[identity profile] chavalah.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] scifi_rewatch
Hello, hello! We are ten weeks out from season six of “Game of Thrones,” so I’m back for the fifth year in a row to do my recaps. Changing things slightly, I hope…I’m planning to truncate each review a bit. It’s been getting a bit time-consuming to write, and hell, might be nice for someone else to read these some day. :P

Decent start from the season that veers away from canon like none before (can only imagine what next season will be like, since we are pretty much at the end of most source material.) The title of this episode is spoken by two people—Varys to Tyrion and Mance to Stannis. Varys is unquestionably referencing the race for the Iron Throne, but despite Stannis’s involvement in that, methinks Mance is after some bigger fish to fry. At the very least he says “wars” plural, and I’d bet the more important one, the one against the White Walkers, comes into play. I could also take this metaphor of Stannis’s “wars” further, given that I’ve seen to the end of the season, but that’ll do for now.

Elsewhere, the people of Kings Landing struggle to find new equilibrium in the face of Tywin’s death. Daenerys has new political battles to wage in Meereen, and things are unstable on that front at the Wall as well. Sansa and Brienne seem to be struggling for direction, which Littlefinger and Pod attempt to provide.

Finally (or actually firstly) we get our first flashback/prophecy in “Game of Thrones” history. It’s kind of a big deal, because flashbacks and prophecies are far more prominent in the books. So at least one thing is getting more canonical, hee.


Summary
Cersei’s flashback
As a young girl, Cersei drags a friend to a witch’s house in the woods of Lannisport. The witch orders the girls to leave, but in the face of Cersei’s threats she delivers her future instead. She says that Cersei will marry “the king” not “the prince.” Said king will have 20 children and she will have three. She will rule until a younger, more beautiful queen deposes and takes everything from her. Finally, and most ominously about her children, “gold will be their crown, gold their shrouds.”

King’s Landing
Cersei forces a large crowd waiting outside of the Sept of Baelor to wait while she and Jaime, attending Tywin’s body, debate the threats to their family. At a later and more public gathering, the Queen runs into her cousin, Lancel, who has found peace for his past mistakes and hurts by joining a stringent religious order called the Sparrows. As Loras, seemingly free of his engagement to Cersei, canoodles with Olyvar, Maergery appears to be contemplating new ways to rid herself of her once and future mother-in-law.

Pentos
Tyrion and Varys arrive at Ilyrio’s manse in Pentos. Unhinged by the journey and the experiences from last season, the former lord of House Lannister mostly takes to drinking and throwing up. Varys ultimately convinces him to go to accompany him to Meereen where they can vet Daenerys, the one person with possibly the right temperament and family name to rule Westeros.

Meereen
Deadly strife is brewing between the former slaves and some of the former masters of Meereen, called Sons of the Harpy. Hizdar zo Loraq returns from Yunkai with a request from those former masters—re-open the fighting pits, which Dany opposes but Daario is for. While she visits with her angry, remaining two dragons, Missandei and Grey Worm share an awkwardly tender moment.

The Vale
Littlefinger leaves Robin with Lord Royce, but takes Sansa to a mysterious location after receiving a covert letter. Unbeknownst to all involved, Littlefinger and Sansa, in a carriage, pass Brienne and Pod on the road. Brienne feels uninspired to search for the elder Stark girl after Arya rejected her last season, but Pod attempts to spur her on.

The Wall
Jon and Olly train, Sam and Gilly worry about what will happen when the new Lord Commander is elected, and Thorne and Slynt kind of hate everyone. Stannis wants Jon to convince Mance to bend the knee and pledge the wildlings to his cause, but Mance refuses. Melissandre almost succeeds in burning Mance alive publicly, but a disgusted Jon puts the former King Beyond the Wall out of his misery with an arrow to the heart.

Differences between page and screen:
Cersei’s flashback: she has more friends with her, and the witch, Maggy the Frog, is considerably older. The prophecy is actually more distinct in saying that Cersei will outlive her children, and emphasis is placed on her own murderer, the “valonquar,” which means “little brother.” It’s worth noting that both of Cersei’s brothers are younger than her, but much like Voldemort choosing between Harry and Neville, the girl has her mind made up about who this is. :P Child Cersei is also much more vicious, and murders the friend who is in love with Jaime (another prophecy foretold by the witch.)

King’s Landing: Cersei is not aware of Jaime’s part in freeing Tyrion, and instead is far more focused on resuming their sexual relations right away, which he refuses to her anger. Show Jaime is more concerned with family legacy and less internally histrionic; also, Tywin’s body isn’t rapidly rotting. Lancel’s newfound faith is far less threatening in the book; also, he’s a much more frail man. The scene between the Tyrell siblings and Olyvar is invented; the book’s Loras is presumably celibate after Renly’s death, and Margaery is likely less cunning, since she is a bit younger.

Pentos: Illyrio is present in the novel (Varys isn’t), and his relationship to the Spider was forged separately to their concerns about Robert’s rulership. Probably a good time to remind readers that they were the two people covertly meeting whom Arya spied near the dragon heads, way back in season one.

Meereen: The Sons of the Harpy don’t wear masks, but instead blend into the general populace. Also, Grey Worm comes out with the answer about why Unsullied visit brothels—they are paying for some maternal comfort.

The Vale: …basically, everything. :P Sansa has yet to leave the Eyrie in the published material; Littlefinger leaves for brief trips, then comes back. Robert Arryn, aka Robin is a much sicker boy, so he stays home. Canon Littlefinger might be a little more hesitant to leave the future Lord of the Vale under someone else’s watch anyway. Brienne and Pod are in quite a different psychological place as well; they never have any contact with either of the girls, and Brienne in general is a less dour and dejected character.

The Wall: Janos Slynt is running for Lord Commander, rather than Allister Thorne. Davos, Selyse and Shireen are at East Watch. Stannis wants to settle the wildlings on the land of the Gift, and doesn’t ask them to fight for him. Jon doesn’t try to convince Mance to bend the knee, and although the character is burned, in the book he attempts to escape and beg for his life. This is partially because the character who dies isn’t Mance, but Rattleshirt under one of Melissandre’s glamors. Mance is sent to Winterfell to attempt to free a certain spoilery hostage; I’ll get to that in a later recap. Suffice to say—in the show, Mance dies, period (unless there’s some huge reveal next season, and I don’t think it’ll be coming from that angle. :P). Finally, Jon doesn’t mercy kill “Mance” directly, but he does order some archers to do it.

Thoughts
Reasons behind some of the changes. Shifting the focus of the prophecy from “the valonquar” to the younger queen who will take everything away brings Cersei and Margaery’s beef to the forefront. Yes, Cersei still despises Tyrion; it’s the bulk of her conversation with Jaime. But Tyrion isn’t there for the Queen Mother to play off of, unlike Tommen’s future bride. The prophecy also sets the stage for Cersei’s remaining children to be in jeopardy. One down, two to go… (and the remaining two are good eggs, alas.)

I’m also a bit of a fan of not making Cersei a child murderer. It’s just a little too fairy tale evil queen for me. We already get enough of that with her being deposed by the younger, lovelier one anyway. I think I’m kind of rare for a book lover, but I have always preferred show Cersei. I appreciated the way that she deftly harped on Jaime’s guilt, rather than try to jump his bones and leave in a huff. She’s so much more of a real character to me. That scene where Loras is stumbling over his repetitive eulogy, and Cersei answers him with a platitude that doesn’t hide her revulsion was comic gold to me.

Another big theme introduced in King’s Landing was that of a new, religious component. Lancel’s faith is much more proactive, and he brings it to the fore by reminding his cousin that he felt the need to absolve himself of sins the two of them committed together back in season one. The music was a shade of foreshadowing menace, and by the way, I loved the new CGI of the gods in the sept. Will add a bit of flair to the theme of the season.

The scene of Loras and Olyvar in bed with Margaery’s interruption is mostly a placeholder so things can be acted on in the future. But speaking of foreshadowing, Loras’s Dorne-shaped tattoo and the small talk that followed is totally about trying to ease the audience into this new “Game of Thrones” location, hee. (Random transition: the Grey Worm/Missandei “flirtation” also felt like a placeholder…they were trying to build up a character moment in, like, two seconds of time wedged between bigger scenes. There’s a lot to accomplish on this show.)

I kind of feel like the Pentos scenes dragged a little bit, just to prove how miserable and un-anchored Tyrion is, but Peter Dinklage is a good actor. Then we end with a bunch of jingoistic words to get them into a plot about helping Daenerys win the Iron Throne, and hey, I’m a fan of Daenerys.

Seriously, I think many people are waaay too hard on her. I’ve heard a lot of griping about the way she treats “her children,” but what would you do if “your children” could cause literal world destruction, and didn’t follow your lead on when to start and stop? “Nuclear weapons” really are a better term for dragons; I feel for Dany’s dilemma.

There’s also the issue of the fighting pits. Is Dany being too stubborn in refusing to allow people to fight to the death for sport? Hell, in my beloved “Hunger Games,” the entire crux of the saga was to stop that barbarity. I think I’d rather live in a world where people feel psychological trauma for killing other people in an arena than…whatever Daario feels. There’s reasons why death-as-sport is good for the Khaleesi’s rule by way of appeasing the masses, but the whole concept is still pretty icky. Dany’s empathy only feels like overkill—no pun intended—because life is so ridiculously cheap in this series. Maybe, to twist a little bit of what Brienne says, people are either dead or they are monsters.

Speaking of Brienne and Pod, their show characters have been consistent, and I suppose it works for the bleakness of the series. Brienne will have bigger challenges later on, and GROAN, her and Sansa just missing each other. :P At the time, I thought this would be a one-off thing, with the showrunners giving credence to the idea of close encounters, but now I think it’s more foreshadowing. Zips lips.

I suppose the show wanted to juxtapose Robin training with the Royce boy and Jon training with Olly. Jon was going hard on the lad—and I think it was supposed to be up in the air, whether he was doing it to help the boy or to get back at him for Yigritte—but he could hold his own. Robin, on the other hand, was failing miserably. Both boys had gendered insults thrown at them, of course. That’s pretty common in our world, too. Anywho.

The Sansa stuff is mostly a placeholder, too. We see her try and sneak a peek at Littlefinger’s letter, and later she questions him about the validity of leaving for their protection. The books seem to agree with her, lol—they’re pretty safe in the Vale, with Littlefinger’s powerful position and the geographical defenses. Lord Baelish’s line about taking Sansa somewhere too far for Cersei to find her is obviously meant to be a hook for the audience, as this new plot trods slowly forward. I appreciate Sansa questioning of new reality; it’s a little more overt than in the last books, but show Sansa is now playing on a more varied field, too.

Finally, the Wall! Setting up the pieces…Gilly and little Sam (and ero big Sam) are in danger from Thorne’s wildling-hating ways. Jon is easily snapped up into the Stannis plot. We are reminded of the most immediate Westerosi enemy—the Boltons, who have taken up residence at Winterfell. I feel like I could sense the respect between Jon and Stannis as they stood by their duties, to the Wall and to the kingdom. I wouldn’t call it affection, because Stannis and co are a little too merciless for Jon’s tastes. I think it works that show Jon actively tries to save Mance’s life; you need visual representation to translate on screen, and Jon’s an empathetic guy. He will stand up in the face of opposition, even from a king, to do what he believes is right. Got a bit of Ned Stark in him, after all. :P

I started saying this last year, and I’m gonna go for it again—Mance is the Mordechai and the wildlings are the Jews of the series. :P I’m sure other groups can fit their narratives into parts of this as well, but here is mine. Mance (and most of the wildlings) believe the most important thing about their lives is their identity. Life isn’t worth living if they have to give up their ideals. The Jewish people have had to face this conundrum for millennia—at the Inquisition, during the crusades, pogroms and the Holocaust, to name a few. I can’t explain it better than that; I felt an immense kinship to the delivery of those lines. Ciaran Hinds did a fantastic job. I will miss him on the show.

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