After the massive shock that was the Battle of Hardhome, it was inevitable that the penultimate episode was going to have an uphill climb.  I suspect that the writers knew that the audience would be expecting something huge in the ninth episode of the season, and intentionally pulled that trigger an episode early to maximize the impact.  Perhaps they also felt that the scene in the fighting pit would be equally powerful, but sometimes, it’s just a matter of timing and execution. 

For my part, the Great Games were hardly the most shocking and gut-wrenching part of the episode.  That is reserved for Stannis’ decision to sacrifice his own daughter for the supposed good of the realm.  Given that we’re right on the edge of what material actually exists, this plot progression is admittedly in keeping with what we’ve seen out of Melisandre and Stannis for quite some time.  As it turns out, George R.R. Martin has admitted that this reveals a plot twist that plays out in the ever-impending sixth volume, so right now, Stannis’ plot thread is outstripping the source.



Before anyone accuses Martin of simply enjoying the slaughter of young children, one might consider that Stannis has long been the Agamemnon of Game of Thrones; the king that would do anything for victory, including sacrifice his daughter, only to find his ambitions cruelly cut out from under him.  Will Stannis’ wife, finally no longer under the spell of Melisandre, turn out to be the Clytemnestra to Stannis’ Agamemnon?  Only time will tell, but much like the old Greek tragedy, Stannis may find short-term success at the cost of long-term defeat.

What’s interesting is that Martin, and Weiss/Benioff after, has managed to convince the audience that Stannis is not the worst option in the world.  And that’s despite some of the things he’s done in the name of fulfilling his destiny and taking the reins of the Seven Kingdoms.  He’s murdered his own brother, given enormous power to a religious zealot (outpacing the Lannisters by quite some time in that regard), and presided over countless human sacrifices.  That he’s at all sympathetic is less a testimony to his choices than a reflection of how terrible the other options in Westeros have been.  There’s a reason a Jon/Dany endgame is so appealing, after all.



In the grand scheme of things, this could give Stannis the necessary impetus to weaken the Boltons dramatically and give Littlefinger exactly the opening he was hoping for (if his explanations of his scheming turn out to be true).  If Ramsey is pushed to the breaking point, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, that means for Sansa.  I still think it would be a bit of a cheat, given the terrible writing for her character this season, but I could see Sansa taking advantage.







The darkness of Stannis’ decision to sacrifice Shireen may account for some of the punch that was taken out of the Great Games.  That, and I must admit that Jorah’s obsessive “love” for Daenerys makes me cringe at the notion of his “redemption”.  So much is different about this scene from the source material that I also have to keep reminding myself that this subplot has been dramatically reduced in scale.  It’s all in keeping with the elements that exist in the adaptation, but it’s a far cry from the chaos that is the impending Battle of Meereen.



The scene is hobbled by endless expectation.  Hizdahr zo Loraq was begging to be killed throughout the entire scene, slowly but surely asserting his self-assumed authority over Dany, and yet his apparent end was somewhat anticlimactic.  I was also hoping against hope that Daario would be dispatched, but I suppose he still has a part to play.  What worries me is that his part might be to show Dany how much more dedicated and effective Jorah can be, and I truly do not want Jorah to be rewarded for being so damned possessive.







On the other hand, Tyrion’s point in the previous episode about ruling without the consent of the local powerful turns out to be foreshadowing, as the Sons of the Harpy make a rather compelling play to assassinate their foreign occupier.  And if it hadn’t been for the timely arrival of Drogon, Dany and her entourage wouldn’t have lasted much longer than the remaining runtime of the episode.  And considering that Dany’s rule was predicated on the threat of dragon-wrought shock and awe, it’s about time she delivered a reminder.



What concerns me is that Dany’s mounting of Drogon and leaving Meereen is under somewhat better circumstances than I recall from the source material, and there is a Very Important Plot Point that comes immediately after this that changes things dramatically for Dany.  I’m concerned that this will be glossed over with so much else happening in the season finale.  As it stands, a lot is going to have to be covered in that final hour. 







That includes Arya’s crisis of duty, as she is torn between her mission against the Thin Man and her personal desire for revenge against Ser Meryn Trant.  Now let’s be clear on this point: Trant already deserves to die, but the writers gave us another rather solid reason to want to see Arya end his days horribly.  But that’s the nature of the dilemma: Arya has to let go of personal vendettas if she is to become what she supposedly wants to be.



This is also another point at which the adaptation might be spoiling events in the eventual sixth volume, because Arya’s desire to cling to her past is left unresolved in the existing source material.  That said, one must consider: either Jaqen is well aware of what Arya is up to, and waiting to deliver consequence, or Arya has actually managed to lie to him without detection.  It seems rather unlikely that acolytes of the Faceless Men have been flawless in the past, so this is hardly the first time someone has taken a while to let go of the past.  What, then, might the consequences be?







Finally, there is the foreshadowing at The Wall, which continues to beat the audience about the head.  Olly is clearly being set up as someone who will exact payment from Jon for “having too much heart”, and it’s not going to be pretty.  Let’s consider that Olly was the one who killed Ygritte, so the writers have been setting up Olly’s understanding of “doing the right thing” for a while.  Chances are, Jon is not going to have a pleasant time in the finale.



Ultimately, this episode was always going to have a difficult time following up on the Battle of Hardhome.  Staging the Great Games sequence, watered down somewhat as it is, after an emotionally scarring human sacrifice was perhaps a miscalculation.  However, it does drive home one of the underlying themes of Game of Thrones: mere moments after we were horrified by one character being burned to death for the sake of one ruler, we were cheering on as dozens were burned to death for the sake of another.  Context, as they say, is everything.