The Diggity Doc

"The perils of self betterment."

As all the lovely characters of Game of Thrones preparing to fight for the living, we were graced with an abundance of enticing scenes. Chill, you'll get your action and drama in the upcoming episode, episode two was all about showing how far these characters had come, their growth and spreading the tentacles of plot beyond a war against death's nothingness.

Tyrion and Jamie Lannister offered the most blatant arc of character development in their wee chat our their journeys. Theon Greyjoy continues his path as an enlightened lad, taking on the responsibility of protecting Bran Stark at the weirwood tree and while that tasks seems a bit beyond Theon, it's honourable nonetheless.

Arya's journey led her to a heavily alluded to rendezvous with Gendry. Despite knowing that Arya has become a savage, this was like a rite of passage for Arya and signaled her growth as a young woman in the 'interesting' land of Westeros. We know how much the Hound as wiggled his way from being a single-minded prick to offering oodles of depth and the last trio of the Night's Watch pondering their journey to this point was a low key highlight.

The whole episode kinda centred on this idea, in different ways. Consider Davos' interaction with the hearty little girl, which pulled at the heart strings as we were reminded of Shireen and the single most fucked up moment of Game of Thrones. Or Bran, not being Bran. Or Brienne becoming a Knight. This got me thinking about how crazy the path can be to get to where you gotta get to in life.

All roads led to Winterfell, or back to Winterfell for this moment, and most of the characters had to come to Winterfell for this as vastly different characters. For many, like Tyrion, Jamie, Theon, they are better humans and yet what they had to endure to arrive at this point was horrible. Just think about what Theon had to endure, to right his wrong regarding the Stark whanau and Winterfell. In super simple terms, to be an upstanding lad, Jamie had to lose his hand.

None of these characters knew where they would end up, or what their destiny would ultimately be. Neither do you and that can make enduring the hardships, the mental torture, getting your willy or hand chopped off and slumming around the wilderness in rotten clothes, extremely difficult. It's difficult to comprehend your hardships when you don't know how it's going to be worthwhile, when you don't know what your destiny is.

Nor do you know when all that niggly bullshit will end. You don't decide that, you don't decide when it's all been worthwhile and you sure as shit don't know when the stars align. When that opportunity to escape Ramsay Bolton's wrath, or release yourself from a poisonous love with Cersei Lannister, that's the stars starting to align and it's your job to pounce on opportunity.

Having questioned Tyrion's spot in all of this last week, I found it notable that we got a whole lot of Tyrion this week. This came in a few different wrinkles, led by Daenerys having major doubts about the little fella and what the value he offers her. Keep in mind that the seeds were all planted in episode one about Tryion not being as smart as he, or we thought and now that's flowed into Dany going nek level with her doubts about Tyrion; remember how Dany wasn't overly chuffed with Tyrion's decisions last season?

The development in episode two though was that Tyrion enjoyed plenty of good moments, good Tryion moments. Whether it was outlining their journeys with Jamie, or playing the role of conductor at the fireplace orchestra of the misfits; Tyrion was being the purest possible Tyrion. That lays things down in a weird way, for how I view Tyrion in this season and no one really knows what Tyrion is up to, or how this will play out for him.

We also got a lot of crypt yarns. Jon and Dany had their awkward little moment in the crypts in front of Jon's mum's tomb, but there was also a considerable effort made to highlight the safety of the crypts for those who won't fight. In the series trailer we got vision of these people, led by the hearty veteran of niggly situations Gilly and I'm feeling weird about how safe those crypts are.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in on the magic of Winterfell and am hoping that survivors find safety and escape via the crypts/tunnels. Chuck in that teaser based in the crypts though and I'm weary/excited to see what role the crypts will play in this battle and whether they will genuinely offer a safehaven.

We got a lot, of a lot of things in this episode. That's exactly what you'd expect when most of the notable characters are in one place and have a lot of catching up to do, especially when they are all fairly confident that they will die - a lot of confidence floating around Winterfell that they will die ... note that. Two villains were absent though; Cersei and the guy everyone's certain will bring immense death.

Cersei's absence was to be expected and not all that interesting. The Night's King wasn't shown as approaching Winterfell, nor were dragons mentioned all that much on either side. We haven't really contemplated a battle for Winterfell without the Night's King, partnered with Bran and gang outlining a reasonable plan of luring the Night's King out into the open at the Weirwood.

There were a few keys offered in that yarn from Bran, which you can explore for yourselves and one could get lost in trying to make sense of the Bran x Night's King relationship at a keyboard. That plan though, is fine and dandy if the Night's King shows up at this battle and doesn't have some other plan.

The Night's King is a dude with a plan, or multiple plans, which he has probably seen happen before. We weren't spooked with the Night's King arriving outside of Winterfell, we were spooked with the horsemen of the apocalypse arriving and the longer the Night's King isn't there, the scarier shit will get.

THE WILDCARD

The big moments are the ones that get people talking about this show. Ned Stark’s execution. The Red Wedding. The Battle of Hardhome. But it’s the little moments that make it so special, those moments when it’s just a couple characters in a room talking with subtext deluxe and every line means a hundred different things.

This episode, a capsule episode spent over the course of a single day and night in Winterfell as impending doom edges ever closer, might just be one of the top five episodes that Thrones has ever served up. I’m a sucker for subtext and the quiet stuff is always what I watch for in films/telly. The space between the seconds. The meaning beneath the words and images. That’s where entertainment becomes art and this episode was astoundingly good. I didn’t get around to watching it until extremely late on Monday night and, sure, by that point I had a belly full of whisky and pistachios (yes, I’m an eccentric), but by the time those closing credits popped up I didn’t even know what to do with myself. Bit of a wreck of emotions.

Nothing in this show works if we don’t care about the characters and if they can’t interact with each other in a believable way. The dragons are possible because we’re able to relate to the people around them. I mean, think about it. These people, who we’ve invested eight seasons and countless hours into, are all amassed at the same castle where this entire show began so many years ago and they’re there because they’re defending the living world from an impossibly large army of ice zombies. The concept’s a little less than what’s-for-lunch-today-can-i-afford-sushi-again realism, right? But this episode wasn’t about the plausibility of ice zombies, it was about a bunch of our faves all passing the time knowing that they’ll probably die in the morning and processing that in the truest way they could.

Last Night in Westeros. They’d been preparing for this ultimate battle for so long but once Tormund, Beric, and Edd arrived in Winterfell it was suddenly here in the present tense. Before the sun rises tomorrow, death will be upon the doorstep. No more hiding, no more ignoring it, no more not today. Samwell made that connection literal around the tactics table: the white walkers are death itself. And if you wanna know how to get people to care about your characters then this was that. Consequences. Next week there will be an eighty minute battle with the fate of the world on the line and to set those stakes up at the utmost we had this episode. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. 55 minutes of people wrestling with that inconceivable riddle… what would you do if you found out you only had hours to live? It was brilliant television.

So… Tyrion’s been redeemed then? Weird thing was that after having his intelligence threatened last week, this week he was back to being called the smartest person out there. He made a mistake by underestimating Cersei and that could yet have disastrous consequences if anyone survives the Battle of Winterfell next week but yeah nah Jorah still rates him so now Dany does too and people are back to talking about how smart he is. But… he hasn’t actually done anything particularly smart since getting sassed by his sister so not sure how that one turned around, although when the dead finally arrived at the very end it was Tyrion’s eyes through which we first saw them.

Also, to be fair, we’ve had a few hints lately that Dany isn’t holding it all together as well as she wants to let on. In fact twice this episode she was interrupted at a point where something drastic might have happened. First when she and Sansa finally had their little chat and cleared the air… but Sansa still has the north in her priorities and when she put it out there about what’d happen to her people if Dany takes the throne, things got frigid again right up until some dumb bugger walked in and snapped the moment. Then the same thing happened in the crypts as Jon, who’d been dodging her for the previous fifty minutes, let slip about the whole family relation thing… and Dany’s immediate reaction was less than generous.

“If it were true, it would make you the last male heir of house Targaryen. You’d have a claim to the iron throne. ”

Okay then, Dany. Keep it all about yourself then. Lucky for Jonny Boy, the horn then blew to signal that the army of the dead had arrived within sight of Winterfell and she’s all about to kick off, mate. Put in pin in that whole scrap for now… but just remember that if these jokers come out victorious in the end, like Tyrion drunkenly and optimistically predicted, then they’ll have to deal with:

Cersei’s massive army of sellswords
Jon’s rival claim to the iron throne
The sovereignty of the north

But that’s assuming that everyone lives and when so many characters had these emotional and heartfelt spotlights this episode… Brienne getting knighted, Tyrion rediscovering his wine stocks, Arya going all the way with Gendry, the Hound getting some peace and quiet until Beric turned up, Jon spending some time with his mumma’s statue, Grey Worm and Missandei’s plans to run away together, Jaime’s almost-complete redemption, literally every single time Tormund spoke or did anything, Samwell and Gilly with little Sam, Podrick’s goddamned gorgeous singing voice… you get the idea already. So many of them had Moments. And we all know that the Hollywood rule is that as soon as you have a Moment with a capital M, that makes you vulnerable to being killed off.

The obvious ones who’ll get whacked next week are the ones fighting in the frontline so the Wildcard’s Tragic Death Odds are led right now by Grey Worm, devastatingly. But when you make that pledge to run away with your sweetheart into happily ever after land just as soon as you can get through this oooone laaaast baaattle… sorry bro but I hope you’ve drafted your will. That’s the war movie version of the old cop who’s like: just one more week ‘til retirement, nothing can go wrong now!

Second on the list is Ser Brienne now that she’s fulfilled her life’s ambition and been knighted despite never really feeling it was possible as a woman. Game of Thrones has never prided itself on being predictable so there are more than a few red herrings in here but she did also brag about that left flank she’d be defending which is another warning sign. Similarly, Jaime is almost there with his redemption tour thanks to Brienne but redemption probably means sacrificing himself to die so don’t get too attached. The only thing saving him is the possibility of that one final climactic scene with Cersei. Imagine if he kills her like he killed the Mad King… ultimate redemption.

But honestly there’s nobody in the show who is safe right now. Even Jon and Dany… they won’t both die because somebody has to sit on the iron throne eventually but the fact that they both have a claim (and they both have a dragon), means that one of them is for sure expendable and I can’t be the only one who thought that Jon was trying to imply he was going after the Night King himself. Bran stepped in front of that bullet for now but Jonny wants him, no doubt about it. I’ve had the feeling ever since Melisandre brought him back that he’s got survivor’s guilt and is ready to give his life (again) for the cause when the right time comse. Well, there’s never been a righter time.

Sneaky pick in the Death Pool… Lady Mormont chatting it up about wanting to fight when, bless her, she’s like four and a half feet tall and weighs maybe fifty kgs. She’s a legend but she’s gonna struggle with a sword, tell you that much. Also listing Jorah, Davos, Beric, and the Hound in this one too, since they’re all old enough to be seeing the next generation take control now and that’s making them expendable. Varys knows this, hence he’s laying low and probably building up his sparrow collection again. Oh and Theon. He might as well die too, even if Sansa’s still mates.

But not Tormund. In an episode heavy with emotions, Tormund had me laughing out loud about six times in this one, from the giantsbane story to the skulling of the draaank. If they harm a single orange hair on that fine man’s head next week then I’m out. Sorry mate. Not having it.

Bran can sit quietly for a while, he’s told Tyrion his stories and now he’s acting as bait for the Night King. But he also said the Night King wants to bring about the eternal night or whatever and that doesn’t sit well with my theory that the Night King is a more rounded character than we realise. It’d be dumb of me to say that Bran is hiding some knowledge because of course he is… but methinks perhaps he knows more than he’s let on about this devious bloke in particular. He has the Night King’s mark on his arm… there’s a connection there. He also had that weird line with Jaime about not being Bran Stark anymore (as part of why he didn’t even need to forgive Jaime for crippling him because he’s just so far beyond that). I don’t trust Bran is all I’m saying.

Finally, Arya and Gendry. It wasn’t as weird as I feared it would be although Arya’s unsleeping glance when they came back to her was… gonna say that’s just a matter of all the tension at Winterfell because of the impending doom rather than, you know, Gendry not quite living up to expectations or whatever. But that relationship means more than meets the eye. Obviously the two have history going way back to season two when Arya escaped from King’s Landing after Ned died… but while she probably always had two intentions for Gendry (one was to get her spear and the other was to get his [or rather, a visit from the easter bunny]), and while she very much took control of that whole scene… she exactly didn’t go seeking him out. Instead she was shooting arrows when he found her to hand over the weapon he’d just made and it was after he mentioned being Robert Baratheon’s bastard that she stepped things up.

“I have a son. You have a daughter. We’ll join our houses”. That was Robert to Ned way back in season one. He’d meant Sansa and Joffrey but here we are. Arya, according to the books, is the Stark child that most reminds those who remember of Lyanna Stark, while Sansa is more like her mother. Robert’s Rebellion began because of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s dalliance (kidnapping according to the northerners who didn’t know the full story), since Robert was betrothed to Lyanna. This is Robert and Lyanna in another time, another place. Although if Robert had married Lyanna then there’d be no Jon/Aegon and that’s where this alliance, as subtle as it was, could emerge as another split between the Starks and the Targaryens… of which Jon is both.

All these implications, no wonder while everyone else was (understandably) getting drunk, getting laid, or getting some sleep on the eve of the dawning of the arrival of death incarnate… Jon was hanging sombre by himself with the ghosts of the crypt. Poor boy’s got a lot on his mind right now.

There was also the moment that Jon had up on the wall with Edd and Sam, reminiscent of all those times atop a much taller wall looking out for the possibility of an enemy which they’re now truly about to meet in devastating battle. As Bran might say, all that they’ve gone through has brought them to this very place and time where destiny awaits. The Battle for Winterfell is next. I’ll see you on the other side.

GOT S08E03 Power Rankings

Ser Brienne of Tarth – Arise, Ser Lady Brienne, knight of the seven kingdoms. Never was there a more honourable swordsperson.
Arya Stark – Go on and get it, girl. Funny how people think Arya getting a sex scene (in which she’s empowered and in control) is wrong but they cheer her on when she commits straight up murders. Society is strange.
Tormund – Hey did you hear the one about how he got his name Giantsbane? It’s a good yarn, strap yourself right on in and don’t forget to wear a bib.
Sansa Stark – But what about the north, Dany? What about the NORTH!?
Podrick – The boy has the voice of an angel… and his song choice was on point too. Jenny’s Song tells of a woman left dancing with the ghosts of all those she’d outlived. There’s a Targaryen link to the story of the song but right here the visceral imagery of kings who are gone and damp, cold stones was enough of a trigger all on its own considering what’s going on and what’s to follow. And she never wanted to leave…
Grey Worm & Missandei – Romance portends tragedy on this show and these two are the most romantic couple in the whole damn thing. Stay safe, Wormy. Don’t you dare get killed.
Tyrion Lannister – He’s smart again, apparently. He was also the only one to wait around for a proper chit chat with Bran so maybe he really is on the comeback trail. Most importantly though, he got sing-song drunk for the first time in ages and let off a bit of that suffocating Queen’s Hand pressure.
Davos Seaworthy – The most troubling thing in Davos’ life was when he wasn’t there to save Shireen. So that subtle scene where he runs into the little girl with the facial scarring reminiscent of Shireen’s greyscale was pretty powerful. Here he found someone that reminded him of the girl he wasn’t able to save and, with the help of Gilly (another famously ex-illiterate character), he’s able to shuffle her to relative safety in the crypt.
Jaime Lannister – The Redemption Tour is almost complete.
Jon Snow – Sorry, Aegon. Yeah that one’ll take some getting used to. Quiet, sullen episode for Jonny Boy who’ll get his chance to shine next week.

Churning out the Thrones yarns like nobody else… support TNC on Patreon if you appreciate it all

Also whack an ad whenever you read something decent to say cheers