‘Game of Thrones’ delivers the battle fans have been waiting for
Episode 6 is by turns stunning, annoying and hard to follow
“The enemy always wins.” From the first scene of the series, Game of Thrones has been about the battle against the White Walkers. And in that department, Sunday’s episode delivered, much to the distress of our heroes. But, with the audience knowing, as Dany now does, that the only thing that matters is destroying the White Walkers, the series is struggling to make anything else feel vital with only one episode remaining in the season.
ICE, ICE, BABY
So, an ice dragon, huh? Dany’s dragon’s death and reanimation was a huge shock that some book fans may have seen coming (or hoped was coming), and dramatically turned the tide of the war with the White Walkers.
Unfortunately, before the dragons appeared, the journey beyond the wall was a bit messy and visually confusing. Sure, the members of the Game of Thrones Expendables got some bonding time, but the battle sequence and time line were hard to follow. And, just for kicks, huge facts about White Walker mythology were thrown in the middle of it all.
The group has two prebattles to prep them for the dragonfueled extravaganza. First, they come across a wight bear (helpfully showing that any animal can reanimate) and then a small group of wights and a Walker (helpfully showing that if you kill a White Walker, you kill the wights he turned, which is new and totally would’ve changed the visuals and stakes at Hardhome, but I digress).
The next sequence is annoyingly hard to follow. Jon hears the wight army approaching and sends “fastest runner” Gendry back to Eastwatch to call for Dany, even before they are completely stranded. The group then fights its way to an island in the center of a frozen lake and is stuck but safe, because the wights break the ice as they advance.
An undisclosed amount of time passes during which a) the wights never try to cross the lake, b) Jon and friends survive in the cold without water or food, and c) Dany gets a raven and flies her three dragons north. That could all feasibly happen, we guess?
But once the Hound accidentally kick-starts the battle again and Dany flies to the rescue, the visuals are stunning (ice and fire were definitely singing) and the plot clicks back into place. It feels so right that only the White Walkers could take a dragon down (sorry, Qyburn) and that Benjen would reunite with Jon at last (if only briefly). Dany also finds her moral center once again, reinvigorating a character who had become almost boring in her power-hungry mind-set.
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
Before the ice hit the fan, so to speak, Game of Thrones was having a lot of fun with its Avengers joining up for the mission. Forcing these characters together allowed the pairings to be a little more interesting than before.
But the most interesting pairing is Jon and Beric, the two men who have been brought back to life by the Lord of Light. Beric was brought back with a calling to protect innocents and a fervor for the Lord. Jon came back a little more sullen, with a fervor to destroy the Walkers. Beric thinks they are there for a reason. Jon just wants to help humanity survive. That they both are the “shield that guards the realms of men” makes a lot of sense. That’s a line from the Night’s Watch vows, and the order’s original purpose was to keep out the White Walkers. Now these two men may be the best weapons against them.
SISTER, SISTER
The series seems as if it wants to turn Arya into a villain, but it’s pulling its punches. The result is a muddling of her characterization. The scenes with her sister felt forced and unnatural, and her not-so-veiled threats of violence felt like they had no motivation behind them. Is she just angry that Sansa survived? Or does she just want to be angry, dismissing the idea that her sister could have suffered while she suffered?
If it seems as if Arya is stalled, that’s because she is. She’s always had a purpose and now she’s just waiting for her brother to come home. Her pettiness will not allow her to feel at home, but the writers won’t allow her to do anything but sit there. A girl is not in a good place.