"I fought. I lost. Now I rest...You'll be fighting their battles forever." Stories both eschew and crave finality. A good journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but when we're truly invested in it, we don't want the ride to stop. We crave the spills, chills, and surprises. So heroes come back from the dead, siblings thought long lost reappear, and like the white walkers headed toward the gate, the story marches on.
Thorne's last words are one of the few little quotations that echo through the episode. Throne dies with his head held high, a man who knew what he was and what he did, and lays out his actions in firm but understandable terms. I never particularly cared for Throne--he always seemed to hate Jon almost irrationally--but in his bravery against the Wildling attack on Castle Black and his honest defense of his principles, he showed himself to be a man who made a choice and accepted his fate. He takes comfort in the certainty of that.
Jon is thrown into the most uncertain waters from the getgo. He arises from the dead, knowing that it shouldn't be, feeling the scars where the knives entered his body and knowing that something unnatural has happened. He has been drafted into this war, at some points making conscious actions because of what he believes in, but at others simply swept along by the current of what was required of him. Thorne tried to do what he thought was right and is hanged for it. Jon did the same and yet gets to return from the land of the dead, left to wonder if it's all worth it, if he can stand fighting these same battles over and over again, if he can suffer the betrayal, the knives piercing his flesh that seem to come in one form or another whatever he tries to do.
When he swings a blade of his own, slicing the rope keeping his betrayers in place on the makeshift gallows, it's a visual echo of deserter from Castle Black that Ned Stark executed in the beginning of the show. That opening scene, about the responsibilities of being a leader and accepting the uglier parts of the job, and of "honor" has come back in several forms over the course of the show. From Rob executing Lord Carstark, to Theon's botched execution during his reign of terror, to Jon himself having to execute a former member of the King's Guard. It's the burden of command.
But this time, Jon has to look into the eyes of a child. He has to cut that rope and see the very sort of innocent he was trying to save, resenting him to his very last breath. This is his reward for all his service and commitment. This is his reward for making the tough decisions. This is his reward for effectively giving his life in order to save thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives. It's ugly and harsh and compounded by a hatred from people like Ollly who will never understand, no matter how many warm embraces from his brothers he may receive.
It's particularly harsh because, as Varys puts it, children are innocent. The Spider works his magic on a sympathizer for the sons of the harpy, and he's a presence of Machiavellian perfection. The arch manner in which he probes his resistant witness, his iron fist in the velvet glove that gets him the information he wants, is another boon from one of the show's most entertaining characters. But the futility of it all comes through in what he learns as well.
The lands that Dany liberated, the ones that made her the "breaker of chains," have not only returned to slavery, but have been funding the sons of the harpy and setting the whole of Slaver's Bay against her. Preceded, though it may be, by a hilarious seen where Tyrion tries to make conversation with his much more subdued companions, it's a dispiriting revelation. Dany too tried to do the right thing, to live by her principles and make herself worthy of being called a queen, but parts of the old system are as resilient as they are malignant, and it's exhausting to have to constantly fight to keep whatever meager gains you've managed to make.
And Dany herself is once more reduce to something less than she ought to be. She's accomplished a great deal, and yet she is just the latest victim of this cycle. She stands surrounded by women who, as the one who speaks for them all explained, once imagined that their great Khals would rule the world with their distaff counterparts at their sides. Instead, they are each left to play out the string as something lesser and compartmentalized, with Dany potentially being punished for having dared to do anything but submit. Maybe when she speaks to the council that decides her fate, she will convince them to free her, or at least to let her help them lead a horde of Dothraki to Slaver's Bay as an antidote to the Sons of the Harpy. But one could easily forgive her for, like her raven-haired counterpart at the wall, growing tired of this neverending battle, that seems to leave you back where you started no matter what you've tried to do.
They're not the only ones who end up back where they started. In a surprise reveal, we see Osha and Rickon back in Winterfell for the first time since they departed from Bran & Co. While I fear that their reappearance will be another excuse to give Ramsay a new pair of torture toys for a while, there's a similar theme running through the preceding exchange between him and the rebel bannerman who delivers the youngest Stark. He refuses to swear oaths or kneel or pledge fealty. He's seen what oaths are worth: the Boltons turning on the Starks, Ramsay turning on his father, the Carstarks joining Ramsay even though their share blood with Ned's brood. What good is an oath, whether it be a bannerman's to Ramsay or Jon Snow's to the watch, if people break them so easily. Maybe they're just a way to keep people in line, to keep them from looking out for themselves or upsettng the usual order, and those lines can only be crossed so often before people begin to wonder if they were illusory in the first place.
The High Sparrow figures out how to keep Tommen in line, another innocent child tainted by the movements of the larger forces at work, through his mother, who is facing challenges of her own with the small council. The soft machinations of the High Sparrow, seeming to constantly yield and yet simply redirecting forces like anger to his own ends, allow him to use Tommen's connections to his family to help keep him cowed. Arya is kept in line by trying to break those very connections, but trying to teach her to sever her ties with her siblings, with the names on her list, with the relationships that kept her a part of her old life. As I've said before, the montage that shows her developing her skills as an assassin is a bit too Karate Kid for my tastes, but by drinking the bowl full of poison, Arya follows her brother in accepting a dividing line between an old life and a new one and changing her manner and methods accordingly.
But those sorts of connections are the one warm thing for Jon as he returns to the living. The joking embrace of Toramund, the similar ribbing welcome of Edd, make it feel as though there was at least something for Jon to come back to. And then there's the one connection that's absent -- Sam, who is bringing Gilly and Sam Jr. back to where he started, a likely unwelcome homecoming he undertakes for the good of the people he loves and who, as Gilly conveys by calling him the father of her child, love him back. He set off on this journey to help Jon and to protect his loved ones from the rapists and criminals at Castle Black, and though his pleasant moments are punctuated by unhappy (if amusing) bouts of nausea, he knows what he has to do, and is buoyed by the affection of those he feels that familial connection to.
The same familial connection drives a young Ned Stark in the show's flashback to the Tower of Joy seen through Bran's eyes. He intends to rescue his sister, but the methods used fail to live up to the man Bran imagined his father to be. This too, is a broken oath, of sorts. Bran has heard this story a thousand times -- he knows how it's supposed to end. But instead, even honorable Ned, covers up the fact that his bannerman, Mera's father, stabbed the opposing swordsman in the back to win the day. Again, honor is shown to be a fairytale in Westeros, one where the show's only paragon of virtue this side of Brienne will invent lies in service of a more important truth. We don't get to see all the details of that truth just yet, but Bran, and the audience, are learning that there's more to the story.
And there's more to Jon's story as well. After seasons that left Jon concerned with the affairs of The Wall, whether at Castle Black or in the Wildlings' territory, he is headed elsewhere. But he remains stung by the futility of his actions, that he cannot try to serve the greater good, cannot try to live up to his father's honor, cannot even die without being pulled back into what he was trying to move on from.
Only Alliser Thorne could make it sound like a failing to have the temerity to come back from the dead, but he's right. Jon will continue the struggle; he will continue to suffer losses, and he may never have the chance to rest. He has fought these battles, many other people's battles, for so long. Who can blame him for seeing someone like Olly kicking in mid-air and deciding that he's had enough? Once, Jon pledged, like all of the Brothers, that his watch would "not end until my death." Well, he died, and now his watch has ended, and the closest thing to a traditional hero left on Game of Thrones has earned the right to go fight his own battle, to go fail again, or perhaps not even fight at all.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2016-05-09T21:11:21Z
"I fought. I lost. Now I rest...You'll be fighting their battles forever." Stories both eschew and crave finality. A good journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but when we're truly invested in it, we don't want the ride to stop. We crave the spills, chills, and surprises. So heroes come back from the dead, siblings thought long lost reappear, and like the white walkers headed toward the gate, the story marches on.
Thorne's last words are one of the few little quotations that echo through the episode. Throne dies with his head held high, a man who knew what he was and what he did, and lays out his actions in firm but understandable terms. I never particularly cared for Throne--he always seemed to hate Jon almost irrationally--but in his bravery against the Wildling attack on Castle Black and his honest defense of his principles, he showed himself to be a man who made a choice and accepted his fate. He takes comfort in the certainty of that.
Jon is thrown into the most uncertain waters from the getgo. He arises from the dead, knowing that it shouldn't be, feeling the scars where the knives entered his body and knowing that something unnatural has happened. He has been drafted into this war, at some points making conscious actions because of what he believes in, but at others simply swept along by the current of what was required of him. Thorne tried to do what he thought was right and is hanged for it. Jon did the same and yet gets to return from the land of the dead, left to wonder if it's all worth it, if he can stand fighting these same battles over and over again, if he can suffer the betrayal, the knives piercing his flesh that seem to come in one form or another whatever he tries to do.
When he swings a blade of his own, slicing the rope keeping his betrayers in place on the makeshift gallows, it's a visual echo of deserter from Castle Black that Ned Stark executed in the beginning of the show. That opening scene, about the responsibilities of being a leader and accepting the uglier parts of the job, and of "honor" has come back in several forms over the course of the show. From Rob executing Lord Carstark, to Theon's botched execution during his reign of terror, to Jon himself having to execute a former member of the King's Guard. It's the burden of command.
But this time, Jon has to look into the eyes of a child. He has to cut that rope and see the very sort of innocent he was trying to save, resenting him to his very last breath. This is his reward for all his service and commitment. This is his reward for making the tough decisions. This is his reward for effectively giving his life in order to save thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives. It's ugly and harsh and compounded by a hatred from people like Ollly who will never understand, no matter how many warm embraces from his brothers he may receive.
It's particularly harsh because, as Varys puts it, children are innocent. The Spider works his magic on a sympathizer for the sons of the harpy, and he's a presence of Machiavellian perfection. The arch manner in which he probes his resistant witness, his iron fist in the velvet glove that gets him the information he wants, is another boon from one of the show's most entertaining characters. But the futility of it all comes through in what he learns as well.
The lands that Dany liberated, the ones that made her the "breaker of chains," have not only returned to slavery, but have been funding the sons of the harpy and setting the whole of Slaver's Bay against her. Preceded, though it may be, by a hilarious seen where Tyrion tries to make conversation with his much more subdued companions, it's a dispiriting revelation. Dany too tried to do the right thing, to live by her principles and make herself worthy of being called a queen, but parts of the old system are as resilient as they are malignant, and it's exhausting to have to constantly fight to keep whatever meager gains you've managed to make.
And Dany herself is once more reduce to something less than she ought to be. She's accomplished a great deal, and yet she is just the latest victim of this cycle. She stands surrounded by women who, as the one who speaks for them all explained, once imagined that their great Khals would rule the world with their distaff counterparts at their sides. Instead, they are each left to play out the string as something lesser and compartmentalized, with Dany potentially being punished for having dared to do anything but submit. Maybe when she speaks to the council that decides her fate, she will convince them to free her, or at least to let her help them lead a horde of Dothraki to Slaver's Bay as an antidote to the Sons of the Harpy. But one could easily forgive her for, like her raven-haired counterpart at the wall, growing tired of this neverending battle, that seems to leave you back where you started no matter what you've tried to do.
They're not the only ones who end up back where they started. In a surprise reveal, we see Osha and Rickon back in Winterfell for the first time since they departed from Bran & Co. While I fear that their reappearance will be another excuse to give Ramsay a new pair of torture toys for a while, there's a similar theme running through the preceding exchange between him and the rebel bannerman who delivers the youngest Stark. He refuses to swear oaths or kneel or pledge fealty. He's seen what oaths are worth: the Boltons turning on the Starks, Ramsay turning on his father, the Carstarks joining Ramsay even though their share blood with Ned's brood. What good is an oath, whether it be a bannerman's to Ramsay or Jon Snow's to the watch, if people break them so easily. Maybe they're just a way to keep people in line, to keep them from looking out for themselves or upsettng the usual order, and those lines can only be crossed so often before people begin to wonder if they were illusory in the first place.
The High Sparrow figures out how to keep Tommen in line, another innocent child tainted by the movements of the larger forces at work, through his mother, who is facing challenges of her own with the small council. The soft machinations of the High Sparrow, seeming to constantly yield and yet simply redirecting forces like anger to his own ends, allow him to use Tommen's connections to his family to help keep him cowed. Arya is kept in line by trying to break those very connections, but trying to teach her to sever her ties with her siblings, with the names on her list, with the relationships that kept her a part of her old life. As I've said before, the montage that shows her developing her skills as an assassin is a bit too Karate Kid for my tastes, but by drinking the bowl full of poison, Arya follows her brother in accepting a dividing line between an old life and a new one and changing her manner and methods accordingly.
But those sorts of connections are the one warm thing for Jon as he returns to the living. The joking embrace of Toramund, the similar ribbing welcome of Edd, make it feel as though there was at least something for Jon to come back to. And then there's the one connection that's absent -- Sam, who is bringing Gilly and Sam Jr. back to where he started, a likely unwelcome homecoming he undertakes for the good of the people he loves and who, as Gilly conveys by calling him the father of her child, love him back. He set off on this journey to help Jon and to protect his loved ones from the rapists and criminals at Castle Black, and though his pleasant moments are punctuated by unhappy (if amusing) bouts of nausea, he knows what he has to do, and is buoyed by the affection of those he feels that familial connection to.
The same familial connection drives a young Ned Stark in the show's flashback to the Tower of Joy seen through Bran's eyes. He intends to rescue his sister, but the methods used fail to live up to the man Bran imagined his father to be. This too, is a broken oath, of sorts. Bran has heard this story a thousand times -- he knows how it's supposed to end. But instead, even honorable Ned, covers up the fact that his bannerman, Mera's father, stabbed the opposing swordsman in the back to win the day. Again, honor is shown to be a fairytale in Westeros, one where the show's only paragon of virtue this side of Brienne will invent lies in service of a more important truth. We don't get to see all the details of that truth just yet, but Bran, and the audience, are learning that there's more to the story.
And there's more to Jon's story as well. After seasons that left Jon concerned with the affairs of The Wall, whether at Castle Black or in the Wildlings' territory, he is headed elsewhere. But he remains stung by the futility of his actions, that he cannot try to serve the greater good, cannot try to live up to his father's honor, cannot even die without being pulled back into what he was trying to move on from.
Only Alliser Thorne could make it sound like a failing to have the temerity to come back from the dead, but he's right. Jon will continue the struggle; he will continue to suffer losses, and he may never have the chance to rest. He has fought these battles, many other people's battles, for so long. Who can blame him for seeing someone like Olly kicking in mid-air and deciding that he's had enough? Once, Jon pledged, like all of the Brothers, that his watch would "not end until my death." Well, he died, and now his watch has ended, and the closest thing to a traditional hero left on Game of Thrones has earned the right to go fight his own battle, to go fail again, or perhaps not even fight at all.