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Tag Archives: Sansa Stark
Game of Thrones: Family Comes First in “The Dragon and the Wolf”
Family is everything. That was Tywin Lannister’s lesson, even if his interpretation of the sentiment left something to be desired. More than the moment, more than a fleeting grievance, he tried to teach his children that the Lannister name was their legacy and that their family is what truly mattered. “The Dragon and the Wolf” plays with this idea, the concept of who genuinely cares about the blood of their blood, who’s willing to put their own ambitions above the same, and what it gets each of them.
Game of Thrones: The Dizzying Thrills, the Blazing Horrors, and “The Spoils of War”
Game of Thrones likes to have its cake and eat it, too, especially when it comes to war and its wide-ranging consequences. It’s a show founded on a sense of anticipation. When will the Starks reunite? When will Daenerys Targaryen lay siege to Westeros? When will The White Walkers breach The Wall? But it’s equally founded on depicting the horror and unexpected costs of those convergence points.
That means its heart-pumping battles and heart-warming reunions are always in a state of superposition. Those moments are exhilarating but also harrowing. Home is a sanctuary, but home has changed. And war is glorious, but war is also hell.
Game of Thrones: “Dragonstone” Offers a Brilliant Homecoming
“Dragonstone” is a homecoming. For Game of Thrones, that means something very different than for the standard alma mater. In Westeros, it means throne rooms, dead bodies, and lush locales in which to do the same thing we do every season — try to take over the world. But the show starts its seventh season with an episode about being away, coming back home, and reflecting on what’s changed, within and without, since you left.
Game of Thrones: The Beginning of the End in “The Winds of Winter”
Game of Thrones, as a series, franchise, and brand, is always going to stand in the shadow of The Red Wedding. More than Ned’s beheading, more than Joffrey’s demise, more than the battles of Blackwater Bay or The Wall or Hardhome or the bastards, the Red Wedding is the event that defined the series in the popular consciousness. For a long time, it felt like everything in the show up to that point had been building to that moment, and everything that came after was a consequence of it. The third season in particular was a focal point of the larger story Game of Thrones show was telling, with that mortal matrimony as its zenith.
Season 6 of Game of Thrones has felt more like a sequel to Season 3 than an extension of the work that the show did in Seasons 4 and 5. It is the season of resurrection, one where we’ve witnessed the returns (and, just as often, the demises) of those we knew long ago: The Brotherhood Without Banners, The Blackfish, Osha and Rickon, Benjen Stark, Walder Frey, and more. Whether it’s the freedom that comes from no longer being constrained by George R. R. Martin’s novels, or the knowledge that the end is nigh, Game of Thrones spent much of its sixth year tying off loose ends that been dangling for years, often in a characteristically lethal fashion.
The culmination of that spirit comes in “The Winds of Winter,” a season finale of beginnings and endings. It is the close of one epoch of the show — the one which spun out from the Red Wedding, scattered our heroes across oceans, and brought more and more characters into the fold — and the beginning of another. The monarchs from the War of the Five Kings are dead. Winter is here. And now it’s the future that’s coming.
Game of Thrones: The Great and Terrible “Battle of the Bastards”
Game of Thrones is a show that thrives on violence. Its past installments featuring that sort of visceral thrill — from Ned Stark’s beheading to the various battles that have made up the series’ “special event” episodes — certainly tell complete stories, but they don’t skimp on the swords and sangre to help fill them out. Westeros is a world founded on violence, one where those in power gained it and kept it by waging war, killing, and trafficking in the kind of brutality that wins kingdoms and helps break ratings records.
So when Dany mounts Drogon and leads her tripartite crew of dragons off to destroy the slavers’ fleet, it initially feels new and different, since the winged-beast confrontations in the show so far have largely been limited in scope. It is, however, part and parcel with the show’s standard M.O. when it comes to death and destruction. The dragons’ attack on the fleet works well as a fist-pump moment, not only because it’s the first time the show’s depicted all three of them engage in this type of badassery (give or take a Qarth), but because the audience largely believes in Dany and her cause. Flames raining down from the sky, dispatched to guarantee that Meereen never again becomes a land of slavers, feels righteous.
But then there’s that little voice in the back of your head, the one that says the people on those ships are probably slaves too, not devoted perpetrators of evil. The attack may be a necessary evil. It is a show of force to ensure that the other masters of Slaver’s Bay don’t get any ideas and meant to guarantee that they think twice before challenging Dany’s regime.
Game of Thrones: “Hold the Door” — A Service Interruption
It’s easy to reduce “The Door” to its big reveal. For all of the mysteries and unanswered questions floating around in the background of Game of Thrones, sometimes the most moving reveals are the ones that fill in gaps you didn’t even realize were there, in surprising and unexpected ways.
Posted in Game of Thrones, Television
Tagged Arya Stark, Bran Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Daenerys Targaryen, Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones S06E05, Game of Thrones Season 06, Hodor, Jorah Mormont, Littlefinger, Magic, Ned Stark, Sansa Stark, The Faceless Men, Time Travel, Tyrion Lannister, White Walkers
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Game of Thrones: The Battle Lines Drawn Between the Old and the New in “Book of the Stranger”
The battle lines are being drawn in Game of Thrones, 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 novel and disruptive ideas that threaten to “break the wheel” and introduce a new order. “Book of the Stranger” sets up these conflicts between the past and the future as it darts across Westeros and beyond.
Posted in Game of Thrones, Television
Tagged Daario Naharis, Daenerys Targaryen, Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones S06E04, Game of Thrones Season 6, Grey Worm, High Sparrow, Jon Snow, Jorah Mormont, Littlefinger, Missandrei, Ramsay Bolton, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Yara Greyjoy
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Game of Thrones: The Grand, if Scattershot Reintroduction of “The Red Woman”
Game of Thrones might be too familiar, too expansive, to have the same force it once did. When a show’s been on the air for five years, it’s harder for it to surprise you. The characters are well-established; you know most of the series’s tricks, and you also know a great deal about what the show’s good and bad at. Game of Thrones is good at a lot of things–humorous asides, daring rescues, and moving character moments–so that even when it’s simply chugging along, it’s still a very enjoyable show. But for a season premiere, “The Red Woman” was a bit underwhelming.
It wasn’t bad, mind you. There were plenty of exciting moments, surprising twists, and interesting developments. But there was little to make you sit up and take notice of a series at the height of its powers moving toward its end game, save for perhaps one scene.
Posted in Game of Thrones, Television
Tagged Alliser Thorne, Brienne of Tarth, Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Davos Seaworth, Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones S06E01, Game of Thrones Season 6, Jamie Lannister, Melisandre, Podrick Payne, Sansa Stark, The Sand Snakes, Theon Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Varys
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