6x04 Book of the Stranger

The battle lines are being drawn, not between the Starks and the Lannisters, or between the good guys and the bad guys, but rather between the old and the new. The side of history, of tradition, of the way things have always been stands poised against the onslaught of the new ways that threaten to “break the wheel” and introduce a new order. “Book of the Stranger” sets up these battles, these conflicts between the past and the future, as it darts across Westeros and beyond.

The most obvious and dramatic of these battles emerges at the end of the episode. The Dothraki council is another vestige of the old way of doing things, of shunting agitators, interlopers, and women off to the side in favor of continuing the old traditions. But Dany tells them no. She says that they are weak, that they’ve grown sclerotic and incapable of change, and that the Dothraki now only raid small villages, that they lack the vision or the commitment to truly accomplish something.

But she will not be so myopic, nor so weak. She topples over the fires that burn in their hut. Her accomplices lock the doors. And the mother of dragons emerges from the flames that destroy her enemies once more. She carries the banner of the new day, a force more powerful than those who had ruled fat and happy for too long, and the Dothraki who witness this bow down to her, recognizing that a day of change is at hand.

But this grand realization is matched with a small one. Daario and Jorah also represent the young and the old, the traditional and the boundary-pushing. Jorah stays within the rules, tries his old trick, and comes up empty, while Daario improves, bends the rules, and keeps the two of them out of trouble. I’m tired of the romantic element here. Love triangles are passe and the cliché dialogue between the two of them has little to recommend it, but I like the idea that they represent too different things – the brash and young and impulsive that threatens to hold sway, and the worn but wily old man, who is literally and figuratively doomed. But in the end, both of them bow down to Daenerys as well.

But the old vs. the new is not a simple good guy vs. bad guy routine. Ramsay is the new. He too is someone who toppled the structures of power (with a little help from dear departed dad) and is the kind of man suited to thrive in the new environment that is taking hold of Westeros. He is ruthless, but sharp. It’s a shame to lose Osha so soon (who was, once again, incredible in just a brief scene), but the fact that he knows her tricks from having tortured them out of Theon shows that he is cruel, but rarely stupid. There’s a reason he’s found himself in charge at Winterfell, and it’s as much a product of his novel methods, his disregard for the usual paths, that led him there.

On the other hand, though they are both quite young, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark represent the old. They carry the Stark blood in their veins, if not the Stark name. Their reunion is a sweet one, and particularly pleasant after the onslaught of Stark missed connections there’s been over the course of the show. Sansa encourages Jon to take back Winterfell, to position himself as the true Warden of the North, who can wrap himself in the mantle of the old ways, and convince the old houses to stand and fight with him. Where so much of what’s happened in Westeros lately is about toppling something, Sansa wants to restore it.

But Jon is still tired of fighting, still sick of the futility of the struggle. He tried to break from the standard and usual, and it got him a series of knives driven into his heart. He thinks he’s done trying to change things. Until he receives the letter from Ramsay that he has Rickon. Then, Sansa draws a line in the sand, and the fight becomes about more than just the old and the new. It becomes about their family.

But that old and the new conflict reaches all corners of the map. In the Eyrie, Lord Royce dotes on the young Lord Arryn, and tries to shield him from the influence of Littlefinger, a common born man whose amassed a surprising bit of power. And when the two meet in conflict, it’s Baelish, the interloper who has the upper hand.

Similarly, the other reunion between brother and sister, is not nearly as pleasant as the one between Jon and Sansa. Yara is suspicious of her brother Theon when he returns to Pyke just when there is a power vacuum. She suspects him of being there to bring a return to the old ways, of the line of male succession that she’s labored under even when Balon’s male heirs were dead or indisposed. But Theon’s seen too much of the world to want a return to the old ways. He admits that he’s been broken into a thousand pieces, that all he wants to do is help his sister however she can. Yara is another break from tradition, another bit of new blood rising, and eventually her demeanor softens and she accepts Theon’s pleas.

Nowhere in Westeros is this conflict clearer or more pronounced than in King’s Landing, where the heads of the old families set aside their differences because of the threat posed by the Sparrows, the threat to their heirs, their children, their replacements, the ones who are supposed to carry on this way of life into the next age, who are now all under the sway of someone who threatens to upset it.
The High Sparrow cares not for power or position. Cersei says as much. She’s shocked that he could dare break from the old order, that anyone would have the temerity to ignore the unquestioned power and privilege they’ve amassed over the years.

And in his best scene so far, The High Sparrow acknowledges that he once envied that power – he pursued it, sought it, worked to enjoy whatever little slices of it he could. Until one day when he had enough of a taste of it, and saw the base, fetid creatures who were around him, that beneath their finery and perfumes were human beings, who sinned and stank like the rest of us. The High Sparrow saw the emptiness of it. The Stranger represents death among the Seven, and his realization that whether born in gold or in the dirt, the men and women in the high towers and those low born came from the same place and were headed to the same place. He sees them as cut from the same cloth, and aims to bring them a little closer together.

And the High Sparrow isn’t the only man trying to bring two opposite sides closer together. Tyrion’s part of this episode is interesting, because he is one of the few characters in the show who straddles the line between the old and the new, and he attempts some capitulation in order to bring the slavers and the slaves out of conflict with one another.

He is a man of the old ways, gilded by his last name and the attendant doors it’s opened to him, but also one who felt rejected by it, who fancies himself a man of the people, an agent of change who is of the group he’s representing, even though Varys, Greyworm, and Missandre must frequently remind him that he is anything but.

Which is why, despite the franchise he thinks he has to make these deals, to offer seven years of concessions before taking a hard line on slavery, it feels like a betrayal to the other members of his party. As Greyjoy and Missandre point out, it’s easy to say you sympathize with the slaves, to trust the masters, to think that some good can come from all of this, when he’s only been a slave a single day. Tyrion means well – he thinks he’s doing good for these people, that it may not be palatable but it’s their best way forward. And yet something about the response suggests he’s as naïve about it as Dany was. The longstanding grand institutions of Westeros and elsewhere cannot be toppled by pure capitulation any more than they can by her attempt at radical change.

And what’s particularly striking is how he sucks Greyworm and Missandre into his middle ground. Tyrion persuades the masters on the one hand, plying them with promises and women, attempting to use his status as a nobleman to speak their language. Then he faces the leaders of the freedmen, and though he again fancies himself their representative, he calls on his two associates to give him legitimacy he cannot muster on his own, legitimacy that they don’t even believe in.

More so than nearly any of the other characters that Game of Thrones follows, these two former slaves have truly been the victims of the old way of doing things, of the traditions and accepted norms that have persisted for centuries. They have seen and felt the horrors that it visits on the weaker and poorer that the High Sparrow speaks of; they know the lengths that the masters, the people who benefit from that system, will go to in order to keep their advantages and largess; and they have the most reason to be afraid of even the slightest backsliding, of the human cost when the tide of the new cannot wash away the old in time.

Pros
+Jon and Sansa along with the "Bastard" letter
+Drogo pyre re-enactment
+I'm excited to see how Jaime and Cersei's plan is going to work out, there's definitely going to be some unexpected twist that happens

Neutral
*Theon and Asha (Yara) reunion, wasn't bad and Theon's actor did great but I was not blown away by it. Still, it should make the Kingsmoot a little more shocking. It's going to need as much help as it can get since Damphair and Victarion probably won't be telling us why Euron needs to be prevented from getting the Throne like they do in the books.

Cons
-Ramsay killing Osha seemed a little out of place. I think it made sense but it was weird that he just has that one small scene and then nothing else. Just a nitpick really.

Danaerys finally had her first good episode in 1 and a half seasons, even though those buff ass dudes would've definitely killed her as soon as they realized how screwed they were, and if not them then the falling rafters probably would've gotten her. Also not convinced that the Dothraki would immediately back her after seeing their leaders burned alive and they obviously didn't give too much of a shit when she walked out of the first fire with her dragons. An argument could be made for them seeing it happen and having literally no leaders left but this is an ultra male-centric society and it's hard to think they'd change their minds after living their entire life in that way especially considering how much they despise magic. Still, it was a cool Odysseus like massacre and the parts before and after were all solid.