Seven Kingdoms Scoop: “Game of Thrones” recap of “Mhysa”

Welcome to the end, my friends! It’s been a fairly crazy 10 weeks for this season of Game of Thrones, no? I don’t think everything worked—Theon’s overly drawn out torture, for example, sits high on my “Oh, this again?” list—but overall I would say this season kept on doing what GoT does, which is deliver unpredictable, visceral television that draws us in emotionally and thematically. Uh, Red Wedding? Yeah, Red Wedding.

I feel somewhat amateurish quoting the Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Frank Ocean song “No Church in the Wild” here, but I do think the lines “What’s a man to a mob?/What’s a mob to a king?/What’s a king to a god?/What’s a god to a nonbeliever who don’t believe in anything?” work quite well to wrap up this season. We’ve spent weeks now considering the individual versus the family versus the kingdom, how one life can end up having a profound impact, be that either positive or negative. Robb Stark’s decision not to marry a Frey girl pissed off the wrong people and sealed his fate. Dany’s decision to free the slave cities has made her their figurative “mhysa” now, or mother. And Jon Snow’s betrayal of Ygritte will certainly have ramifications to come as the wildlings continue to march on the Wall.

So how did this season finale fare in wrapping up certain storylines, introducing new ones, and getting us ready for season four? For this year’s final five best, click through! (Oh, and of course: SPOILERS ahead!)

1. Oh, Tywin Lannister, the ultimate evil daddy of them all. Now that the Red Wedding has happened, a plan between the Lannisters, the Freys, and the Boltons, we finally know why Tywin was writing all those letters throughout the course of the season—and we also get confirmation that he considers himself more powerful than the actual king, his grandson Joffrey. Joffrey’s sparring with Tyrion after the latter learned of the Red Wedding was disgusting, if fairly typical (“Robb Stark’s head; I’m going to serve it to Sansa”), but Tywin’s ability to shut down both of them was, as always, fluidly simple and impressive. “Any man who must say I am the king is no true king,” Tywin says, before effectively sending Joffrey to his room (“The king is tired”). Tywin gives zero fucks! And, of course, he has everything figured out: House Lannister’s power is more important than the “whims and wishes of sons and daughters,” and so he will do whatever to crush any opposition, as evidenced by the destruction of the Starks and Winterfell. And, according to Tywin’s plan, Roose Bolton will be Warden of the North until Tyrion gets Sansa pregnant (“one way or another”) with an heir that will eventually take over that position. Important things of note in this whole exchange are not only that Tywin is sharing his plan with Tyrion in the most “I’m going to use you for this, no matter whether you like it or not” way possible, but just how long-term his thinking is. He believes the Lannisters will always be on top; he believes the Freys and Boltons will fall into line; he doesn’t think he needs the crown to be in charge, but just money and fear and respect. It’s a way of thinking that actually somewhat mirrors what Melisandre tells Stannis—that this war of kings is useless and that a crown doesn’t make you powerful. Of course, that goal-oriented thinking doesn’t make Tywin a better father (especially when you hear him tell Tyrion that he wanted to kill him as a baby), but you can understand why the Seven Kingdoms has been terrified of this man for years. And where do the Lannisters go from here next season? We have Joffrey’s upcoming wedding, Cersei’s engagement to Loras that is complicated by Jaime’s arrival, and Tyrion’s continued involvement with Shae while he’s expected to impregnate Sansa. Melodrama awaits!

2. Speaking of Stannis, we get a very clear idea this week of how he’s caught in the middle between Melisandre and Davos, between two ideas of his path—whether he’s going to be the kind of man who sacrifices others for power or who saves them instead. (Of course, we already know that Melisandre is responsible for killing little brother Renly and perhaps also for killing Robb Stark, but as Davos point out, Gendry is a complete innocent in all of this.) Eventually, Davos takes things into his own hands, swayed by his shared past with Gendry (oh, Flea Bottom! such a shitty, terrible, nostalgic place) into setting the bastard free—and yet it’s Davos’s self-betterment, his learning how to read under Stannis’s daughter Shireen’s tutelage, that saves himself, too. The letter from the Wall about the upcoming attack from the White Walkers and the wights shifts Stannis’s focus there instead of on the war of kings (of course, Melisandre staring into the fire is really what cements the decision for Stannis), and is supposedly giving Stannis another opportunity to prove himself as the Red God’s prophet. “Death marches to the Wall. Only you can stop it,” Melisandre says, and so Davos is pulled again into a situation he doesn’t want to be in but is forced into because he follows Stannis. What is the price of loyalty? Next season, apparently, it will mean a lot of bundling up—the Wall isn’t the most welcoming place, and how they react to Melisandre will be very interesting indeed.

3. And yet, at least Sam and Jon are reunited there—although the former doesn’t have three arrows sticking out of him. Let’s start with Sam first: As much as he and Gilly get on my nerves, their pairing is an important plot element as the series moves forward, and she gives him confidence that he previously lacked—look at how unfazed he is by Bran’s direwolf Summer, or how glad he is to recognize Hodor from Jon’s stories. Sam is becoming a better man with Gilly around, and I can appreciate that. (And he’s also taken the place, I think, of book character Coldhands, who in the series saves Sam and Gilly and directs them to guide Bran and Co. through the Wall; here we see Sam and Gilly share their dragonglass with the young Stark and warn them of the dangers ahead.) And then on the Jon side of things, Ygritte’s face as she listened to his admission of love was a sad, cruel thing, especially since it seemed like such a poor excuse for Jon to keep saying “I have to go home now.” I know Jon Snow is a fan favorite in the books, but jeez, he’s so frustrating in his presumptions about Ygritte, in his confidence that “you won’t hurt me.” And so her final “You know nothing, Jon Snow” before she shoots him is heartbreaking in its finality, in its rejection of the idea that love can save us. We saw Robb Stark punished for loving, and now it feels like Jon Snow is punishing Ygritte, too, for not recognizing who he really is. Moving forward, we haven’t seen the last of Ygritte, I don’t think, and of course things will get more dangerous for Bran and Co. moving forward. As Jojen Reed notes, “There’s nowhere safe any longer”—whether you love or not. (Also, anyone else think that Jon’s gasp of “Sam” when he reached the Wall was very Frodo-like? Anyone?)

4. At least we got some unexpected camaraderie this week from Arya and the Hound, whose partnership is lasting a bit longer than in the book form of the series. We see so many tragic things from their point-of-view this week: Robb Stark decapitated with his direwolf Grey Wind’s head stapled and sewn on his body as a final mockery of the North (an image I am very happy the show adapted from the books); the battlefield of murdered and burned Stark soldiers; Frey followers complaining about Catelyn Stark’s scream of pain after Robb’s death. And so Arya’s frenzied stabbing of one of those boasting soldiers, and the Hound’s assistance in killing the other men, felt like the beginning of something new. As she says to the Hound, this is “the first man” she’s killed, but she did kill a boy some episodes ago, and she was responsible for the men Jaqen H’ghar killed for her; “first” certainly doesn’t mean “last.” “Valar Morghulis,” indeed.

5. And finally, the episode ends with a triumphant, beaming Dany supported by tons of grateful slaves calling her “Mhysa,” or mother; for all those viewers saddened over Robb Stark’s death, Dany is a clear choice for “good person to root for in this crazy Seven Kingdoms world.” But as much as we’ve seen Dany grow and progress in these three seasons from meek little sister to powerful mother of dragons, something about this scene with the slaves felt off-putting to me. Maybe it’s because the crowd was predominantly black and brown people, in contrast to Dany’s little white girlness? That has something to do with my reaction, I think, but something to remember about the word “mother” is that it means someone who has given life. If that’s the identity attached to Dany, what will happen when she needs to take life away? She can’t win the Seven Kingdoms just by freeing people; at some point she will need to fight, at some point she will need to kill. Will those people be as supportive of her when she needs to do those things? Will she keep relying on Jorah and Barristan and Daario to do her dirty work for her? And doesn’t that seem just a little problematic? Ultimately Dany comforts Jorah by saying “These people won’t hurt me,” and she seems to be having a very Princess Diana-like moment in the crowd, but that kind of support can’t last. How Dany tries to prolong it will be interesting, to say the least.

+ And a few final thoughts:

+ Where are Littlefinger, the Tyrells, and Mance Rayder? It seems like a few characters this season just disappeared at some point, but I did like some of the callbacks to previous plot points: girls giggling at Podrick Payne, presumably because his tale of sexual prowess has spread; Cersei discussing her other two children, Myrcella and Tommen, as “the reason I’m alive”; and Brienne’s soft smile to Jaime as he arrives in King’s Landing to no one’s recognition. Those three instances were a nice reminder of how your reputation can either make or break you. Podrick is otherwise a meek and obedient squire, but ladies love him. Cersei is evil and cunning, but her only redeeming quality, as Tyrion has noted before, is her love for her children. And Jaime, once so feared, is now just another cripple. As Davos says to Gendry, people knowing your face is a problem, but the story attached to that face can be problematic, too. How will Cersei and Jaime act together next season, for example? Where does Brienne fit into all of this? How will Tywin feel about his prized son missing his swordhand? Questions, questions.

+ At least we had some humor this episode, too. Some of my favorite lines were from Sansa (“I hear that you’re a pervert,” she jokes to Tyrion before learning of the Red Wedding); Tyrion (“Killed a few puppies today?” he asks of Joffrey, before threatening him with, “Monsters are dangerous, and just now kings are dying like flies”); Ramsay Snow (“Do eunuchs have a phantom cock?”); and Davos (“Why is there a ‘g’ in ‘night’?”). Oh, it’s all depressing, bleak stuff, but I laughed. After the Red Wedding, I needed some chuckles.

+ We finally wrap up the Theon storyline, as his torturer is revealed to be Roose Bolton’s bastard son Ramsay, who, as Roose tells Walder Frey, “has his own way of doing things.” We all know Roose is a cold motherfucker, evidenced in his interaction with Walder Frey as cleaning girls scrubbed the Starks’ blood off the floor (“You’ll be needing a new young girl,” Roose says of Walder’s wife that Catelyn killed, and he sneeringly describes Robb Stark as “forever young”), and so Ramsay’s behavior makes sense. He has fully broken Theon not only by castrating him but also robbing him of his name, forcing Greyjoy into becoming Reek (for book readers, this is a climactic, sad moment)—it rhymes with meek, weak, and freak, if you’re keeping track. And so although we have Yara disobeying their father Balon’s orders and deciding to come save Theon, how much of Theon—not just physically, but mentally—is there left to save? As Balon cruelly points out after checking out Theon’s dick in a box (yes, I had to reference Justin Timberlake here), his son is “not a man anymore,” but for Yara, who has never been the right gender for her father, this doesn’t matter. “I’m going to find my little brother, and I’m going to bring him home,” she commits. Godspeed, Yara.

+ Here’s a picture of Hodor! Hodor, Hodor.

+ We also haven’t seen that much of Varys this season since he tracked down the sorcerer responsible for his eunuch-ness and had him shipped over in a box, but we see him try to buy off Shae this week, offering her a bag full of diamonds to just go away. Lost in this scene, I think, was Varys’s reasoning that Tyrion could be an important man one day, a significant political player in running the kingdom. If there’s anything that drives Varys, it’s a genuine desire for the betterment of the realm (as we saw in his showdown with Littlefinger in “The Climb”), and so while this scene felt exploitative and dismissive of Shae, I think Varys’s intent isn’t personally against her, but for the greater good. But Shae isn’t having any of it—“If he wants me to leave, he can tell me himself”—and it’s a good setup for what I hope will happen between the lovers next season. (Hint: it’s not happy.)

+ And finally, here’s a picture of sweet, beautiful Gendry. “Big words, no clothes”—as he describes his sexual interaction with Melisandre—was a pretty great line from the bastard this week, and I wish we could have had more time between him and Davos. But when you’re up against a woman like Melisandre, who genuinely says things like, “I have faith, and my faith has been rewarded,” what are your chances? Here’s to seeing you next year, Bull.