If last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, “Kissed by Fire,” was about butts—so many of them!—then this week’s episode was about partnerships, no? About doubles.
Think of the main pairings we get this week: Arya and Genry, Melisandre and Thoros, Varys and Petyr, Tywin and Lady Olenna, Jon and Ygritte, Tyrion and Cersei. Not all the relationships are the same—Arya and Gendry and Jon and Ygritte are looking out for each other, while Tywin and Lady Olenna and Varys and Peter are plotting against each other—but I think these couplings are significant. Who are you when you have to look out for someone else? When you have to protect someone? When you have to out-think and out-play them? Does that relationship make you a stronger version of yourself, or a weaker one?
And, of course, there were other things at play in last night’s episode, including a significant decision from Robb to get back on the good side of Walder Frey and a death sentence for Ros, murdered during one of Joffrey’s crossbow-as-penis sex freakouts. So much stuff happening!
So for this week’s five best moments, click through! (Oh, and of course: SPOILERS ahead!)
1. Sam and Gilly are still on the run—which I don’t really care about, at all, since they both infuriate and bore me—but as they hide in the woods, Sam starts telling her about the Wall, “700 feet high, all made of ice” … which Jon, Ygritte, Tormund Giantsbane, and the warg Orell try to climb over on Mance Rayder’s orders. “I’ve waited my whole life to see the world from up there,” Ygritte says, but when she slams her ice pick into the wall hundreds of feet up, it causes a crack that causes an avalanche that wipes out dozens of wildlings. Orell tries to cut off Jon and Ygritte to save himself and Giantsbane, but Jon’s quick thinking saves himself and Ygritte—who earlier had let him know that she’s aware his loyalties still lie with the Watchers on the Wall and that he’s faking it with Mance Rayder. But as she (rightly) points out, what do the men of Castle Black really care about Jon Snow? What do the wildlings care about her? Instead, she urges him to “be loyal to your woman” and realize “it’s you and me that matters to me and you.” “Don’t ever betray me,” she warns—and pleads—and when the two kiss on top of the Wall, it’s a very poignant, touching thing.
3. Tywin’s plot to marry Tyrion off to Sansa and Cersei to Loras Tyrell chugs along this week, with a showdown between him and Lady Olenna during which he rejects her insinuations about Jaime’s and Cersei’s incestuous relationship but is surprised that she’s so fine with Loras’s homosexuality (“a sword swallower, through and through,” she says of her grandson). She eventually goes along with his marriage plot, however, when he threatens to otherwise place Loras on the Kingsguard, a post that would disallow him from having any children and continuing the Tyrell name and legacy. (In the books, there is an older Tyrell brother, but I guess he’s been nixed from the HBO version.) And so we have Tyrion and Cersei bitching about their predicaments (“Loras will come to know a deep, singular misery,” the former says to the latter as they wonder where Jaime is, and what he’ll do when he comes back and Cersei is again married off), and Cersei finally acknowledging that it was Joffrey, not she, who sent the assassin to kill Tyrion during Blackwater. That’s not good news for Tyrion, and it’s not good news for Sansa, either, when he goes to inform she and Shae of their upcoming nuptials. “This is awkward,” Tyrion says, and Sansa’s weeping face at the end of the episode—as she watches Littlefinger’s boat sail away toward the Vale of Arryn, taking her hopes of escape with her—is fairly affecting.
4. And where is Jaime, anyway? Still captured by Stark bannerman Roose Bolton, who has put Brienne in a ruffly pink dress and invited her and Jaime to dinner (some great moments came from Jaime struggling to cut his meat, Brienne reaching over to hold it still for him, and him later warning her not to threaten Bolton with her knife). Bolton’s deal is this: He’ll let Jaime go, as long as he doesn’t spill about Bolton’s participation in cutting off Jaime’s sword hand … but he’s holding on to Brienne. Jaime tries to convince Bolton to throw in Brienne as a package deal—“I’m afraid I must insist,” says the most handsome of the Lannisters—but he’s thoroughly put in his place when Bolton refuses. “I would have hoped you’d learned your lesson about overplaying your … position,” smarms Bolton, in yet another reminder that he took one of Jaime’s hands; he wouldn’t mind taking the other. It’s an intimidating, powerful moment, not only because Bolton is a totally insane psychopath who we will only see get more crazy as the season progresses (trust), but because he’s the kind of person who knows exactly how to torture his victims. Putting Brienne in a dress that mocks and limits her gender; reminding Jaime of his now crippled status. When it comes to weakness, Bolton knows exactly how to exploit.
5. And lastly, we have a few characters trying to make amends for their past wrongs, or for what they consider wrongs against them. The first comes from Robb Stark, who invites Walder Frey’s sons to Riverrun and accepts their demand of an apology … and that uncle Edmure marry one of Frey’s daughters. Edmure, initially rejecting the offer, eventually acquiesces when Robb Stark reminds of his poor tactical decision with the mill a few episodes ago: “I’ve won every battle but I’m losing the war. If we don’t do this, and do it now, we’re lost,” says his nephew. And so, in a couple of weeks, we’re going to the Freys for a wedding. Hmm, I say. Hmm. And, hundreds of miles away, Littlefinger proves to Varys that he does not like to be double-crossed by informing him that not only did he know Ros was spying on him for Varys, but that he willingly sent her off to be murdered by Joffrey, who tied her to his bedposts and fired arrows into her. Varys, who initially came to the conversation with lines like, “Who doesn’t like to see their friends fail now and then?” realizes that he’s underestimated Petyr, who informs him, “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder … the climb is all there is.” Ros, of course, doesn’t get to climb it anymore … and how Varys and his army of “little birds” replies to Littlefinger’s threats is anyone’s guess. + A few final thoughts:
+ Great, sexually charged lines from Ygritte this week, including “You’re a proper lover, Jon Snow” and “You staring at me ass, Jon Snow?” Don’t get on her bad side, though: As she warns Jon, if he betrays her, “I’ll cut your pretty cock right off and wear it around me neck.” She’s not to be fucked with.
+ I love the rivalry between mama bear nanny Osha and the new girl in Bran’s life, Meera Reed, older sister to Jojen, who is helping Bran with his warg visions; the two bickering over the best way to skin a rabbit was ridiculous and wonderful. “You’ve got a big mouth, girl, and too many teeth,” as Osha tells Meera, may be my new “let’s fight” line. And, this short scene nicely fit into another part of the show, what was happening with Jon Snow, as Jojen says he saw Bran’s half-brother during a vision—“on the wrong side of the Wall, surrounded by enemies.”
+ Thoros, despite being a priest, has a somewhat progressive view of his religion, telling Melisandre of the Lord of Light, “You worship him your way, and I’ll worship him mine.” But the drunk, who admits to letting his faith lapse previously, seems very pitiful when he explains how he first brought Beric back: “He was my friend, and he was dead. And they were the only words I knew. And for the first time in my life, the Lord replied. Beric’s eyes opened. And I knew the truth: Our god is the one true god. And all men must serve him.” Does that make me forgive Thoros for selling Gendry? Fuck no. But it does make me understand his bromance with Beric a bit more. 
+ The show really tries to (stereotypically) play up Loras’s homosexuality this week, having him banter with Sansa about whether he’s wearing a brooch or a pin and then describe the details of his ideal wedding, from the food to the clothes. A bride, though? That doesn’t really factor into Loras’s plans. This formulation of Loras is getting increasingly different from the one in the books, who takes a vow of celibacy after Renly’s death: “When the sun has set, no candle can replace it,” he says of his murdered lover. I’m not sure we’re seeing that much regret from Loras in HBO’s version.
+ Oh, and right, Theon is still getting tortured by the mysterious Boy, who this week ramps up the violence by peeling the skin of Theon’s right pinky finger back from the bone. Why? There’s no reason, not really; “if you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention,” sneers the Boy. “I enjoy it. I win.” On, Theon. You poor, dumb bastard. 
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