“My name is Oberyn Martell.  You raped my sister, you killed my sister, you killed her children.  Prepare to die!”

 

The writers came about as close to an actual Princess Bride moment towards the end of this episode as one can get, and the best part is that it was entirely justified.  Oberyn made no secret of his desire to avenge his sister’s memory by killing the Mountain, and it would have been entirely out of character with his previous conversations with Tywin to not use the opportunity to wrest a “deathbed confession” out of the Mountain to implicate the Lannisters.  Of course, never assume a Clegane is out if he’s merely down.

 

That said, the Mountain’s grisly final act is going to have ugly consequences.  In a fair situation, this might have been counted as a draw.  After all, a man’s life is at stake.  But this is Tyrion’s trial, and both father and sister are using this as a way to eliminate a lifelong nuisance.  It doesn’t even matter that Jamie couldn’t be more partisan on Tyrion’s behalf.  Tyrion is sentenced to death, and he’d probably be happy for it to be anything more pleasant than what Oberyn experienced.

 

Yet it’s just the latest example of how one should never, ever celebrate a victory before it is sealed.  How many people in Game of Thrones have fallen into this trap?  Even when they see the blade descending, they overestimate their ability to dodge the killing blow.  Even as he ranted for a confession, Oberyn could have avoided his fate, had he treated the Mountain as the wounded animal he was.  Arrogance usually precedes the fall, as the saying goes.

 

Meanwhile, Ser Jorah becomes the victim of Tywin’s bid to disrupt Daenerys’ plans for Slaver’s Bay, as the revelation about Jorah’s initial role as spy in the Targaryen exiles’ household came to light.  This is no shock to anyone who was paying attention since the first season, but it certainly comes as a shock to Dany.  And in one quick moment, Dany proves how inexperienced she is as a ruler.  Jorah may be besotted and unable to deal with the fact that he’ll never get what he wants from Dany, but he chose loyalty to her cause.

 

It’s a subtle point, perhaps, because can’t we all understand how Dany feels?  But that’s the problem.  Dany is operating out of emotion, not pragmatism.  It would have been distressingly easy to determine if that betrayal was ongoing, and given that she had to be well aware of his feelings, it wouldn’t take much to get yet another example of how quickly he would lay down his life.  As it stands, it’s likely to come sooner or later anyway.  Still, is part of Dany’s decision to exile him an unspoken acknowledgment that she was using his feelings to her advantage for quite some time?

 

That such considerations override the simple fact that Jorah was Dany’s most reliable counselor is telling.  In the same moment that she lets her emotions get the better of her, at least to some degree, she sends away one of the few people able to keep her from making bad or impulsive decisions as a rising Queen.  This alone could result in any number of setbacks, leaving her spinning her wheels trying to keep control of Meereen and Slaver’s Bay.  And that’s just what Tywin wanted.  (Ironically, Ser Barristan literally served her enemies in far more public and substantial ways, and yet this is ignored!)

 

Meanwhile, even as Dany is setting herself up to stumble, another surprising young woman takes the first steps towards becoming a player of the game.  Sansa has apparently been learning all those lessons from Petyr all too well, as she deftly spins a tale to exonerate him for Lysa’s death by leading with the truth and ending with sweet little lies.  And she’s not above manipulation of her own.  Her makeover into the very spitting image of a young Catelyn was startling and certainly designed to lull Petyr into a false sense of security.  (And that scene alone, of a confident and purposeful Sansa, led millions to fall in love just as quickly, I’m sure!)

 

Giving Sansa a bit more agency, however, marks a distinct deviation from the source material.  Sansa’s true identity is carefully hidden in the novels, but it also makes her a far more passive character.  She is completely at the mercy of Petyr’s machinations.  The idea of a Sansa Stark that is working side by side with Petyr, even if only to take control of her destiny and only use him for a time, is far more intriguing.  It’s not unlike the more commanding stance that Dany takes with Darrio in the series; she may struggle with maintaining that over time, but it’s better than being meek and quivering in his presence by default.

 

I’m still a bit concerned that they will go too far with the revisionism.  I imagine they will go with irony by having Arya and the Hound turn away from the Vale, not realizing that the Stark sisters could reunite and command an even more substantial power base as a result.  Arya has a very different trajectory in the source material, and I would hate to miss out on that.  While not in this episode, something similar should happen with Brienne, given that her journey isn’t meant to be so straightforward, either.  (Yes, a bit of a spoiler, but does anything ever happen the easy way on Game of Thrones?)

 

Speaking of revisionism, the producers take some material from the fifth novel, A Dance with Dragons, and stage Ramsey’s assault on Moat Cailin much earlier than in the original timeline.  It’s not a terrible move; having also pulled forward the revelations about Theon/Reek in the third season, it just gets that subplot rolling a little more quickly.  The manner in which Roose Bolton declares Ramsey a legitimate heir is also slightly different, though the end result is roughly the same.  Considering that there were entire chunks of Ramsey’s character arc left out of the second season, it makes sense to even things out to make up for some of the relative lack.

 

I can’t wrap it all up without mentioning the events in the North.  Mole’s Town is sacked, and while Gilly and her child survive, Samwell and the rest of the Night’s Watch don’t know it.  All they know is that they have trouble coming on both sides, and only 105 (or less) men to stave off Mance’s massive army.  And all of that is coming to a head in the next episode, so those waiting patiently for something to eclipse all the other big moves this season are about to get the main event.