Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Another Sunday passes with another excellent episode of “Game of Thrones”! This week’s episode thankfully showed some stories we did not visit in last week’s premiere and introduced us to some new and exciting characters!
We begin with Bran Stark running through the woods with his bow ready to shoot. The three-eyed raven appears and Bran aims his bow at the bird. Jon Snow and Robb Stark appear and give Bran some shooting tips, like they did in the first episode of the show. Bran shoots and misses while his brothers laugh at him, and then Bran hears his father speak. Bran turns around to look for Ned Stark, but sees no one is behind him. When he hears the crow again he turns back around to find a young boy standing in front of him. The boy tells Bran he cannot kill the raven because the raven is Bran. Bran wakes up from his dream in a fright and attempts to tell Osha about what he saw. She doesn’t want to hear anything about it because she thinks his dreams are dark magic, and encourages their group to pack up and move forward toward the Wall.
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At Harrenhal, Roose Bolton brings Robb Stark two different letters; one was sent from Riverrun and the other is from Winterfell. Robb takes the letters to his mother, and he lets Catelyn know the letter from Riverrun explains Catelyn’s father died. Robb tells his mother they will travel to Riverrun to attend the funeral. Robb also tells her the letter from Winterful explains that when Lord Bolton’s bastard arrived at Winterfell, the Iron Born had already left and the castle was burned down. The letter explains no one knows if Bran and Rickon survived. Catelyn believes the boys could still be alive and asks Robb if he has heard any ransom demands from Theon; Robb says he hasn’t heard anything from Theon.
In the next scene, we find Theon chained up and being tortured by an unknown man in a mysterious location. The man demands the truth from Theon, and Theon yells that he does not know what truth the man is referring to. The man then asks Theon why Theon sacked Winterfell. After being tortured some more and giving mediocre responses to the man’s question, Theon finally admits he took over Winterfell so he could punish the Starks for keeping him hostage most of his life. After this confession, the man leaves the room but one servant remains. This servant goes up to Theon and tells him Theon’s sister sent him there. The servant then leaves while Theon is still tied up to the torture devise and pleads for the servant to stay with him
Somewhere in the river lands, Brienne and Jaime are walking through the woods with Jaime handcuffed and leashed to Brienne. Jaime teases Brienne about her feeling for Renly, clearly trying to irritate her, and Brienne adamantly denies having feelings for Renly. Jaime tells Brienne everyone knew Renly preferred the company of men. As they bicker, a man with a horse passes by them. The three of them engage in casual coversation, and then the man leaves them to go on his way. Once he’s gone, Jaime tells Brienne she should kill him because the man recognized Jaime and will tell someone their location. Brienne doesn’t believe Jaime and explains she will not kill an innocent man.
At King’s Landing, Joffrey is being fitted for some new garments while his mother watches. Cersei starts asking her son what he thinks of Margaery as a person. Cersei is clearly trying to poison Joffrey against Margaery by pointing out Margaery was married to a traitor and that she has ulterior motives with regard to her caring for the poor. Joffrey quickly disregards his mother’s probing and proceeds to continue his fitting.
In Sansa’s quarters, Shae tries to get Sansa to tell her what Littlefinger talked to Sansa about. Sansa says her interaction with Littlefinger was innocent, but Shae warns her that men like Littlefinger only want one thing from pretty girls. The girls are then interrupted by Ser Loras Tyrell, who asks if he can escort Sansa to lunch with Margaery and Lady Olenna Redwyne. Sansa agrees and leaves to go meet the women. Margaery introduces Sansa to her grandmother, Lady Olenna, who takes a quick interest in Sansa. Lady Olenna asks Sansa what she really thought of Joffrey because they heard some bad rumors about Joffrey and want to know about his true character. Sansa tries her best not to talk negatively about Joffrey, but she finally calls him a monster after telling the women about how Joffrey killed her father and made her go see her father’s decapitated head. Lady Olenna and Margaery swear they will not betray Sansa’s trust and will not tell anyone what she told them. Sansa begs them not to cancel the wedding between Margaery and Joffrey based on what Sansa told them, and Lady Olenna assures Sansa Margaery will be queen.
On the road to Riverrun, Catelyn is making a protective charm for Robb. Talisa asks Catelyn if she can help, and Catelyn explains only mothers can make the charms for their children. Catelyn proceeds to tell Talisa that she has made two of these charms for her children, one for Bran after his fall and one for Jon Snow. She explains that when Ned brought Jon home as a baby, Catelyn prayed that Jon would die because she couldn’t stand to look into the eyes of a stranger’s baby. That night Jon came down with the pox, and Catelyn felt responsible and cruel. She prayed to the gods again to let the child live and made the charm. She explained she promised to allow Ned to let Jon use the Stark last name and that she would raise Jon as her own son should Jon survive. Jon recovered, but Catelyn couldn’t keep her promise to Ned. She tells Talisa she feels all of the harm that has come to her family is because she was not strong enough to love a motherless child.
North of the Wall, Mance Rayder asks Jon if it was hard to kill Qhorin Halfhand. Jon answers yes because he was fond of Qhorin. Mance proceeds to explain how difficult it is to manage the different tribes of wildlings because there are many rivalries amongst the tribes. He tells Jon he was able to unite the tribes by warning them that they would die if they do not head south. Mance and Jon come across a wildling named Orell whose eyes have rolled into the back of his head and staring up at an eagle. Ygritte explains to Jon that Orell is a warg who can go into the minds of animals. Orell comes to, and tells the wildlings his eagle saw the dead Night’s Watch men at the Fist of the First Men.
Meanwhile, Sam is hiking back towards the wall with the remaining men of the Night’s Watch scouting group. Exhausted, Sam falls to the ground and cannot go on any longer. Grenn and Dolorous Edd come to help Sam who is hopeless and upset his friends left him when the White Walkers attacked. His friends encourage Sam to keep going, but Rast tells Sam he is a burden and should stay behind so he doesn’t slow the remaining men down. Finally the Lord Commander intervenes and tells Sam he forbids him from dying. Grenn and Dolorous Edd pull Sam up and help him continue walking.
Somewhere outside of Winterfell, Bran wakes up from a nap to find Osha and Summer looking out into the wilderness. Osha takes off because she hears something, and suddenly two children show up near Bran. The boy begins to talk to Bran, and Osha arrives and threatens to kill the boy, but the other child puts a knife to Osha’s throat. Osha stands down and the children proceed to introduce themselves to Bran as JoJen and Meera Reed. JoJen explains he and his sister have been looking for Bran for some time.
While they continue to walk towards the Wall, JoJen inquires about Bran’s wolf dreams and his dreams about the three-eyed raven. JoJen explains to Bran that seeing the three-eyed raven indicates Bran has the Sight, which is the ability to see the future and past, and JoJen lets Bran know he has the Sight as well. Bran tells JoJen he saw his father die, and JoJen tells him he saw it too. JoJen and Meera’s father was friends with Ned Stark and sent his children to go help Bran.
Back in the riverlands, Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie are wandering in the wilderness while Gendry explains his frustration with Arya about her choices of what three men she could have chosen to die. Arya ignores Gendry and tells them they should head to Riverrun where her grandfather can help them. Suddenly they hear a man signing and see a group of traveling men coming towards them on the road. They try to find, but the men saw them and interrogate them. The leader, Thoros of Myr, explains they are with the Brotherhood Without Banners and are trying to save the countryside from the Lannisters. Arya tells Thoros the three of them escaped Harrenhal, and Thoros asks them to come dine with him and explain how they escaped. Arya hesitantly agrees. While eating, Arya tells Thoros that Genry is a blacksmith and was able to make the three of them swords to aid their escape. Thoros believes them and Arya anxiously asks if they can leave. Thoros agress, but as they are leaving the Hound is brought in as a prisoner. When the Hound recognizes Arya, he tells everyone she is a Stark, thus revealing her identity to the Brotherhood Without Banners.
Back in King’s Landing, Tyrion finds Shae in his quarters and is upset with her for risking her life to come see him. Shae explains she is worried about Sansa and the conversation she had with Littlefinger. Shae tells Tyrion Ros warned Shae about Littlefinger. When Shae realizes Tyrion knows Ros, she begins to interrogate him about how many times Tyrion slept with Ros. She then proceeds to tease Tyrion about his attraction to Sansa when he that everyone thinks Sansa is a great beauty.
Meanwhile Margaery arrives at Joffrey’s quarters after he summons her. Joffrey proceeds to interrogate Margaery about her relationship with Renly and he questions how she could be married to a traitor. Margaery quickly realizes Joffrey is being vincidctive, and to explain her past actions she tells Joffrey she was simply following orders and trying to be a good wife to her husband. Joffrey questions why Margaery conceived Renly’s child, and Margaery carefully explains to Joffrey that Renly did not to sleep with her even though she tried to make love to him many times. Joffrey calms down once he hears her noble response, and Margaery changes the subject by showing interest in Joffrey’s upcoming hunting trip and new cross bow. Like any teenage boy, Joffrey excitedly shows off his cross bow and teaches her how to shoot it.
The episode ends with Jaime and Brienne crossing a bridge to get to the other side of the river. Brienne is nervous about crossing the bridge because they could easily be seen, and while walking Jaime distracts Brienne and unarms her. Brienne has a second sword and the two of them fight one another. Brienne is able to corner Jaime and defeat him when suddenly a group of men come across them at one side of the bridge. The man that Jaime and Brienne saw earlier is with this group, and he identifies Brienne and Jaime to the group and is rewarded. Jaime tries to negotiate with the men by explaining his father would pay them a great sum for saving him. They ignore Jaime and tell Jaime and Brienne they will take the two of them to the King of the North.
And with that we complete another excellent episode of “Game of Thrones”! We are very excited to see the Reed siblings come into the story and add some variety and depth to Bran’s storyline! Also seeing Thoros of Myr was an unexpected and added bonus! Lady Olenna is perfect and will certainly prove to be a great adversary to Cersei. This week’s theme seemed to be about remembrance and regret as both the deaths of Ned Stark and Renly Baratheon were mentioned multiple times this episode. The affects of the death of these two characters continue to trickle down into the lives of these characters and show how intertwined this world truly is. We begin to wonder if the writers regret not giving Renly more screen time before he died as his death clearly made such an impact on many characters in this show. Nevertheless, this was an excellent episode and we believe this season is moving quickly and shaping up nicely.
