? How far have they traveled already? How does he know that Gendry is the fastest of them; did they have races before they headed out? What fucking good is a raven to Daenerys going to do when she is some 1500 miles away or whatever? How fast can a raven even fly? What was any of this … YOU KNOW WHAT OK FINE WHATEVER SURE.

So Gendry leaves his hammer behind and just hightails it in the opposite direction while Jon and friends run away from the sea of ice zombies headed towards them.

The men are chased out onto a somewhat frozen lake which, somewhat fortunately for them, cracks open behind them, taking some wights with it. The men find refuge on a rock in the middle of the lake, but are like, “Well, now what? WHAT’S YOUR PLAN NOW, KING?”

Meanwhile, Gendry makes it back to Eastwatch, collapsing before the gate, which, I mean, obviously he collapsed, after all, he just ran for … … OH, THAT’S RIGHT, WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW FAR HE RAN. Anyway, Davos drags him inside and presumably sends one of the Night’s Watch’s super ravens that can break the sound barrier to Daenerys.

Back on their lake rock, Thoros dies. And Dondarrion has a little Lord of Light funeral for him.

And King Jon comes up with his very complicated battle strategy: Kill the Night King.

Back at Dragonstone

Minutes later, Daenerys receives the magical raven’s message, puts on her fiercest winter coat (seriously, that coat is fucking everything) and marches out to her dragons, she’s got some damned ice zombies she needs to teach some manners. Tyrion begs her not to go — WASN’T SHE JUST TALKING ABOUT WHAT DUMBASSES HEROES ARE? But she’s like, “Bitch, please, I did not have this gorgeous coat made so that I’d never wear it. BOY, BYE.”

Back at Eastwatch

While they sit around on their lake rock, waiting for Daenerys’s dragons to come save them, The Hound grows bored and hurls a rock at one of the wights staring them down from the bank, bopping it in the head. Thinking that he’s found himself a fun game, he chunks another rock, but it falls short of its target, and when it lands, the lake doesn’t break.

And the wights, who apparently aren’t completely dumb, realize that they can just march across the lake and finish off these pests. Fight fight flame sword fight, and poor Tormund is very nearly killed, but The Hound manages to save him in the nick of time. But some other red shirt dies. Sad? I guess?

Everything goes slo-mo and the sad “Jon Snow Realizes He Done Fucked Up This Time” theme begins to swell as the group is completely overtaken by wights. But then who should arrive, but Daenerys and her three super-sonic (apparently) fire-breathing dragons to lay waste to some ice zombies, hooray! DARMOTHERFUCKINGCARYS! Killing all the zombies, killing all the zombies, killing all the zombies, this is going great!

Until.

The Night King came prepared, and this asshole pulls out an ice javelin which he expertly hurls at Viserion, killing him, his body sinking into the lake.

BUT NO TIME FOR MAN TEARS, EVERYONE ON THE DRAGON. And Team Whose Bright Idea Was This Again? climb onto Drogon with Daenerys, all but Jon who keeps fighting, eventually falling into the lake.

Oh no. I am sure this is definitely the end of Jon Snow. He is certainly dead this time.

But Daenerys and the rest don’t have time to make sure he’s alright, as the Night King seems to be pulling out another of those damned ice spears, and they depart for the Wall. BYE, JON. HOPE YOU KNOW HOW TO SWIM, BUDDY.

Of course, what must be seconds later, Jon pulls himself out of the lake and tries to sneak away stage left, only for a wight to hear him. The ice zombies start chasing him, but he is saved at the last moment by Uncle Deus Ex Machina, who puts Jon on his dead horse and sends him away to safety, staying behind to be finally and forever killed by the wight army WHEN WE CAN ALL SEE THAT THERE WAS ENOUGH ROOM ON THAT DAMN HORSE FOR BOTH OF THEM.

Anyway. ANYWAY. The point is, Daenerys hung around at the Wall, hoping that Jon would return and he does hooray.

And back at the lake, the Night King has his wights yoink Viserion out of the lake with some heavy duty chains THAT I GUESS THEY JUST HAD LYING AROUND, and he turns Viserion into an ice dragon which should surprise no one considering the asshole Viserion was named after.

Somewhere Presumably on The Shivering Sea

Jon Snow is loaded up onto Daenerys’ sexboat, where he is stripped down so that she can see his scars. And Momma likes what she sees.

Later, when Jon Snow wakes up, he finds Daenerys watching over him. He expresses his grief over her loss and wishes he could take it all back, but Daenerys disagrees: she needed to see it for herself. And now she is ready to KICK THIS NIGHT KING’S FROZEN ASS. Jon thanks “Dany” who recoils from the nickname, so Jon’s like, “Alright, how about ‘My Queen’?” which sets Daenerys’s pants right on fire.

So, a quick disclaimer before I get started on the analysis: most of the people who read this blog are in Houston, as am I, and as the country knows by now our city is experiencing the worst disaster in our history. As a result, I’m a little distracted (and emotionally exhausted) so this whole analysis part is going to be both shorter and shittier than usual. I really did my best, my apologies in advance.

Let’s get the bitching out of the way first. GOD DAMN IT, WRITERS, HOW COULD YOU FUCK THIS UP THIS BADLY? I can look past Gendry, who had never seen snow before in his life, being able to run through it at full speed for who even knows how far because they never made that clear; and I can deal with ice zombies having, somehow, dragon-pulling chains (They also had to get their armor and saddles, etc., from somewhere, right? We saw how the Night King was created, and he wasn’t wearing that fabulous breast plate at the time, so.); and I can (kinda) deal with Arya being gullible enough to fall for Littlefinger’s obvious ploy to set the sisters against one another.

What I CAN NOT DEAL WITH is this weird timeline in which Davos sends a messenger raven from the Wall to Dragonstone which is some 1500 miles away, it arrives, Daenerys decides to go save Jon Snow, and she flies her dragons all the way back to the Wall in what, an hour? two? Hell, let’s be generous and say that Jon’s group stood on that rock in the middle of the lake for a full 24 hours, THAT IS STILL NOT ENOUGH TIME FOR A DAMN BIRD TO FLY 1,500 MILES. Do you know how many miles a bird flies in a day on average? Somewhere between 150-300 miles, depending on the bird. (I could get into a whole nerdy thing about some birds who have traveled tremendous distances non-stop, but it doesn’t actually matter because the point is the laws of physics still mean that a bird can only travel SO FAST.) So, again, being generous, if the Wall’s raven was literally the fastest flier they had, it would still probably take that bird a good three days just to arrive at Dragonstone, and then we would have the whole return trip on the dragons to worry about. And what I am saying is that there is no way this takes place in fewer than five days — and that’s again being VERY GENEROUS — though the show would have you believe it all took place in, like, two hours.

And yes, I’ve seen people attacking complaints like mine, saying that it is dumb to be so pedantic about a show that involves dragons and zombies and girls wearing the faces of dead people like Halloween masks. These people have clearly never heard of internal consistency or understand why it is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT ON A SHOW THAT HAS ZOMBIES AND DRAGONS AND GIRLS WHO WEAR FACES OF DEAD PEOPLE LIKE HALLOWEEN MASKS.

The thing that is the real pisser is that this is a problem that could have been solved fairly easily: either Daenerys goes with them in the first place — because it clearly doesn’t take very long to fly a damn dragon from her house to the wall — or, as my friend Richard suggested to me in his own frustration with the raven nonsense, they could have just had Daenerys decide of her own accord to go save Jon Snow. She could have decided after talking all that noise about heroes, that actually she made a mistake by sitting around waiting for someone else to do all the heavy lifting and not being an actor herself — which, in fact, is not in her character AT ALL. Or! Or! Or! They could have had Operation Wight in a Pillowcase hole up in a cave for a couple of days waiting for Daenerys to come save their asses.

BUT I’M GOING TO MOVE ON. And point out that the whole “oh no Jon is drowned” thing was also dumb and unconvincing.

But! It does bring me to a point I wanted to make that drowning imagery often represents death and rebirth. And so it is interesting that we have had three significant submersions in the past two episodes: Jaime (and Bronn), Jon and Viserion. Viserion literally dies and is reborn as an ice dragon (and I’ve been asked more than once this week if he will breathe fire or ice; honestly, I don’t know, but if I had to guess, based on a children’s book Martin wrote back in 1980 called The Ice Dragon, it’ll be ice):

The ice dragon was a crystalline white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It was covered with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man’s boots, and flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were clear and deep and icy.

And when the ice dragon opened its great mouth, and exhaled, it was not fire that came streaming out, the burning sulfurous stink of lesser dragons. The ice dragon breathed cold.

Ice formed when it breathed. Warmth fled. Fires guttered and went out, shriven by the chill. Trees froze through to their slow secret souls, and their limbs turned brittle and cracked from their own weight. Animals turned blue and whimpered and died, their eyes bulging and their skin covered over with frost.

The ice dragon breathed death into the world; death and quiet and cold.

And then there are Jon and Jaime’s “drownings,” both of which occur after they see Daenerys’ dragons in action. Both men fall into bodies of water, appear to have died and re-emerge changed, specifically in their estimation of Daenerys. Jaime returns to Cersei convinced that they will not defeat Daenerys and her dragons; Jon recognizes Daenerys’ heroism and bravery and chooses, finally, to bend the knee.

Now the interesting question will be what effect Jon swearing allegiance to Daenerys will have on the strange power struggle going on in Winterfell. The Northern lords are already pissed at Jon for being away for so long (how long, exactly, is unclear thanks to this season’s clunky writing), I’m not sure they will be pleased to learn that they made him King in the North just to have him bend the knee to some foreign woman, even if she is super hot and has a great wardrobe. With Littlefinger conniving to put Sansa in power and setting the Stark sisters against one another, this could spell trouble for the Northern alliance, and for Stark family relations in general.

Speaking of, I’m struggling to swallow this Arya v. Sansa plotline. It makes sense on paper that there might be tension between Arya and Sansa: they never liked each other as children, and they don’t really know one another as adults. However, I find it implausible that Arya would be so gullible to not see that Littlefinger left her that trail of breadcrumbs, or that Sansa wouldn’t see Littlefinger’s little fingerprints all over this situation. Especially after Brienne EXPLICITLY TELLS HER NOT TO TRUST LITTLEFINGER. IN THIS EPISODE. 

There are some theories floating around out there that Sansa and Arya’s dispute is all for show, that they are playing an elaborate “Game of Faces” in an attempt to trap Littlefinger or something. And while I would like to believe that, and while Brienne’s comments about Littlefinger could suggest that the Stark sisters actually do know exactly what they are dealing with here, I’m concerned that we are supposed to take the Stark conflict at face value. The problem with doing that is that the conflict doesn’t feel real because it hasn’t been given enough time to be emotionally realized. And I know I said that I was going to leave the bitching behind, but if you’ll just allow me this one mini-rant, this is a problem that could have been resolved with a longer season. There is no reason why Benioff and Weiss couldn’t have made this a 10-episode season to develop some of these storylines and not impinge the timeline, HBO was willing to give them ALL OF THE MONIES, but they were anxious to be done with the series, and so here we are.

How this fight is going to resolve itself? Your guess is as good as mine, honestly. But I think there’s something interesting symbolically going on with the catspaw dagger and how the Stark children are passing it around to each other. First Bran has it (who presumably has some idea what is going to happen with the dagger already), he gives it to Arya who then hands it to Sansa. The dagger itself seems to represent this destabilization that Littlefinger is attempting to sow within the Stark family: he first gives the dagger to Bran, the presumptive challenger to Jon; Bran gives it to Sansa who immediately begins threatening her sister; and now Arya has given it to Sansa who may end up becoming a challenge to Jon now that he has bent the knee for Daenerys. Now whether or not Arya will actually allow that to happen or if she’ll catch on to Littlefinger’s game before it’s too late remains to be seen.

A couple of other quick points that I have been mulling over this week: first, Aegon the Conqueror. In the episode, Daenerys talks about Aegon using fear as a tool for conquering, and Tyrion reminds her that Aegon built the wheel that she wants to break. And the episode itself begins with a shot of the Painted Table of Dragonstone before moving to Eastwatch. The Painted Table is a carved detailed map of Westeros that Aegon the Conqueror had made before he conquered Westeros. In A Song of Ice and Fire, the writer notes:

A common myth, oft heard amongst the ignorant, claims that Aegon Targaryen had never set foot upon the soil of Westeros until the day he set sail to conquer it, but this can not be true. Years before that voyage, the Painted Table had been carved and decorated at Lord Aegon’s command: a massive slab of wood, some fifty feet long, carved in the shape of Westeros and painted to show all the woods and rivers and towns and castles of the Seven Kingdoms. Plainly, Aegon’s interest in Westeros long predated the events that drove him to war.

A quick history: the Targaryens were originally from Essos — Valyria, specifically. The Valyrians built Dragonstone as their Western-most outpost some 200 years before the “Doom of Valyria,” a catastrophic event that was probably a volcano eruption. The Targaryens, who are only one of the many dragon-taming families of Valyria, were the only ones to survive the catastrophe because the daughter of a Targaryen lord, Daenys the Dreamer, had a prophetic dream the city would be destroyed, and her father moved the entire family to Dragonstone in response. Twelve years later, kaboom.

Here’s the thing, the Targaryens live on Dragonstone for nearly a century before Aegon gets it in his head to conquer it and unite the kingdoms into one. So my questions are, what made Aegon decide to take Westeros over and how does this relate to Daenerys and this particular story? I should note that the official story of why Aegon conquered Westeros is that he was mad at this one Storm King who tried to marry off his daughter to Aegon, and when Aegon suggested that the woman marry his best friend instead, the Storm King sent Aegon’s messenger’s hands back to Aegon in a box. However, it seems that Aegon had this plan in the works for a long time — see: Painted Table. So is it possible that maybe Aegon came upon some prophecy that made him believe that he was going to be The Prince That Was Promised? That he read or dreamt something that made him believe he and his two sister-wives made up the dragon with three heads? Maybe something in Daenys the Dreamers’ lost book, Signs and Portents? (And wouldn’t it be AWESOME if Sam had that book amongst the ones he stole from the Citadel? He won’t, BUT IT WOULD BE COOL IF HE DID.)

Anyway, I am just putting his story out there to chew on while Daenerys engages on her campaign to conquer Westeros because I think there are parallels that we are supposed to draw between the two conquering Targaryens. They both intend to rule over a united Westeros, but it’s interesting that he built the wheel and she intends to destroy it. How do those two pieces relate to each other within the confines of our story?

The other question I have after this episode is what, exactly, does the Night King actually want? He clearly came prepared to take down a dragon in this episode — I suspect the connection between the Night King and Bran is a two-way street, and he knew dragons were coming. But what is his goal? Just to bring winter and death to Westeros? He isn’t merely a force of nature, a mindless Harvey forcing destruction along its path with no rhyme or reason. But what is his rhyme or his reason? Revenge upon the living? Is he supposed to be an allegory about the nature of conquest? Or does he have some sort of plan, and if so, what is his plan, exactly? Why does he want to get south of the Wall so desperately?

Finally, I thought I’d explain a little more about the relationship between Thoros and Jorah that was mentioned in the episode. Before he dies, Thoros has a moment with Jorah where Jorah tells Thoros that he thought Thoros was the bravest fighter he had ever seen, but Thoros explains that actually he was just very drunk and has no recollection of the fight at all. If you were wondering what that was all about, it goes back to Robert’s Rebellion. Robert sent an army to take Pyke in the Iron Islands, an army that Jorah and Thoros were both a part of. Apparently, Thoros was the first through the gates, with his fire sword flaming, and Jorah was second, a story Jorah shares with Ser Barristan in season three:

And all I’m saying is that if they could make the effort to bring up this old story again — a story which was never shown on the show and will have NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the actual plot or end game — they could have come up with a better solution to the “Dany saves the day” plot point than Super Ravens.

Game of Thrones airs on HBO on Sundays at 8/9 p.m., well, for one more Sunday, and then it won’t be back until 2019. 2019!