Plus having canon fodder that doesn’t mind being canon fodder is a good deal.
I liked Tyland arguing against sending Aegon to Bravos.
“Neither would he tolerate the Bravosi heat. The monkeys alone —”
I assume it was just a throwaway line, but the idea of Aegon having a thing against monkeys makes me chuckle for some reason.
Welp, Cole did not get to go out like he wanted. Had we seen the lady that took him out before? they seemed to focus on her like we knew her.
The bolt is only carrying the line, not the anchor.
They mentioned monkeys again in passing when they were discussing hiring a ship to Volantis/Essos/wherever. Maybe we will get to see an Aegon/monkey face-off.
She was in a scene a couple of episodes back, with Damon and co in the woods, celebrating a win and singing a song. I believe she’s a book character. Apparently in the book some other minor character took out Cole with arrows, so the folks who get upset about that sort of thing are having hissy fits about it.
EDIT: I think it was ep 1 of this season, actually.
Thanks, I’ve read the book but there are way too many characters to remember minor nobles.
I was kind of wishing Cole would get his heroic death. I know, ASOIAF materials usually don’t get the heroic or chivalrous or desired deaths, but the dude had a crazy journey and died in the middle of challenging the others to single combat to save his men Or, well, duo vs single combat anyway. A few arrows out of nowhere was such a sad end. Which I’m sure is the point, but I was a little disappointed.
Also, the playing dead gambit seemed kind of ridiculous. It’s one thing if they just stumbled across them and were fooled briefly and then attacked when first starting to inspect, but there was a conversation where Cole’s scouts came back to report that they checked it out and they were all dead (well, they said “something strange”) – still, the scouts investigating the scene and deciding they were all dead? Hard to believe.
Specially since it was obviously nowhere near enough to even take on Cole’s fairly small band. It seemed like they sacrificed those men just to give him an extra fuck you before killing him.
So who was it who turned up to assassinate the sea snake at the end of the episode? It wasn’t the head knight of the Hightowers who protected against the fake Baratheons was it?
It does strike me as really easy for them to get straight to a main leader, with no scouts, alerts and be able to assassinate him (though it had not happened by the end, and GRMM rules are “if you don’t see them die, they’re not dead”).
Criston Cole going out that way, well, it’s more like reality. He’s the top fighter of the realm “I challenge you…”. Er, nope.
I assume she’s meant to be Alysanne Blackwood, although I don’t think she has gotten named in the show so far.
I don’t think I saw any named characters there, but it had to be Ormunds men. Also not sure they assassinated him.
It strikes me as bad writing for Ormunds men to travel all the way across Westeros, passing all those defenses and checks, to catch a major leader alone. The Baratheon one, you can see that working, it was guile and lack of recognition, but that. Still, I suppose GRMM probably had it down as “Sea Snake was assassinated by, erm, lets say, Moe”
Ormunds men are holed up in tumbleton, a town a stone throws away from King’s Landing, where Corlys left from.
In the book, Corlys survives to old age. I would be surprised if the series kills him off now.
It was an end of episode cliffhanger, that, when you really think about Westeros training, he’ll make mincemeat of anyone coming from the front, so it seems more more cheap ending or just cheap altogether. No idea of the source material for this stuff though.
He’s more useful as a hostage.
Rhaenyra and Daemon are terrible at this. Go attack Old Town to draw out the high towers if you’re worried about Tumbleton. Pay your guards (tax the lords that bowed to Aegon), don’t humiliate all your dragon riders.
The mistress of whispers is awful too. Nobody knows the extremely disgruntled dragon rider is 1) going to the city randomly and 2) meeting with the enemy?
Dragon wasn’t dead?
I dunno. Seems like a lot of plot convenience.
Well it’s not like the Targaryens don’t have a history of erratic and impulsive behavior.
To be fair, he was meeting the enemy while he was supposed to be on reconnaissance duty by himself near Tumbleton. I doubt anyone was watching the watcher.
I found this season to be pretty lackluster and boring until the second half of this episode. Just in time for the finale, which I guess is going to leave us on a big cliffhanger. Isn’t next season the last one? I hope it is a bit more exciting than this one.