“A true history of the world is a history of great conversations in elegant rooms,” said Tyrion Lannister in an earlier episode in this season of Game of Thrones. I think the show itself largely wants us to believe that idea to be true (and, hey, drawing-room chitchat is pretty easy on the overall budget). But last night’s spectacular “Battle of the Bastards” proved that actual history—and those “great conversations”—only happen as a result of people putting their lives on the line. It was the goriest, most violent episode Game of Thrones has ever aired, and one of the most visually stunning. Was it one of the best?
Some tap-dancing around that question, and a bunch of spoilers, after the jump!
In previous recaps I've broken down each episode by its various settings, but there’s little need for that this week. Despite what the lying opening credits told us (yo, King’s Landing! What’s up, Braavos!), “The Battle of the Bastards” had only two narrative threads: one in Meereen and the other in Winterfell. This concentration of focus was one of a very strong episode’s greatest strengths; the story breathed and ebbed and flowed in an artful and satisfying way. Too often, and usually by necessity, this show gives viewers a quick flick of story here, a slice of action there, some boring throne-room gossip over yonder, and 20 seconds of computer-generated dragon to top it all off. Not the case with last night! We got good and ensconced in two of the show’s most essential and interesting plotlines (in my opinion), and dispensed with its most boring—namely the religious wingnuts vs. whiny royals in King’s Landing. Praise the Red God!
What unfolded in Meereen contained little in the way of surprises, but boy, it was immensely satisfying to watch all the same. The Slavers’ attack on the city, and the breaking of their pact with Tyrion, comes to a very toasty end, courtesy of Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion. And the Dothraki storming the slavers’ army at the city gates was a nice little bonus, foreshadowing the blood and violence that would characterize the second half of the episode. In fact, this whole Meereen section was proof of expert pacing for an episode that probably posed some real narrative challenges: By putting this particular battle up front, the show gives us two action-packed peaks at either end of the hour, with a (relatively) calm lull in between.
And everything that happened in Meereen was deliriously fun to watch: Tyrion sputtering excuses to Danaerys as fireballs crash around them. The tables being turning on the Slavers during the parlay. The two smaller dragons joining Drogon in torching the Slavers’ armada (presumably not all of it, as they’ll need the rest of those ships to cross the Narrow Sea). The slave warriors dropping their weapons and abandoning those three guyliner’ed masters. Grey Worm’s two-for-the-price-of-one dagger move.
Later, Theon and Yara meet with Dani, in another feel-good scene as these two groups of characters reach a pretty obvious accord. Some 'shipping of Dany and Yara is all over the internet today, but the real takeaway here is that our two Iron Island royals have promised to give up their way of life—no more reaving, roving, raiding, or raping. (Raving is presumably still on the table; you just know Yara is down for some designer drugs and an all-night dance-athon.) It’s invigorating to see two women in power negotiating on their own terms.
The Meereen stuff was so thorough and so directly told that it leaves me with only a few suspicions and even fewer questions. Tyrion mentions Wildfire again, which leaves little doubt that it's going to play into the Cersei/High Sparrow plotline, maybe even as soon as next week? And the two smaller dragons escaping the dungeon—could they have done that all along, or did the Slavers damage the walls enough so that they could break free? And uh, that handshake between Dany and Yara looked super awkward. Maybe a high five next time?
The bulk of “The Battle of the Bastards” was taken up with exactly that—a very violent battle for Winterfell between Jon Snow’s army and Ramsay Bolton’s. The show has been building to this confrontation all season long, and as grueling and grisly as it was to watch, I really enjoyed the simplicity of it, the fact that the show actually delivered what it had been promising for weeks on end. That never happens on Game of Thrones!
The battle for Winterfell was effective and immersive storytelling, the kind we used to rarely see outside of big-budget movies. But we're in a new era of mass entertainment, and make no mistake—Game of Thrones has a budget that dwarfs most Hollywood productions nowadays, and while they need to carefully mete out all that cash money across 10 hours, Benioff and Weiss obviously splurged for this one. And it was great to watch them blow out all the stops. (Remember the tease of that battle between Robb Stark's and Tywin Lannister’s forces in Season 1, when Tyrion got knocked out and missed the whole thing? We’ve come a long way since then.)
There are only a few nits to pick. The nittiest is, of course, the supposed needlessness death of the dumb and worthless Rickon Stark. “Zig!" I heard you yell at your television in frustration last night. "For the love of maidens and bears, zag!” If only the (surprisingly tall) young Stark had switched up his running game with some bobbing and weaving, he could have dodged Ramsay’s arrows and survived.
Actually, I doubt there was any alternative. Rickon’s death, for one final time, demonstrated Ramsay’s most sadistic tendencies (and the show’s, for that matter). If Rickon had proved more elusive and been able to scoot away from Ramsay’s bow, be sure that Lord Bolton would have ordered his archers send a giant volley of very sharp projectiles directly into the boy's back. The point is not that Rickon ever had a chance—remember what Sansa said? Rickon was doomed from the start. The point was that Ramsay, and the show runners, wanted Rickon to get right up close to his half-brother before slaughtering him. That way, the agony is much more acute than if Ramsay had simply sliced his throat at the far end of the battlefield. And that maximization of agony has always been Ramsay’s weapon of choice.
However, the fact that Ramsay left Winterfell at all is a bit too narratively convenient. At one point Sansa states that Ramsay’s leaving the castle to fight on the battlefield is in keeping with his nature, but I’d argue that the show spent multiple seasons arguing the exact opposite—that Ramsay’s cunning and cruelty work in tandem with his patience and his foresight. If he had stayed behind Winterfell’s walls, Jon’s army wouldn’t have stood a chance. But this way, we got to watch the fight we wanted, and draw this excruciatingly protracted plot line to a close.
Which brings me to the other big nit: The perfectly timed arrival of the Knights of the Vale to save everyone's bacon. The blog-post-writing part of me feels a need to mention how improbably handy it was, and how blatantly it embraced the fantasy-story conventions and heroic tropes that Game of Thrones has been undercutting from the very start. But in the moment, it was an exhilarating thing to watch. It provided a welcome dose of relief after the hardscrabble realism of that very violent battle, with Jon being covered in blood and—nearly—a critical mass of bodies.
And Ramsay’s death at the hands of his own hounds... as predictable as it was, I don't see any other way for his life to end in terms of providing a similar sense of viewer satisfaction. Sansa gets the final smirk, and the episode fades to black with as close to a happy ending as we’ve ever seen in six fucking years of this thing. Surely this means that something terrible is waiting for us around the corner, so for now, let’s enjoy the nearest thing to poetic justice Game of Thrones has ever offered us.
A few quick things to wrap up:
• Tormund Giantsbane doesn’t seem to be familiar with the terms for conventional battle strategies, nor does he understand the idea of metaphorical demons. The show’s making him seem dumb is dumb, though: He’s emerged as one of the wisest and most reliable characters in the show—I’d share sour goat’s milk with him on the eve of any battle. Tormund's scene with Davos was among the episode's best moments, in which they talk about their former leaders and the disappointment with broken promises. (In the filicidal Stannis, Davos has a lot more to be disappointed about.)
• And now Sansa and Littlefinger are a firm alliance. This is good in the short term, but almost definitely not in the long. Is Littlefinger still hung up on dead Catelyn Stark, or has his crush transferred completely over to Sansa? There’s some hint that Sansa and Jon will be at odds in the future, so what’s the likelihood of Sansa turning to the dark side? All the ingredients are there.
• Were those House Stark banners just sitting in a closet somewhere in Winterfell? Wouldn't Ramsay have burned them, or sliced 'em up into chamber-pot paper or something?
• Why did Ramsay keep calling them his “hounds”? Clearly they are Staffordshire Bull Terriers and not part of the hound family at all.
• Also, Ramsay tells Sansa just before he dies: “You can’t kill me. I’m part of you now.” Uh oh. Is Sansa pregnant? Or did Ramsay merely give her chlamydia?
We’ve got one more episode left this season. There’s no way it will be as punishingly fun to watch as “The Battle of the Bastards” was. I predict a stupidly frustrating trial with Loras and Cersei, some Wildfire shenanigans, and a cliffhanger involving Bran and the Night King. Game on!
