I heard ‘your father’ and thought it was weird.
It looks like Tyrion probably won’t have to suffer the consequences for trying to make a deal with the masters, now that Dany will be riding back into town at the front of a mongol horde. I can see the conversation being very short, something like this:
Masters: Wow, that’s a lot of goddamned warriors. Okay, we’re ready to take the deal.
Daenerys: What deal?
(Dothraki riders murder everyone)
Also, I appreciate Sansa’s spirit, but she ought to tap the brakes a bit. There’s an army of freakin’ zombies on the other side of that wall, so wouldn’t it be a bit more of a priority to defend the wall against the GODDAMNED APOCALYPSE than to take back your ancestral home from some guy who’s totally dishonorable? Anyone marching south from the wall at this point is partly responsible for the inevitable catastrophe.
Littlefinger is about to get curb stomped. I’m not sure by who, yet, but he’s been juggling knives for too long and is bound to miss one soon. It’s a prediction based purely on instinct and hope. Fuck that guy.
Calling in the national guard to intimidate the sparrows will end badly for the great houses. Everything the faith militant has shown so far points at them being impossible to intimidate. The only thing that might work against them is to cut down the high sparrow. As much as he pretends that he’s only one among many, the reality is that the faith militant is nothing without him and would crumble instantly if he were taken out of the picture.
Brienne, Davos, and Melisandre won’t last long together. My prediction is that at least two of them will die by the end of the season. I predict Davos saves Mel from Brienne by fatally wounding Brienne. While Brienne is dying, he discovers what Mel did to Shireen, and kills her. Brienne makes amends with Davos with her last breath.
Dorne will continue to not have any impact on anything at all. Maybe next season they’ll figure out how to make lemonade with all those sour lemons, but for now I’m hoping Dorne doesn’t get any more screen time.
NM
No one on the show has even hinted at the point that reclaiming the North, who currently ignore the Night’s Watch and the loom threat, would crank the NW men and resources by about 100x.
Did Sansa and Jon get along well in their childhood in Winterfell? I remember Jon being close to Arya (he gave her Needle) but can’t remember his relationship with Sansa. Also, where was Jon proposing that he and she go? He said “somewhere warm” but where could that realistically be?
I think he did this in the very first episode but hasn’t had a reason to since.
Tough Sisters Reunite with Wimpy Brothers makes an awkward episode title but I don’t get “Book of the Stranger”. Does it refer to how each pair of siblings has changed and become strangers? I’m really pushing it to make that connection.
The stranger usually refers to death in this series but despite the two murder scenes I don’t think death was a theme.
The High Sparrow told Margaery his backstory, his own version of the religious text The Book of the Stranger, which was explicitly mentioned by Margaery during the conversation.
If they don’t retake the north, Ramsay intends to ride north and kill all the wildlings. So that wildling force won’t be defending the wall regardless.
Well Sansa specifically said they did not get along during this episode, Jon mostly agreed.
She didn’t say they didn’t get along, she said that she sometimes was a little shit and she was-- to everyone. She was as obnoxious as any pubescent little spoiled princess could be without actually being the daughter of a king.
Well she specifically said “I was awful to you”.
I loved the ending of the episode. I figured out what was coming with all the lamps around and figuring out what Jorah and Daario’s help would have been, and had a big smile on my face waiting for it to happen. I also loved that Dany trash talked the Khals first, though there was no need for that, she could have just killed them sooner.
That was great. And the awkward silent meal at Castle Black with Tormund staring and Brienne and Ed looking around awkwardly was hilarious before the message from Ramsay came in.
In the “Inside the Episode” thing, the showrunners referenced Lincoln, in how he wasn’t as anti-slavery as people sometimes think of him, he wanted peace and compromise. Tyrion’s deal makes sense, but considering the tension with everyone, and referencing Lincoln and knowing how war still came here, makes me think that it’s inevitable in Mereen as well. Does anyone know how far the Dothraki warriors are from Mereen?
The zombies are a bigger threat, but Ramsay is a much more immediate one. I don’t think Sansa is taking the white walkers into account, it hardly seems like anyone is, but it makes sense to focus on Ramsay for now. If he’s not dealt with first, then the white walkers are going to kill a lot of people but only after Ramsay’s already tortured and killed many.
For Littlefinger, I could see one of his plans going terribly wrong, and the armies of the Vale getting killed or something else going terribly wrong that he didn’t foresee. But I think at worst he’d retreat and escape, and recover for a while, then try something new. He has a lot of balls in the air, but if one falls he can just work with the others.
Fighting the Sparrows could go very badly for everyone, or it’s possible Cersei could use it to her advantage. Margaery could get killed in the fighting, which the Tyrells would hate but Cersei would love, and since Margaery is the well loved queen, it’s possible her death would turn the people more against the Sparrows. Especially since Margaery’s sin is just covering up for her brother, not for anything terrible she’s done. But also Cersei thinks she’s much smarter than she actually is, so it’s very possible that it just ends up terribly for everyone.
The showrunners also mentioned in the “Inside the Episode” that this was the first scene on the show that Jon and Sansa had together, which was surprising to me, but I guess the Starks did get split up pretty soon.
So, where again is Chekov’s Dragon, er, Drogon in all this?
So how does Jon Snow plan to attack Winterfell with a smaller, less organized army than Ramsay commands, and with his brother as Ramsay’s hostage? What Jon does have going for him is that Ramsay is not a great leader, and also I think his bannermen are not totally on board with him.
Don’t worry; we haven’t seen the final act yet.
In the short term, Drogon’s arrival (again) would have been too repetitive. After all, he saved Daenerys just a few episodes ago at the end of last season.
My own fanwank is that there is some supernatural connection between Dany and Drogon, and that Dany was not in fear of being killed in her meeting with the khals (because she knew she had an ace up her sleeve), so there was no reason for Drogon to show up.
I am disappointed we didn’t get to actually hear Jon and Sansa’s catch-up conversation. It would have been gold.
“So how have you been?”
“Well, I’ve been married and/or engaged three times, twice to sadistic psychopaths, plus there was the time I spent with the guy with the evil moustache who wants to jump me because he liked my dead mom. Eventually, I jumped off a wall and almost died in the cold.”
“Yeah, my month was worse.”
I’m guessing he’ll join up with the army from the Vale and try to round up any more bannermen loyal to his father.
I’m wondering if the siege of Winterfell will be the 9th episode this season. They’ve built up Winterfell as pretty much undefeatable in an outright siege. Theon only took it by sneaking in and kidnapping Bran.
From eyeballing the show ‘official’ maps of Essos, Vaes Dothrak looks to be (roughly) several hundred miles northeast of Slaver’s Bay. Maybe on horseback and over good terrain, several weeks journey?
Would Ned’s bannermen follow a bastard?
So Daario knows Jorah is dying. Missandei seemed a little too pissed off at Tyrion for my comfort. And I agree, keeping Rickon alive is risky for Ramsay.
So, Theon is going to help his sister rule the Iron Islands. I wonder if he wants revenge too.