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Tag Archives: Tyrion Lannister
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: “Eastwatch” Offers Uneasy Alliances and the Longview
Game of Thrones is about opposition, shifting alliances, and rivals stabbing one another in the back. But in a weird way, it’s also about teamwork and cooperation. The events that have ravaged Westeros and turned king against king against king have also produced no end of unexpected allies and strange bedfellows.
From the beginning of the series, when Catelyn Stark forged an uneasy alliance with Tyrion Lannister, to the present where warring queens agree to talk armistice, bastards become brothers in arms, and blacksmiths fight alongside the men who once bought and sold them, the series has always shown that interests sometimes align and serve to unite people who, under other circumstances, might be at one another’s throats.
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 Explores the Symmetry of Westeros and its People in “No One”
For a several years now, Game of Thrones had a fairly reliable format for the structure of its episodes. We spend ten minutes in one location advancing one character’s story, ten minutes in another, and so forth and so on with little repetition beyond the possibility of some sort of coda for one of the stories at the end of the episode. But the show has been playing around with that format this season (with cold opens, longer segments, and other differences) and that trend continues in “No One.”
Instead of a semi-linear progression from place to place, there’s something approaching symmetry to the order in which we visit our heroes across Westeros and beyond. The episode begins with trips to Braavos, The Riverlands, and Meereen, and finishes by returning to these same places and stories in reverse order. The middle portion of the episode comes close to doing the same thing with stops in King’s Landing and Riverrun.
So why the symmetry?
Posted in Game of Thrones, Television
Tagged Arya Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Cersei Lannister, Edmure Tully, Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones S06E08, Game of Thrones Season 6, Greyworm, Jamie Lannister, Missandrei, Symmetry, The Brotherhood Without Banners, The Faceless Men, The Hound, Tyrion Lannister
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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 Power of Giants, Little Men, and Nobodies in “Home”
Be kind to your dragons. Be kind to your giants. Be kind to your enforcers and lieutenants and underlings. Be kind to the nobodies, to the downtrodden, and to the “little people” who, unbeknownst to you, can loom quite large. Because these individuals have power–power that you may not recognize, power that you may take for granted–but power that may be turned against you or that, at some difficult moment, you may even sorely need.
No one is kinder, if still cautious, on this front than Tyrion. His quiet scene with Dany’s two remaining dragons was the highlight of an eventful, action-packed episode because of its simplicity and tension in the moment. Perhaps Tyrion is uniquely suited for dragon taming, particularly attuned to earning the trust of superior beasts. He is, after all, someone who has had to get by on disarming the powerful with his wits and charms rather than with his sword (though he’s occasionally used his pocketbook instead). And as Tyrion noted when we first met him, he has a particular appreciation for the unique and broken things across Westeros.
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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