Actually I think it has to do with paying the price, taking littlefinger and the valemen now is probably costs more now, than waiting for Briene to catch up with Royce on her way to talk to the blackfish. Littlefinger needs Sansa, more than Sansa needs LF.
My opinion is that they started last week, the too long gaze as they finally re-unite, did not give me familial vibes, then the fession that she was a terrible sister blah blah, more in a flirty sort of way.
Anyways, I don’t think they are Bro/sis technically, anymore than Robb and Theon were step brothers by adoption/fosterage. What they are is cousins at most, at the moment I am just awaiting confirmation that Lyanna is the mother, but it would be really co-incidental if Ned brought the kid home after Roberts Rebellion, as per season 1 I think, where Catlyn is hating on the kid.
Maybe not. Jon’s actual ancestry has been a big mystery. The speculation has been that Lyanna (not some serving wench) was Jon’s mother, and his father was Rhaegar Targaryen (not Ned). This has been hinted at by some of Bran’s flashback scenes this season. This would make Jon and Sansa first cousins.
My take on Hodor was that Bran needed to wake up from the warging, but he also needed present-Hodor to keep holding the door. The problem is Hodor wouldn’t keep holding the door while he’s being ripped to shreds unless he was compelled by warging.
So Bran consciously broke young Hodor’s mind, essentially overwriting his brain with the undeniable imperative to hold the door until the very last, no matter the pain, no matter the hopelessness, no matter what. This programming kicked in for present Hodor when the door closed and he started holding, at which point Bran could come out of the warg state and Hodor would keep holding the door.
If the origin story for the white walkers was meant to be a big reveal, that was incredibly perfunctory. “oh btw we made white walkers lol woops”
Seems like we could’ve had some sort of flashback or history lesson about the relationship between men and the children culminating in a dramatic reveal of the drastic measures the children took to create the white walkers, some context on who that guy was, etc. It could’ve been the subject of its own episode and could’ve really fleshed out the lore of the series and been a dramatic reveal, and could’ve even had a “man brought it upon themselves” angle, but instead it became just sort of a blip.
After Bran fucked everything up and they knew the tree would be sieged, why would they go back to a random scene at winterfell where Grandpa Stark sends his kid off to be fostered? Seems like a poor time for some minor visit when they should’ve really been preparing for the siege, or at least the old man revealing some necessary wisdom.
Unless the point was that the old man knew what would happen, and knew he had to bring Bran to young Hodor in order to facilitate what actually happened. Is that what we’re meant to take from it?
Totally agreed. We could have completely skipped the entire Arya storyline since she left The Hound to fit in ancient history with Bran. Bran wouldn’t have needed to have been cut out of last season that way.
The perfunctory two minutes spent on ancient history this episode could then have been used to catch us up on Arya’s endless (pointless) training montages.
Arya and The Hound had some of my favorite scenes. (H: Only cunts name their swords. A: A lot of people name their swords. H: A lot of cunts.) But ever since she set sail for Braavos or wherever she is, her storyline has been worse than Sam and Gilly. Just awful.
I mean, Bran was being a reckless dipshit. “Huh, this guy who’s been at this magical stuff for 1000 years is telling me to cool it. He really knows a whole lot better than me, and this is clearly dangerous stuff. I should definitely do whatever crazy shit I can without him watching over me”
I mean, that’s the sort of reckless dipshit teenagers are, but Bran brought it all down on himself. Possibly the last of the Children of the Forest dying, a thousand year old guardian/trainer, and a 30 year old mindfuck of Hodor because he was a reckless teenager.
I think the speculation that Bran is going to take the wall is correct, I wonder what would happen if instead he caught a ship to Braavos – White Walkers in Essos?
We have no stake in Arya becoming no one. If she lost her identity she wouldn’t be the girl we love so much. It’s time to reveal what Faceless want or have Arya kicked out without a diploma.
I don’t think Yara and Theon will sail to Essos. Theon’s story is in the north. They will join the fight against the Boltons.
Didn’t the promos for the season show Jaime in the Riverlands?
Doesn’t all this make Bran a pretty horrible person? Maybe he just screwed up big time with young Hodor, but he seems to be subjecting adult Hodor to a horrible death simply to save himself for about ten additional seconds, given the apparent futility of holding off the zombie horde. If what he did to young Hodor was intentional, he’d be something of a sociopath, no?
The whole direwolf thing is seeming utterly incidental to the plot at this point.
That’s true but would it had killed the Three eyed raven to mention that time travelling, without supervision, might draw ice zombies to their location? We know the opposite did.
Sages in fiction are always so vague about the consequences. It’s like they’ve never met teenagers before, or whatever age Bran is supposed to be now.
I think perhaps the showdown between the night king and the three-eyed raven was not over. There were, what, four kings/princes there? If Raven can knock down the main one, might it cut the zombie’s puppet strings? Either that, or Uncle BenJen is in that white out with horses at the ready . . .
Sansa believes Littlefinger about the Blackfish retaking the Riverlands, but I don’t think I do. We never saw Littlefinger learning this information from anyone (I know someone said it was discussed in his conversation in the Vale last week, but I don’t recall it either). Littlefinger is playing her, somehow - maybe just to convince her to bring Jon’s army to attack Winterfall even without the Vale army.
Speaking of which - Littlefinger managed to get from the Vale to Moletown awful damned quickly, didn’t he?
I figured it was also that Sansa knew she could trust the Tullys, so she had Brienne go talk to them, but with the Vale it would be Littlefinger either leading them or basically leading them and she doesn’t think she can trust Littlefinger. If the Riverlands people come to fight, they won’t end up betraying her, but if the Vale comes to fight, she doesn’t know what Littlefinger will lead them into doing.
I agree. Bran should have listened to the raven saying how dangerous it is. But also Bran might have been more likely to listen if he said “we’re safe in here, but if the Night King touches you then we’re not safe in here anymore, and all of us could die.” Then instead of investigating the zombie army, he’d have at least try to run or wake up or whatever. It took him 30 seconds to say that after the Night King already touched Bran, but it would have been a lot more helpful sooner.
This is a good point, it could go pretty similarly, with the religious helping at first but then it backfiring. Tyrion isn’t giving the Red Priestess any power right now, just asking to spread the word, but that’s still an opening she could use.
Based on the Three-Eyed Raven’s previous words that “the past is already written; the ink is dry”, I think it’s likely that he already knew how everything was going to go down (if he didn’t know exactly when) – he knew that the White Walkers would come and kill him, and that Bran had to escape, and that Bran would Hodorize Hodor in the process. So there would be no point in telling Bran, since it (in a sense) already happened, in Hodor’s past.
This is what I expect – by a totally unbelievable coincidence Benjen will be over the next drift. But he won’t have extra horses, and at most a horse can carry two, so…goodbye Meera. (The do seem to be pruning down the cast, don’t they?)