Mother of Dragons enters the fray
Battle takes the spotlight while the story’s threads begin to come together
Warning: Spoilers for Game of Thrones ahead as the Star recaps Season 7, Episode 4.
Don’t you just love it when a lady brings a dragon to a knife fight?
Well, Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, did just that. And it was glorious. You know how I may have said my favourite part of Game of Thrones was the slow-burn court intrigue, as it revealed the primal machinations for power that drive us all?
Well I lied. What I was waiting for was a kick-ass battle scene to end all scenes that took an agonizing seven seasons to deliver.
On the ground were the fearsome Dothraki army, modelled after the Mongol warriors. In the air, the regal Khaleesi on her dragon. The Lannister army on the way to King’s Landing finally got some payback in one of the best grand-scale scenes yet.
We have waited a long time for the moment that Daenerys finally commits to battle. From the time those tiny dragon eggs hatched, to building an army, to crossing an ocean.
The series is based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice books, inspired by literary influences ranging from Tolkien to Beowulf and Homer. And perhaps there is some Avatar in there too, given the flying dragons.
Daenerys on her fiery steed did not disappoint, dispatching all thoughts that this may be another Disney Pandora thrill ride.
Although on a different budget and adifferent show, Daenerys could easily have ended up looking like she was going into battle with that fuzzy bath mat of a dragon from The NeverEnding Story. That, I suspect, would be harder to take for fans than Usain Bolt coming in third place in anything.
I did have my doubts. It was a battle deserving of the eye of the Christopher Nolan of Dunkirk. Instead, it was directed by Matt Shakman, best known for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
I am not sure what directing Danny DeVito in a low-budget comedy series and CGI dragons have in common, but Shakman did a bravura job. The combination of gritty Steadicam tracking shots and grand-scale action scenes should have satisfied even the most jaded fan.
Finally, the threads of the story are coming together in an emotionally satisfying — and explosive — way.
Continuing in the vein of the last episode, where Daenerys finally met Jon Snow, the King in the North, it seems there could be a predicament of the heart. Certainly fans are awaiting what could the most massive hookup in the seven kingdoms.
“What do you think of her?” asks Snow’s right-hand man, Davos.
“I think she has a good heart,” Snow says.
“A good heart? I’ve noticed you staring at her good heart,” Davos says.
“I have no time for that,” Snow says, not quite convincingly.
While Jon is with Daenerys, his family is having quite a reunion in the north.
That includes sister Arya Stark, who is reunited with Sansa, whom Jon has left in charge of his kingdom. Arya also gets to hug her little brother Bran.
Bran, the cute mop-topped kid from Season 1, has turned into something of a weird, supernatural force, going full-on Dark Shadows as if actor Isaac Hempstead Wright were channelling Barnabas Collins.
The upside is that he no longer has to get hauled around on Hodor’s back or picked up in an ox cart. In what passes for a Tesla in Westeros, Bran now has his own wooden wheelchair.
All roads in this episode, though, end at that awe-inspiring battle.
Taking inspiration from Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile launchers on wheels (or was it the other way around?), the Lannister army unveil their secret dragon-slaying weapon, the Scorpion.
And it packs a powerful sting, bringing Daenerys’s dragon Drogon to the ground.
At the end of the episode, we see Jaime Lannister making out like Don Quixote and charging the wounded dragon but escaping a fiery death in the nick of time, albeit sinking to the bottom of a body of water. Will he live? Will Bronn, who escaped his own fiery death when Drogon torched the Scorpion?
I’m sure the most fearsome pirates this side of the Greyjoys are already at work on the internet, trying desperately to find you that answer before the next episode airs, Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO Canada.