Game of Thrones Season Six Episode 5
I'm as confused as all of you are right now. And the blood bank guarantee just went 0-3 over this weekend -- meaning I'm in need of a blood transfusion as we speak -- and I spent all day driving my family down to the beach. (Where we will now be forced to sleep on the beach in a tent).
So my brain is fried right now and nothing makes sense.
But I'm going to try and write about what we just saw.
HODOR, NOOOO!
HODOR, NOOOO!
(Seriously, Hodor holding the damn door made me tear up and I haven't felt like this much of a pussy since that Pixar movie about the little girl's emotions. Tell me you didn't cry when she left Bing Bong behind and I'll call you a damn psychopath.)
Anyway, here we go.
1. Little Finger gets to Castle Black in record time and he and Sansa have a heated conversation about whether he knew what Ramsay would do to her.
Little Finger claims he didn't know how evil Ramsay was and Sansa doesn't believe him. For a moment it even seems possible that she's going to have Lady Brienne kill him.
(Am I the only one who wants to hear "Bitch better have my money," come on, have Sansa snap her fingers and then see Lady Brienne go to work on Ramsay?)
Little Finger does give Sansa one bit of potentially useful information, there's an army at River Run that she can add to the Stark army in her quest to overthrow Ramsay.
Sansa also tells Little Finger Ramsay hurt her everywhere, but her face and she also says that she can still feel the physical pain. I took this as potential confirmation that she was pregnant, a theory I gave you guys a couple of weeks ago. But it could also mean that Sansa is physically scarred everywhere by Ramsay. In which case we may get an unveiling of Sansa's naked body and see her scarred like Denzel in "Glory."
2. Arya's still getting her ass kicked by that mean no named bitch.
I'm so sick of watching Arya get her ass kicked with a stick. We get it, the other chick is a lot better at ass kicking with a stick than Arya is.
But at least this time we get to see a fairly funny play mocking the death of Robert Baratheon and the decapitation of her father, who is played as an idiot.
We also get a totally unexpected cock and balls shot as the actor complains about two warts on his dick. Mercifully, the actress playing Sansa has perfect boobs and we see her topless.
Anyway, Arya's supposed to kill the actress who plays Cersei, but, again, what's the point of this entire entire storyline? Maybe Arya will end up killing Cersei at some point, but why do we need to spend so much time on this story angle? I just find it pretty worthless.
3. In one of Bran's visions we learn that the creepy tree kids created the white walkers to protect themselves -- and their tree -- from the humans.
They crucified a man into the tree and he became the first white walker. But then what happened? The white walkers gained their own agency and now they can't be controlled? It's like Terminator, your creation becomes all powerful and decides to kill you.
Why are the white walkers marching south and killing all the humans? What's their goal here? I need to see some white walker motivation other than the fact that they might just be zombies.
4. Yara attempts to become the queen of the Iron Islands, but instead Euron, who confesses he killed the old king, becomes king.
As part of his campaign for the presidency, Euron ridicules Theon for not having a dick. Meaning he's basically the Donald Trump of the seven kingdoms.
Having lost the election Yara and Theon flee on the best ships in the kingdom; Euron is drowned and then comes back to life, and immediately says, "Where are my niece and nephew? Let's go murder them."
Then Euron says we're going to build thousands of new ships. Which makes no real sense. First, why couldn't they make these ships beforehand? Second, wouldn't building these ships take forever? He's going to make the Iron Islands great again.
Also, where do we think Yara and Theon are going? Will they sail to the north to help Jon Snow or will they sail across the seas to get to Daenerys first? My bet is they're racing to Daenerys to pledge their loyalty to her.
5. Jorah shows Daenerys that he has greyscale and says, "I love you. I'll always love you, goodbye Khalessi."
Only Daenerys refuses to let Jorah to leave her forever instead commanding him to find a cure for greyscale. Then she tells him, "When I take the seven kingdoms I need you by my side."
Having just burned tons of dudes to death and revealed her boobs, Daenerys isn't lacking in confidence.
6. The lord of lights loves boobs.
All of his priestesses are smoke shows with perfect boobs.
That's a religion I can get behind.
That's also the only thing I really gather from the conversation between Meereen's priestess with Tyrion and Varys. As Varys taunts her for the failings of her religion, she responds by saying that she knows he heard something when his cock and balls were tossed into the fire.
This leaves Varys in stunned silence.
Tyrion is clearly attempting to mythologize Daenerys, but why does she need it? She's got dragons, yo.
7. Bran chokes, big time.
With the old man in the tree asleep -- he confirms it via the extremely sophisticated throw a rock at the old man method -- Bran heads back into the past on his own and sees the white walkers, whereupon the Night King grabs Bran on the arm.
Terrified, Bran wakes up and the old man in the tree says, "He touched you. You must leave. All of you."
Only none of them leave.
Instead they head back for a new vision despite the fact that the tree and the cave no longer are protected from the white walkers now that they've made contact with Bran.
8. Back at Castle Black they're recruiting an army to combat Ramsay and they need more troops.
Davos, the king of maps, is moving armies around like he's playing Risk.
Sansa volunteers the idea of adding the army at River Run, but when Jon asks her how she knows this information she claims it came from a raven when she was still at Ramsay's.
Why does she lie to Jon? Is she protecting Little Finger? And do we think Little Finger is telling the truth or is he secretly allied with Ramsay and setting up the traveling crew for an ambush?
Are we headed for the Red Wedding part two?
9. Back at the tree, the white walkers have arrived.
The tree people have fire grenades that stop the zombie army, but the four horsemen of the white walker apocalypse are impervious to flames. They walk straight into the tree where, for some reason, Bran is back inside a vision with the old man. The vision? Back when Hodor is still young at Winterfell.
As this vision plays out we lose another dire wolf -- honestly, why didn't that dire wolf make a business decision here and not attack the zombies? (If Cam Newton was a dire wolf no way he's jumping into that fight.) Did the dire wolf really help very much? Hate to Monday morning quarterback the dire wolf here, but this seems like a really bad play call. You run and fight another day if you're a smart dire wolf.
Between this and Rickon's dire wolf getting his head chopped off, not a good couple of games for the dire wolfs lately.
This leaves us with just two dire wolfs left, Arya's and Jon Snow's.
10. Meera kills one of the four horeseman white walkers with a spear that must have been made of dragon glass.
Which raises the question, why do the tree people have exploding grenades and not more dragon glass? Why don't they all have dragon glass spears? All the tree people have to do is sit in the tree for thousands of years and they can't make better weapons? Just a real waste of time here.
And how about Meera joining Jon Snow and Samwell as the only three people to have killed a white walker? Doesn't this make the possibility that she's Jon Snow's twin sister seem even more real? Especially since the episode ends with her dragging Bran away into a blizzard while Hodor is holding the door and getting attacked by crazed zombies?
What a badass way for Hodor to go too. I teared up here and then felt like such a pussy for doing it. What a payoff on a character name here. He's been Hodor for six seasons -- him saying Hodor for every answer has spawned a billion jokes -- and I still guarantee that not one person theorized Hodor was actually hold the door.
Also, I'm no expert on the speed with which the white walker army moves, but don't you like their odds of catching a single girl dragging a crippled dude on a sled in the snow? Is Hodor holding the door closed for a week? Otherwise, I don't see how Meera and Bran get away.
11. I have so many questions about this ending, so let's discuss them all here.
After being told that he must leave now, why does Bran go back into another vision with the old man in the tree? What final lesson must be imparted that is worthwhile enough to risk everything? Especially after the old man says they have to leave immediately. But then instead of leaving they go back into a vision. Sure, we finally learn that Hodor has had a seizure and only been able to say, "Hodor," which is actually "Hold the door," ever since he was a teenager. So Bran screwed up here and changed the past. Meaning that Bran now knows he has the ability to alter history.
But does he really?
Or has that history already happened and if he really wanted to change history has Bran not already done it? (One theory that might make sense is that Bran is the one who turns the Mad King mad because he goes back in time and talks with him to prevent, potentially, another great malady from befalling the kingdom. That is, just as Bran made Hodor have a seizure and be rendered virtually mute, Bran has also gone back in time and messed up the mad king. But if he did it he's obviously already done it, we just don't know it yet.)
This is where you can get lost in a metaphysical time travel mystery. For instance, if Bran were going to go back in time and prevent himself from being pushed off the castle wall by Jaime Lannister -- as some of you suggest -- then he'd have already done it, right? That is, the past would have already reflected his action in the present so we know he didn't do it. Does this make sense or am I just confusing you?
Take the Hodor scene as an example -- Hodor has spent his entire life unable to speak since that moment in his youth when Bran mixed up the past and future. Hodor can't talk his entire life because this happened to him in his youth. Even though, to us, we just now realized why it happened. So if Bran had actually made a decision to alter the past we would have already seen the impact of that choice; but we might not know that he's the cause of it yet. Which is why the mad king theory is a fascinating one.
Several other questions I have: how long will Bran be lost in the past? Will he come back to real life anytime soon? When will he go back to the Tower of Joy? How does he leave the past visions without the old man to guide him?
Why do the white walkers want Bran? And why does it matter that the old man is dead now? The old man spent his entire life waiting for Bran so that susggests everything is preordained, right?
Will Hodor become a white walker and allow Bran to see inside a white walker, potentially turning Hodor into a double white walking agent?
I still believe that Bran will go inside one of the dragons and wipe out a ton of the white walker army, but it seems clear that the leaders of the white walker army can only be killed by dragon glass or Valyrian steel. Which is why Sam has to go research this for Jon.
(Final thought: is it possible that Bran has already entered the Tower of Joy and persuaded his father to raise baby Jon Snow and Meera Reed? Could this explain Ned Stark's strange refusal to never discuss what he saw inside the Tower and also explain why Meera has such a substantial role despite having no substantive back story so far? This was hinted at a bit with Bran calling out "Father," as his dad began to run up the stairs. Just an idea. Again, based on the Hodor example it would seem to be clear that whatever Bran does in the future has already occurred in the past. We'll see.)
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Game of Thrones Season Six, Episode 1
Game of Thrones Season Six, Episode 2