The Unsullied are great at fighting in formation on the open field. Spears and shields suck for fighting close up in a hallway.
They send out Grey Worm, the leader of all Unsullied, with nothing but trainees?
Ah yes. I didn’t put that together before, but that makes perfect sense. She’s systematically going after everyone close to Margaery. She manipulated the Sparrows into imprisoning Loras, driving a wedge between Tommen and Margaery, and now she’s effectively holding Mace hostage.
But the witch pretty explicitly said that someone younger would cast her down and take all she held dear. Assuming that Margaery was indeed the person referred to in the prediction, I think she is still going to come out on top. Of course, it looks like Cersei is still going to cause a lot of collateral damage even if she’s doomed to be outmaneuvered by Margaery.
Except when you have plenty of time and space to form the phalanx formation you’re trained for. Two guys pointed one direction-two guys pointed the other direction you pretty much have the hallway covered.
Cersei assumes it is Margaery, i think we are supposed to assume it is Daenerys.
Ahhhhh. That does make sense. I thought it would be pretty contrived if it ended up being some new character instead of Margaery, but Daenerys is appropriate, and it’s not like she’s coming out of nowhere.
It also fits nicely into the idea that Cersei is doubly doomed to her fate because she’s moving against the wrong person in her haste. I thought Cersei’s final tragedy would be in failing to fend off Margaery, but it’s even more tragic if she succeeds in beating Margaery only to fall to Daenerys. Ouch.
Not that she doesn’t deserve it. She’s a monster. But watching her slow fall over the last few seasons has still been oddly painful.
That establishing shot of Dany looking down on the city - whew! I hope they have some Wall-style elevators. Getting that far down to street level, and then back up again, would be quite a hike.
Jaime and Bronn’s talk on the ship was good. You could tell Bronn was biting his tongue not to say anything about the twincest rumors. And nice to see Jaime putting his metal hand to good use in the fight in the dunes!
Also a nice moment earlier, when Jaime saw Tarth - you know he was thinking of Brienne.
I thought the Sand Spiders killed the merchant captain so that he couldn’t tell anyone else that Jaime and Bronn were in Dorne. Knowledge is power.
Good scene with Littlefinger and Sansa down in the Winterfell catacombs. He won’t be pleased, upon arriving in King’s Landing, to find his brothel(s) have been shut down by the Faith Militant.
Nice hearing from Ser Barristan about Rhaegar’s love of singing.
I was disappointed in the Unsullied soldiers’ fighting skills, too. Hope Grey Worm and Barristan recover.
I get the impression that you don’t have to buy an unsullied army - you could buy a few unsullied to be your personal guard if you’re a rich guy. And so you would expect them to be trained in things other than phalanx formation combat.
And when Missandei is rattling off about their training, she says IIRC “they’re trained in the 3 spears, and the shortsword”
The show should be consistent about this. The premise about the unsullied is that they’re basically near-perfect fighters, almost superhuman, but that’s not what we saw. They could’ve set up a situation that actually was plausible for supersoldiers to be ambushed effectively - like perhaps something similar to the Red Wedding where they were lured into a situation in which crossbowmen could fire at them from above. Or perhaps just have 2-3 Unsullied ambushed by 20+ men. We actually did see that, in the cuts of the main fight, when two unsullied were attacked in an open area simultaneously with the main fight.
He’s been consistently shown as a dimwit, definitely not a game player, and the women are the schemers of House Tyrell. He’s ever so happy to be given token signs of respect as a great man of power that he’ll joyfully play a small role on the small council and be happy about it. It’s kind of sweet, in a way, in contrast to all of the evil bastards and schemers.
That would have been a slaughter though, the point of scene was to end with the cliffhanger of whether Obama and McCain made it or not. It had to end in a tie basically so the sons of the harpy did not have a chance to finish them off. The unsullied were outnumbered about three to one, the problem was that they mostly got their ass kicked while Grey Worm kicked mayor ass by himself. It would have been more realistic if they all fought reasonably well and still lost to superior numbers and being completely surrounded, they just chose to let the named character shine instead.
Well, not exactly . But when you’re taken from two/three sides and by surprise- yes, they suck.
You’re right, but I wish they’d have taken more care to show the unsullied fighting prowess. The show has shown their dedication, certainly, but aside from Grey Worm’s fighting skills (and they’ve given Daario and Jorah equally potent fighting skills as important characters) they’ve never really shown the Unsullied to be the almost superhuman fighters they’re cracked up to be.
Basically, they should all be what they show Grey Worm to actually be. If they’re running around as red shirts it undermines their premise.
I wonder if that was supposed to be all of the Sons of the Harpy?
I suspect that Cersei already knows that Littlefinger has Sansa, and that he knows that she knows. Work travels quickly in Westeros. Being the sharpest of the bunch, I wonder what Littlefinger will do to address the strong possibility that he will be detained (at best) once entering King’s Landing (if he goes there at all). At first, I thought that he was just saying that he’s headed for King’s Landing, but really getting the hell out of Dodge before Stannis’s army comes rumbling in.
I vote for a big slide, like what they used to remove the statue only with less crashing and smashing to bits.
Grey Worm is fine. You can tell because he had no Moment of Calm/Pleasant/Warm Interaction scene in that episode.
I kept thinking that was a terrible place to have a private and important conversation. So many dark corners down there in the tombs, anyone could have been hiding and overhearing.
The Sand Snakes killed the captain because he wanted to be paid for information. So instead of paying him, they kidnapped him and tortured him into telling him the information. Once they had the information he was of no use.
They probably expected the scorpions to kill him and got impatient when they did not.
It will be interesting to see how Littlefinger reacts to the Sparrows attacking his brothels. I think Cersei still trusts him, I wonder what her plan for him is and vice versa,
I think Margery went to get the Queen of Hearts back from Highgarden I bet she is not going to sit still while is Loras in jail. Did Cersei do all this just to show Margery she still has power, or is there more to her scheme? Maybe have the old man killed in Braavos and assasinate the old lady when she comes to collect Loras?
It is good to have Jorah back, with Barristan Selmy gone there is a spot open on the Queensguard.
And who knows what the acoustics are there? Maybe it’s all dead and voices don’t carry at all. Maybe they reverberate and carry for long distances. Someone like Littlefinger, who depends on overheard conversations should know to take something like this to the windswept plains or somewhere no one would be able to overhear.
A bit late here, but I have to admit I feel like we’re just spinning wheels so far this season. I don’t mind it too much; I’m usually more interested in characters than I am in plot, and we’ve spent plenty of time with our characters so far. But I haven’t felt like we’ve really taken many steps forward so far, perhaps because I’m having a harder time seeing where we’re going from here.
I’m fairly content, but I can understand how someone earlier in the thread felt that the four leaked episodes didn’t really take us anywhere.
Cersei’s playing with fire without realizing it. I really hope we get to see Olenna again.
Yeah, that Tommen got the whole thing ass backwards.
Agreed, until Loras is free Tommen is just going to have to rely on the Hand of the King.
Tyrell men are just for show & breeding purposes; the women run everything from behind the scene. This is perfectly illustrated by how he came up to Tywin & Olenna, and his mother shooed him away like a child without a 2nd thought.