A rather dull episode, I thought. The only scene that excited me was the one in which Joffrey was sent to bed.
Had to add more…wasn’t there some speculation that Jaime and Cercei weren’t really Tywins? As if poor broken Tyrion was all he had, might be the only reason he didn’t drown him at birth. Tywin seemed very sincere when he said Tyrion was a Lannister.
I think the speculation was otherwise … that Tyrion was fathered by someone else.
They can still get Coldhands in next season. They didn’t really need him to escort Sam and Gilly to the Wall. From the books so far I don’t think it matters if they cut him.
In the final episode of season 3, Asha jets off to save Theon. I’ve read through book 4 which has a lot of chapters focusing on the Greyjoys and this hasnt happend yet. I dont even think it was metnioned that Theon was captured. Is this storyline in book 5, or was it created for the series? Or was there something in book 3 that I’m not remembering?
Theon was missing since book two until book five so anything we see is either made up or retroactively implied later.
I’m pretty sure nobody thought Theon was alive though. When Asha sees Theon in Stannis’ camp in ADWD she’s very surprised. So, this story line would be on the made up side instead of retroactively implied.
There is speculation both ways. Aerys Targaryen may have exercised the right of first night with Joann Lannister, thus producing Jaime and Cersei and their incestuous predilections. Gemma Lannister proclaims to Tyrion “You are Tywin’s son, not Jaime”, and she may not have been speaking purely metaphorically.
There are reasons to think some or all of the Lannister kids are Targaryens, and we’ll see which turn out to be true, if any.
There are hints in the books. See here (book spoilers, of course):
You can follow other links at those two pages to find out more detail.
I think he did snap when he killed Tywin and Shae. He slowly returned to his old self, but consider his antics at Illyrio’s manse for example. He still wasn’t himself then. He was no longer murderous, but he was still hurtful towards innocents.
Also, Tyrion was considering suicide at one point. Doesn’t he almost eat some poison mushrooms?
Yes he was definitely depressed and suicidal, but that is different than “unhinged”.
Wasn’t she speaking to Jaime at the time, about Tyrion? In context, she was clearly being metaphorical. She was talking about Tywin’s mind for strategy and general shrewdness, which are not strengths of Jaime. Nothing that she says implies Jaime is NOT Tywin’s biological son, just that he didn’t inherit those gifts.
Good episode, all in all. I liked Roose’s and Walder’s chat in the Twins great hall as the blood was mopped up, and Tyrion’s and Tywin’s chilly discussion about duty to family. Good foreshadowings with Tyrion’s threat against Joffrey, and Arya’s display of the coin and her first kill. (I’m digging the dynamic between the Hound and Arya; he’s only mildly annoyed that she took his knife and didn’t tell him what she had in mind with the four Frey mooks. He seems to admire her for her guts a bit more). Good to have the Bolton bastard finally identified.
A whole 'nother season behind us, though, and still no big, LOTR-scale, army-against-army battle scene. You’d think they could afford the CGI for what’s supposed to be a continent-wide war, after all.
A very nice scene with Varys urging Shae to leave. I really do think Tyrion needs to kill Shae as well as his dad; it underlines just how hurt and angry he is, and keeps him from becoming too cuddly.
We don’t hear much of Asha/Yara again until book 4 where they have the kingsmoot in the Iron Islands. So the series is going to need to create a lot of Yara plot in order to have her make a rescue attempt of Theon and still get back to the Iron Islands by the end of Season 4.
They could actually accelerate that plot quite a bit and make the Ramsey/Reek stuff all part of season 4, including some of Yara’s involvement. They could just change it so Stannis’s army doesn’t fight the Iron Islanders at all. Stannis has enough to worry about between Wildlings, Crows, and Boltons anyway.
Two bookstores cope with the RW: Bookstores Use Dark Humor To Cope With "Red Wedding"
I’m confused about the notion of the Frey soldier being Arya’s ‘first kill’. Hasn’t she killed at least two other people already? There was the stableboy she stabbed with Needle when escaping King’s landing, and later on the journey didn’t she kill at least one of the soldiers in the fight where Yoren of the Night’s Watch was killed? I think it may have been more than one. And later, she dispatched one of Roose Bolton’s guards when they escaped Harrenhal.
When she told Sandor that it was her first ‘kill’, I thought she was merely hiding the fact that she had killed multiple people already. But a lot of viewers seem to be taking her ‘first kill’ literally.
Little Arya is already a stone-cold killer. The whispered “Valor Morghulis” after she killed the Frey soldier suggests that she’s got absolutely no problem with it. And she already told Beric Dondarrian that her God is “Death”.
She said it’s the first “man” she’s killed, and in the show that’s true. The only other person she killed was the stableboy.
The dropping of the coin was a nice nod to her killing the guard in Harrenhall in the book though.
As it has been years since I read the books, remind me, why did Arya not tell Bolton who she was when she served as cup bearer? This was before he betrayed her family and she would have known he was her brother’s bannerman? WHen he threatened to cut her tongue out, it would have been a good time as any.
IIRC, she did not trust Roose because she did not know him. If he had been a lord she was familiar with from her time at Winterfell, I suspect she would have.
True, in the books. Not in the show. The battle between Amory Lorch’s men and the Night’s Watch recruits was quite a disappointment in the show.