'Game of Thrones' recap: Cry uncle
Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 6 episode 6, “Blood of My Blood.” To read our recap of episode 5, click here.
Things are getting warmer in Westeros. And we should all be very afraid.
After five seasons of grief and blood and death, Game of Thrones season 6 has been a veritable feast of joy. Sure, we’ve had some heartbreak (HODOR!) and there’s been plenty of violence (this show knows nothing else), but on the whole, there has been more good fortune for some of our heroes this season than in the other five seasons combined. And that should give us all pause.
Walder Frey is back, but he’s unhappy. The Tullys have truly taken back Riverrun. Sam and Gilly are striking out on their own. Jaime is heading to the same place Brienne is heading. Dany has her dragon back. Arya has Needle back. And, oh yeah, Benjen Missing-Since-Season-1 Stark is alive (sort of).
In an episode where there are no major (or minor) character deaths it might be easy to be lulled into a false sense of safety, to be tricked into believing that the good guys can win. But we can't let that happen. Because, to be very honest with you, I just can’t believe that this show would let us have a happy ending. I’ve been crushed too many times. But I'll take the good times where I can.
A very happy family reunion
Well hello there, Uncle Benjen! Nice to see you again! Can we ask what the heck you have been up to for the past five years?
But hey, we are so, so very happy that you are back now. Besides saving Bran and Meera (the true hero of Westeros, let’s be real, always keeping Bran safe and losing her brother and her friends in the process) and introducing the fire mace as a weapon against the wights, Benjen proves they can fight against the White Walkers another way. With the help of that Dragonglass, they can prevent the White Walker numbers from growing. And that’s not nothing. Plus maybe those five years have been spent gathering intel on the White Walkers. And maybe Benjen can also clue Jon and the rest of us in on that whole R+L=J thing.
Now book readers may have been particularly jazzed by this development (skip this paragraph if you don’t want mild book spoilers), as it seems that the show has just confirmed a popular theory that Benjen is a character in the books called Coldhands. Coldhands shows up several times way before this, including when Sam and Gilly fight off the White Walker (he leads them to the secret entrance in the Wall but cannot pass through because of the Wall’s magic) and when Bran, Meera, Jojen and Hodor are traveling to the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave (Coldhands leads them there, but again, he cannot enter because of the magic).
Benjen-maybe-Coldhands is a powerful ally for Bran and Meera, who have truly been left on their own without Hodor or Summer or the Raven. Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven now, and the flashes we see him see as Meera drags him away prove that there’s a lot of knowledge locked away in his head, including visions of the Mad King. Like with the Tower of Joy, we may finally get some true answers about what started this whole mess.
A very unhappy family reunion
So you take a young Wildling girl who has lived her whole life as a prisoner to her rapist father in a five-acre plot in the frozen wilderness and throw her and her toddler into a gigantic castle with grass and trees and dresses made of silk and curling irons and food that is supposed to be eaten with a fork and a knife and a psychotic patriarch and just expect everything to go smoothly? Oh Sam, I thought you were the smart one.
Things go pretty well for Sam and Gilly at Horn Hill (which is not too shabby a keep) when it’s only his mother and sister he has to deal with. But when the entire family sits down together for dinner with Lord Tarly at the head of the table, the tension built up over the entire course of Sam’s life explodes. Sam, who has never been the most assertive man anyways, completely collapses under his father’s glare, letting the man lash out at Gilly, a woman he has risked everything to defend in the past. And even Sam knows he has failed, when he decides not to leave Gilly and the baby in Horn Hill, but to run and take the precious family sword Heartsbane with him on the way out.
Sam may see a symbolic gesture signaling his manhood, but I see another weapon that can be used against the White Walkers (Valyrian steel guys. It’s all about dragonsteel, dragonglass and dragonfire now).
“The gods have a plan for us all”
We should have seen this coming. The show has skillfully and subtly been planting the seeds of Tommen’s turn all season, from his mentor/mentee conversations with the High Sparrow to the Lannister/Tyrell team-up behind his back to Margaery’s visit to Loras and her discussions with the Sparrow. Tommen’s visit with his queen in this episode sealed the deal. After all, she’s always been a master at manipulating the men in her life.
If anything, the idea to turn Tommen to secure her freedom likely was Margaery’s from the start, seeing it as her only option to get out of there without going through the walk of atonement like Cersei. It’s all upside for our young queen, although there is a flash of regret in her eyes when she sees the troops who have come to free her. She could have waited. But she was never one to passively wait to be rescued.
Meanwhile Tommen’s conversion means he kicks his uncle/father Jaime out of the Kingsguard (GOOD it was dragging him down), and sends him to recapture Riverrun (more on that below) for Team Baratheon/Lannister. And though Cersei’s trial is imminent, the twins (who are back in each other's loving embrace) agree that he should go and restore some Lannister glory. After all, she has the zombie Mountain. What else does she need? Right? Right? Right?!
Hey, at least Jaime is now heading for the same destination as Brienne (she was sent by Sansa to recruit the Blackfish to Jon’s Winterfell campaign). That is a reunion we deserve. Maybe they’ll gossip about Tormund.
A girl is gone
Arya Stark, it’s nice to see you again. We are so very happy to leave “a girl” behind and get back our girl, the one who has a list of people she wants to kill and who has some siblings on the other side of the Narrow Sea who could really use her help. After a lot of stalled time in the House of Black and White, Arya is finally doing something, and that something is deciding that the Faceless Men are just as corrupt as the rest of the world. When she saves Lady Crane from the jealousy of the other actress, she’s reminding herself that she is the person who sets her own moral compass, not Jaqen and not the Many Faced God.
Arya Stark was never good at taking orders and conforming to someone else’s idea of what she should be. She was never going to be the lady her parents wanted her to be, and becoming a Faceless Man was just another persona pushed on her. But she isn’t no one. She’s Arya. And she’s finally embracing herself.
Plus, now she has Needle back. The Waif should be very, very afraid.
You’re a conqueror, Daenerys Stormborn
GOT likes to take each episode out on a big note. You’ll remember some of the biggest moments of episodes over all six seasons have occurred just before the credits rolled. Dany’s two fiery moments with the Dothraki, for example, hit just at the end of their respective episodes (and the first one, the very first season). So it seems odd that this particular episode ended on Dany’s Braveheart-esque speech to her new Khalasar. It felt just a little anti-climactic. We’ve seen her rouse her various peoples many times. We’ve seen her ride Drogon. And we’ve already seen this particular group of people awed by her. So, besides assuring us that Drogon is back and controllable, the whole scene just felt kind of pointless.
But hey, at least we know now that Dany needs the exact number of ships that Euron Greyjoy shouted about building last week. Real subtle, guys.
Red Wedding ghosts
Did anyone else physically shudder to see Walder Frey onscreen again? Because seeing that revolting man again was enough to cause a physical reaction of disgust. Yes, friends, the Freys still exist, although they are terrible at all things. It turns out that Littlefinger had it right, and the Blackfish has taken back Riverrun for Team Tully, which the Freys had been holding since the Red Wedding. Also in news about uncles-to-the-Stark-children-we-haven’t-seen-in-awhile, it turns out Edmure Tully has been hanging out in the Frey dungeon since that time they slaughtered his family and friends at his wedding. He does not, shall we say, look too happy about that. But hey, at least he’s alive! Better than his sister and nephew.
Death watch
Jon Snow: Presumably still alive, but not in this episode.
People we ALMOST lost in this episode (because there were no character deaths):
- Lady Crane (let’s hope Arya kills the Waif now)
- The High Sparrow (this guy has got to GO)
- Lord Tarly (OK, no one almost killed him, that just happened in my imagination)
You can scroll through more photos from this season below.