GAME OF THRONES: A Sunday for Suspects
If last week Game of Thrones left us with mass chaos in King’s Landing, this week provided us with hints of impending madness in the North and the Free Cities. As Tywin mentors Prince Tommen and interrogates the people of the capitol, Castle Black is suffering with the stress of an imminent war and Dany threatens Meereen with the same fate as Astapor and Yunkai. The episode itself left the list of suspects longer than we could have imagined while keeping us up to date with the characters outside the capitol.
Littlefinger brings a guest back to The Fingers. The show begins with Ser Dantos, the drunken knight-turned-fool, rescuing Sansa from the Purple Wedding. In other words, clearly fleeing the scene, which she willingly does. But Petyr Baelish conspired the whole thing?! Plot twist: a thousand gold cloaks are searching for Sansa, who presumably helped Tryion murder the king. How did he plan this epic rescue if he didn’t know about the assassination of King Joffrey? He already betrayed Ned Stark in the past, and I wouldn’t say coincidence is in his vocabulary.
More guess work: who is the queen now? Margaery’s circumstances at this point are questionable. Apparently one of the gods doesn’t want her to be queen because this is the second time she’s lost the throne to unusual conditions. Because the marriage was never consummated and Joff didn’t impregnate Margaery before his death, Tommen becomes the new heir, renewing Cersei’s title as Queen Regent. But we can’t discount her yet. Remember, the people want Queen Margaery and the Lannisters’ alliance with the Tyrells is still crucial to their royal claim.
Tywin mentors while his family mourns. Tywin was at Casterly Rock when Cersei declared Joffrey king. By the time Tywin took his rightful place as Hand of the King, Joff was actively and brutally tormenting the city. As we saw in episode three, Tommen is way easier for Tywin to handle. Do we think he did it? Joffrey was beyond a point of manipulation, so it’s possible Tywin’s motive was to consolidate power and at this point he can control Tommen until he comes of age. He told his mourning grandson that Joff was not a wise king, not a good king, but is confident that Tommen will be. Meanwhile, Cersei and Tywin also needed an excuse to kill Tyrion, so who better to lay the blame on, right?
On that note, Prince Oberyn’s presence is equally fishy. Everyone is currently a suspect, as Tywin so kindly pointed out. Oberyn arrived just in time for the wedding with a clear want for retribution against the Lannisters. Murder one Lannister, blame another? That’s revenge if I’ve ever seen it. And yet Tywin didn’t outwardly blame him. Instead, he offered him a seat at the judges’ table as well as a seat on the small council. Dornish prince on the small council for a Lannister king? I don’t trust it so how does Tywin? Oberyn accepts Tywin’s promise to serve justice to his sister, Elias, which is interesting because he gave the order to have her killed. So the question now is how will his justify it?
The disasters of loving a hateful woman. The love scene between Jaime and Cersei was seriously sketchy. She was kissing back at times, but Jaime basically raped his sister next to the body of their dead, bastard son. Just when we thought we might like another Lannister beside Tyrion! Meanwhile, he doesn’t seem to care much that his own son was just murdered, nor is he willing to kill Tyrion for it. Suspects, suspects. Tyrion, on the other hand, is convinced it might have been Tywin and pretty positive it wasn’t Cersei. His guess is as good as ours.
Arya has suspicions of her own. Our favorite 11-year-old was showing her best side in this episode, smarting her way into the home of a passerby by making an educated guess that he was a Tully bannerman. And thank the gods because THEY WERE SO HUNGRY. Or were they? In the North, the rule is that once you eat someone’s food, you become a guest in their home and cannot be harmed under their roof. (Unless, of course, you’re Walder Frey….) Arya’s guard is still up, as she realizes that the Hound is practical but still vicious. During the episode she was willing to pass the Hound off as her father, but in the end she saw him as a villain and thief. To distrust him or follow his lead?
Gilly joins the Night’s Watch. Or does she? Sam said it himself: a hundred men, one woman and she’s not a whore or a bastard. If there’s anything we do know, it’s that Sam is most certainly not bored of her. But I’m not sure he’s protecting her by leaving her at a brothel. He seems to be becoming attached to little Sam as much as he is to Gilly, so he might not be able to stay away for long.
Ser Davos masters the art of the written word. What was in the letter Davos had Princess Shireen write to the Banks of Braavos, we don’t know yet. But we do know from previous seasons that wars or won with quills, not swords. Maybe he doesn’t have all his fingers and isn’t the best fighter, but Davos can read now and he is going to use it to his advantage. He clearly sees that there is something to Melisandre’s black magic; but quills and soldiers win wars, not prophecies.
Ygritte and her bow are on their way to Castle Black. And she is back with a vengeance. The wildlings are more than willing to cut down anything and anyone who gets in the way of their reaching the Wall. At least they had the courtesy to warn the Night’s Watch? Because the Watch only has hours at this point to find about 99,900 more men in order to match up. Luckily the Night’s Watch decided to keep Jon’s head on his body for now because as the double agent, he’s their only hope for survival.
Dany makes for Meereen. The last shot of episode three was the best cliffhanger for what Danaerys is about to get herself into. By launching broken chains over the walls of Meereen, she not only threatened the city’s leaders but she also left the slaves of Meereen some evidence of hope. Meereen certainly didn’t do themselves any favors by waking the dragon. The leaders insulted the Mother of Dragons by literally peeing on her parade, to which she responded with another badass speech in Valyrian. Watch out Meereen, Danaerys Stormborn is about to get feisty.
With the exception of Bran and Theon, almost every storyline was hit on in the follow-up episode to the epic Purple Wedding. While Arya is growing more confident, Cersei is losing all sense of control. Jon, on the other hand, is coming into his own as he leads the Night’s Watch into war. In the mean time, Tyrion sits in torment while the capitol searches for people to testify against him. A loyal Podrick Payne is currently fleeing King’s Landing rather than betray Tyrion, and Sansa was his only other hope for a witness to his innocence. An intense and lengthy trial is about to begin and the outcome could seriously shock us all.