Wildcard:

All right then, you bastards. You geniuses. You want my money, do you HBO, you want my time? Here, have it all. I try to pretend that I can keep some distance from this damned show and then there’s an hour like that (actually, closer to 45 mins – one of the shortest eps ever) and I just surrender. With all the speculation about how they’re gonna try to tie up these loose ends and polish the show off… gotta admit I severely underestimated how ferocious these remaining hours could be. That was… that was… I don’t even know what that was but I had to unlock my jaw to put it back in place when the credits started rolling.

Jaime, you’re a very smart fella… but you’re an idiot. Absolutely clouded with loyalty to the woman who is at least in the bottom four of the worst Westeros monarchs out of the last five Westeros monarchs. Depends on your feelings about Robert and Tommen, probably. Anyway, lotsa stuff was said about why Dany has earned her followers rather than inheriting them and what an inspiring leader she’s become… only for Jaime to basically commit suicide in trying to kill her for someone who stands for the exact opposite.

Did he die though? Not yet but it seems like it’s only a matter of time. More confusing is: who tried to save him? Somebody dropped a Sonny Bill right into him to and sunk him into the water right as the flames of Drogon came whooshing in his direction. Then probably because of his golden hand he sunk all the way to the bottom. Presumably it was either the Tarly bloke or Bronn who saved him but Bronn had already hit the deck way back – I doubt he recovered in time to get on over there. Probably the Tarly bugger then. Dickon was his name… *hehehe*…

Nobody died. Okay, well hundreds of people died. But nobody with a name in the credits. I’m still not sure how either Bronn or Drogon got out of there alive after they sorta set it up like one of them had to go. And, to be honest, it feels like a bit of a cop out that nobody did.

Nobody died... except for all the sculptors in the world who'd ever met Sean Bean

But also the beauty of that insane final battle scene was that we have affinities with both sides of the fight. Bronn is a badass, gotta root for Bronn. But Jaime has his moments too. Meanwhile who wants to see Dany randomly assassinated in a minor battle (with major repercussions, granted)? You’re stuck being dragged in both directions like how am I supposed to react to all this? You can’t, not logically. You’ve just gotta let it sweep you along.

And quick note here, that was why the Battle of the Bastards felt fun at the time (with the brilliant filmmaking the reason for that) but in hindsight feels pretty empty. There was no way Jon could lose for the sake of the show so what the hell. Hence why the voiceover take of Highgarden last week was clever work.

One thing I really get a bit annoyed with is the way people meta-analyse the show. I know I do it a bit too, we all do, but not everything in a telly programme needs to fit into a snug little box of purpose. Clearly the valyrian steel dagger will be seen again. Clearly the dragonglass has a wider reason for being. But the way the writers conspired to keep Bronn, Jaime, Dany and Drogon all alive despite very strong hints in at least three of those directions that demise was imminent doesn’t have to mean anything other than that they made it through another hour.

Like, why did they keep Bronn around when they’d perfectly orchestrated his heroic sacrifice? Well, maybe because he’s a fun character and also the world’s most pragmatic soldier who would obviously jump out of the way of a flaming spurt of dragon fire? Just because he left his gold behind, you know. That cash wasn’t gonna be worth much to him if he was charred into ash in regathering it. Nice little tease, though.

Thing is, this is the show that killed its main character way back in season one. Game of Thrones gained notoriety in the early days because it was so brutally honest to its own world – characters never got narrative sympathy. Other than maybe Jon and Dany with a hint of Tyrion, to be fair. But since they’ve gone off book it seems like there’s a tendency to be too… precise with how they deal with characters. Olenna got whacked because she no longer fitted into the endgame. Same with the Dornish lasses. Dunno, it just seems like Benioff and Weiss are playing to the TV rules not the book rules these days.

I don’t happen to think that George R.R. Martin has spilled all his secrets to the HBO lot. I reckon he’s got some stuff up his sleeve that he never planned to tell – I’d imagine he gave a broad strokes outline and then said: “there, you’re on your own now”. No different than giving them a half-drawn map to town and dropping them unprepared in the middle of a forest. Otherwise what’s even the point of writing the rest of the books?

"Umm, yeah... just remembered I've got a dentist appointment at four... gotta run!"

Tell you what else, I think Martin woulda killed Jaime there. His last act alive would’ve been a hail mary pass from his own half with four massive linebackers charging straight for him. Completely irrational but he pretty much admitted to Olenna that Cersei had made him that and more and if he could drive a spear through Daenerys Targaryen then that’d be that – war won. The things we do for love, aye?

The only reason not to ice him yet is to keep him around for either his redemption (he had his chance and he went back to Cersei, game over there) or to spread the news of Olenna’s last words. But if he’d died with that news untold then… seem to recall Ned died with the news of Jon’s parentage untold as well. Martin would’ve killed him and I doubt he would’ve let Tyrion watch either. The TV show is definitely holding its own since going off-books but you can see the different priorities at stake. This was great. I miss the unpredictable, unconventional Thrones too, is all.

Dany seemed to take a slightly lascivious interest in Missandei’s love life there. I mean, a natural curiosity given the logistics of that but still. Then there’s this fascination she’s got with people bending the knee for her and… no, never mind. Best not go there.

Those Starks have been some places, done some things. Their stories aren’t over as Arya tells Sansa but the lives that they’ve all lived have very carefully prepared them each for a specific set of skills and it’s kinda made them hard to relate to with each other. Bran especially because he’s a callous sage now whose original spirit maybe possibly died in that cave (metaphorically speaking). Arya’s the same though, in her own way. Sansa can’t relate to her murder list or her exceptional combat skills just like how Arya can’t relate to Sansa’s diplomatic alliance with that slimy prick Littlefinger.

Why did Littlefinger share the dagger with Bran? Part of it is that I genuinely think he feels a comradeship with the Starks even if he’s still his own ambitious self beneath that. He is not a generous man, after all. Gotta think he also just wanted a reason to get one on one with Bran to see what’s going on there. More important (sorry, meta-analysis coming here…) is that Bran then gave it to Arya and we already know that Valyrian steel can kill White Walkers. Brienne has a Valyrian steel sword. Hmm… tag team?

I don’t reckon the White Walkers are striking in the next two episodes though. At this stage I’d suggest we spend the rest of this season on the war in the south and the final season on the war in the north. Next prediction: somebody relevant will die next week. TV writing or book writing, they’ll only drag us along for so long and as the show has ramped up the stakes with every following episode so far this season, that’s gonna have some consequences.

Diggity Doc:

During the off-season I had heard how season 7 would feature longer episodes. Less episodes but more crammed into those episodes, although this is just many of those off-season whispers that do the rounds like speculation of what the NZ Warriors need and what they're offering Adam Blair. The Spoils of War only came in at round 50 minutes and as I suspect we're going to see immense shit go down in the remaining episodes, I'm confident that this will be the shortest episode of the season.

It wasn't just the length of this episode that made it succinct. We got a little scene-setting with Cersei and her investors (investors invest in evil too ya know) but other than that, this was all about the Starks in the North and the Dany storyline, both at Dragonstone and in the open fields of Westeros. This felt as though we were being grabbed by the throat, as Jon did to Theon and pulled into the meat and vege of what's going down; yo, let's get fuckin' to it, yeah?

And by getting fuckin' to it, I mean learning about some ancient GoT shenanigans.

Fun fact: The Children of the Forest were all massive Deadheads

Learning about the cave art that Jon discovered in his search for Dragonglass opened can of worms, worms of intrigue. Up to this point, we had been given tasters and insight into the Children of the Forest - those who were pretty much responsible for driving Dragonglass into that poor lad's heart, making him the Night's King (kinda?). We got all that in a flashback and I'd kinda assumed that the Children of the Forest were somewhat restricted to the northern area of Westeros. I mean, that's where the spiral patterns are found, where the Weirwood trees seem to be, where there's a weird mixture of creatures (from Children to Wildlings to White Walkers). The North just feels like the trap house for all that.

So what's up with these carvings being so far south?

That goes into some fairly deep history and I've been on a journey, sparked by the telly show, to educate myself on the GoT history - history created by George RR Martin. I won't take you on that journey, it's just another note to how awesome the entire GoT package is. As for Jon and Dany's discovery, this reinforces how crucial Dragonstone is to the story as appears to have provided Dragonglass and refuge for the Children of the Forest (and/or man) during 'ancient' times.

Wildcard alluded to Dany's fetish for having people bend the knee, which is perhaps a logical explanation. I still find it weird how fascinated Dany is in having people bend the knee to her as that single idea counters how she wants to lead and she's offered lovely insight into how Jon should lead, throwing away his pride and offering a bridge between history and the future for his people. Yet Dany had just been given a slither of evidence of what's coming and once again had a little ego-trip, this seems to a theme of the first half of the season and I wonder how Dany's mindset changes as more information becomes known.

In another salute to history, a lot of focus is being given to a dagger. In the world of GoT, this appears to be nothing more than a prison shank when Dragons breathe fire, Bronn's firing a scorpion and even some of the swords we've seen our heroes wield.

Of course, we saw an illustration of that shank when Sam was hitting the books. Yeah we can speculate on a whole lot of stuff regarding that little shank (Littlefinger tried to have Bran killed way back and now it's gonna be used to kill Littlefinger, "chaos is a ladder"!), but all I know is that if something has that sort of feature in a book at the Citadel, it's pretty old.

Not quite as old as that cave art - my foolish show knowledge and limited research has me thinking that the cave art is a top-three oldest thingy of note - but old.

Word on the street is that it's Valyrian steel, making it super valuable. Valryian weaponry can be made though and as our heroes will need more Valryian steel swords, expect a certain blacksmith to play a role in ensuring that the homies are armed with Valryian steel. Point being; Valryian steel can come and go, it's valuable but you can go get another one if you really, really, really want.

That little dagger's got something more to it. You wouldn't pass it around like a phat joint if you knew all its powers though would ya? Littlefinger's a smart dude but he's not a nice dude and I doubt he would have been so eager to part ways with it if he read the book that Sam was reading, or read that specific page that I reckon Sam's about to stumble on.

I found the Stark and Dragonstone stuff more interesting than the battle. We should definitely note however that old mate Tarly clearly said that the gold had already reached King's Landing, so Dany just burned a whole lot of supplies. What did the Stark and Dragonstone scenes have in common? Information.

There's an arm's race going on and there's a information race running parallel to it.

Ah yeah, the Starks. Arya's back and you can't blame Sansa for feeling a bit left out, like where's her powers? Sansa welcomed back Bran and had the time-travelling bomb dropped on her, then Arya appears at the gates and Sansa watches her little sister more than hold her own against Brienne. Meanwhile Sansa's struggling to understand where she fits into all of this and that sounds like a perfect opportunity for Littlefinger to get back to his schemin' ways.

Littlefinger's world has been flipped on its head as he's now had the two younger Stark siblings come back and show off their abilities. Whatever plans Littlefinger had prior to Jon leaving Winterfell have been burned and now we'll see how Littlefinger pivots, because this ain't a case of driving a wedge between Jon and Sansa anymore. Littlefinger gave that dagger to Bran, who basically told Littlefinger he knows what a piece of shit Littlefinger is and then Littlefinger watched Arya use that dagger against Brienne.

Bran poured cold water on Littlefinger's celebrations of him being a Lord and passed the dagger on without second thought - the first thought was 'someone else will use this dagger a lot better than me'. Littlefinger's copping L's every episode; Sansa told him what's up, Jon ragdolled him in the crypts and now Littlefinger got a double whammy from Bran and Arya.

L, L, L, L; losses to all living Stark kiddies this season. So what now for LittLefinger?

He better not mess with Sansa, but equally of note is that Sansa better not feel left out. Sansa kinda has nothing, other than leadership qualities (highlighted throughout this season) and immense political knowledge gained during her life. I've got no doubt these will be of just as much importance as Arya, Bran and Jon's stuff but right now, Sansa's probably feeling a bit sad and that's dangerous with Littlefinger lurking.

Let me plant this idea seed for future reference: Sansa and Dany will like each other.

GoT S07E04 Character Rankings:

Daenerys Targaryen – FIRE!!! DRACARYS!!! FIRE!!!
Arya Stark – If you can beat Brienne in hand to hand combat then you’re gonna go far.
Ser Bronn – Would imagine he jumps over to the team with dragons now. Bronn’s the Kevin Durant of Game of Thrones and he wants his ring.
Cersei Lannister – But at least they got the gold to King’s Landing in time. Lost an army but she still paid her debts.
Jon Snow – Lookit all that dragonglass! Also, is it weird that they’re laying the foundation for Dany + Jon when technically she’s his aunt? Yes, it is.
The Dothraki Army – So… can they teleport or did they all get a lift from the dragon? Seems like they skipped some serious travel time there.
Meera Reed – Hey, job done girl. Take a few weeks off now and rest up.
Sansa Stark – Is she the only normal one left in her family?
The Children of the Forest – Come on, gotta give them some credit. It wasn’t quite Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel but still.
Jaime Lannister – Points for trying, at least.

Sure, The Niche Cache could probably sack Highgarden and steal all their gold to pay for the ol' costs of business... but that's kinda brutal. Instead we just ask you to hit an ad.