4.01 Two Swords
4.02 The Lion and The Rose
4.03 Breaker of Chains
4.04 Oathkeeper
4.05 First of His Name
4.06 The Laws of Gods and Men
4.07 Mockingbird
4.08 The Mountain and the Viper
Books don’t exist etc etc.
Like Blackwater this episode was just a single battle. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as that one but that is mainly because the only characters in the whole “North of the Wall” story line I could pick out of a line up are Jon Snow and Sam. Blackwater was in King’s Landing where a lion’s share (pun intended?) of the more interesting characters were.
It wasn’t a bad episode and I am glad the Crows won the day but the end result is this just seemed an hour long prelude to the real action we will get next week in the finale.
Potato dad sends his regards.
The giant pendulum that cleaned the climbers off the wall was pretty cool.
Sam had all the good lines.
“She had red hair.”
“Oh? And how big were her feet?”
“I missed…We’re going to die tonight.”
“We will if you keep missing.”
“I killed one! Shot him right through the heart!”
“Is it over then? Right, here you go.”
Rather underwhelming–as Quimby noted, unlike “Blackwater”, we just didn’t have many characters that we’ve been given much reason to care about here. (OK, they’ve tried to give us lots of reason to care about Sam, I guess, but mostly he’s just been fighting it out with Bran for “Least Interesting Storyline”.)
I decided to give the guy who released it the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew it would sweep across right at the level where those climbers were, rather than… y’know, they just happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Which reminds me: Just as a shotgun blast to the chest is not going to send you flying through a plate glass window, an arrow, even if fired by a giant, is not going to send you flying dozens of feet through the air.
I loved that beautiful ginger barbarian, my only solace in her passing is that potato dad was avenged.
A very well done episode, in my opinion. I particularly enjoyed the giants.
Drill sergeant Alliser might be dumb, he’s definitely a dick, but he’s no coward.
What a boring episode. And it was all shot in shitty darkness. A kingdom for a sunbeam!
I just *really *do not care about anything wall-related on this show. Not one of the characters (except maybe Jon Snow) has a modicum of depth.
I thought it was pretty epic. The giants were awesome. The scythe was wicked cool. Some great heroic moments by Jon and Sam and the other brothers.
Damn sorry to see Ygritte die. 
I was hoping those two crazy kids would work it out somehow.
There was a very cool long tracking shot when Jon gets off the lift to join the battle at the castle (after Sam went up the Wall to get him).
The Nights Watch is very brave and all, but they’re only like a hundred or so vs 100,000 and it’s not like the Battle of Thermopile where they are defending the only choke point to march an army through. Mance Rayder could have his army scale the Wall in a thousand places along it’s length and never even bother with Castle Black. Heck, they were almost wiped out by their forward raiding party.
They had some warning that Mance’s army was coming, so why didn’t they send ravens to King’s Landing and the other castles requesting backup?
Are you sure they didn’t?
Well, if they did, I hope reinforcements show up soon, given the 100,000 wildings on the horizon. They’re not going to stop at The Wall, but will rain terror all over Westeros.
They did, nobody gave a shit. Tywin specifically said wildlings rampaging through the north would be beneficial to them, granted that was while Robb was still alive.
Pretty sure they did. Pretty sure the response was to ignore it, like most every kingdom has been ignoring the Wall for generations.
I have a logistical question regarding this siege. The wildlings made a fire bigger than anyone in the north has ever seen. And they’re attacking a wall made of ice.
So, um, yeah…maybe build a bonfire at the base of the wall and melt it? It’s hundreds of miles long, as msmith points out. How hard could it be to stockpile a ton of wood in, say, 5 different locations 10 miles apart and light them all?
Keeping in mind that this is a siege. Sieges could easily take months. Plenty of time to burn a sizable tunnel in a wall made of ice.
I read that where The Wall sequences are filmed there were only about four-five hours of usable daylight per day. I wonder if the fact this was at night made the scene longer than it might ordinarily have been since they had more time to film.
I also wondered if Maester Aemon’s line about the irony of a blind man with a library was an intentional nod to Borges.
Another episode of nothing but a single battle?
At least in the Battle of Blackwater, the whole thing was resolved by the end of the episode. But for this, they used an entire episode to show the first day of one battle which promises to last much longer.
I guess my problem is that nothing really happened. Mance Rayder was coming with a huge fuckin’ army before this episode. Mance Rayder is coming with a huge fuckin’ army after this episode. Nothing changed!
Jon Snow is now in command. Well, he was up until he left. That’s a change.
I would assume that wall-climbing is something of a specialized ability. Or maybe not given that Jon and Ygritte were able to pick it right up, but in any event there are only going to be so many people who have the know-how (and equipment) to climb the Wall, plus Mance has a ton of “civilians” with him who can’t take any real part in a military action (remember, it’s a group of settlers that includes some warriors and weapons, not just an army on a campaign). They would need (what seems to be) the only working gate in the Wall to get the vast majority through.
Or maybe I’m just rationalizing a plot hole.