‘All the Good Lords are Dead, and the Rest Are Monsters’
Our recap of season 5 episode 1, “The Wars to Come.’’
This is an episode recap, so spoilers abound—you’ve been warned.
The season premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones begins with a flashback, a first for the series—Lil’ Cersei (Nell Williams) and her friend are traipsing through the woods to a creepy cabin, looking for a witch who can supposedly tell the future. The witch warns her against it—“Everyone wants to know their future, until they know their future,’’ sound advice for when you go looking up Thrones spoilers—but Cersei presses on. She learns that she’ll marry the king, until “another younger, more beautiful’’ comes along “to cast you down and take all you hold dear.’’ Also, there’s a warning about her future children: “Gold will be their crowns, gold their shrouds.’’
[fragment number=0][fragment number=1]
We’ve seen blood magic before on this show when Stannis used it to curse Robb Stark and Joffrey Baratheon, and it certainly worked for him, so it’s a good bet that all of these things will come to pass. Cersei already married a king. One of her kids is dead—that’s probably what the “shrouds’’ are referring to—so the prophecy doesn’t bode well for her two living children this season, Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) and current ruler Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman). But who is the younger, prettier queen?
We cut to King’s Landing, where all the lords and ladies are waiting outside the sept to see if Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance, as a perfectly motionless corpse) is really dead. Cersei makes them wait, though, so she can have some private time with brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), though not the kind of ‘private time’ they had in that problematic scene the last time they were hanging out with a relative’s fresh corpse. She tells her brother that it’s his fault their father is dead, even more so than it is their brother Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage). Boy, Jaime’s really in the doghouse now.
Later, Cersei’s getting drunk at the funeral. She sees Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) getting a little close with Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman), which I’m sure just makes her want to drink more. Hey, maybe Margaery is that younger, prettier queen mentioned in the prophecy?
[fragment number=2][fragment number=3]
Remember cousin Lancel? Helped Cersei kill her husband, King Robert, back in season one? Did some unsavory-but-Lannister-y things with her, if you catch my drift, in season two? He’s apparently part of some extreme religious order now, and begs forgiveness for all the bad stuff they did. I had almost forgotten anyone else played a part in Robert’s death—that’s sure to come back to bite Cersei later.
Across the narrow sea in Pentos, a drunken Tyrion rolls out of a crate after a long (and gross) journey. Varys (Conleth Hill) is trying to let him in on a secret plot, wherein he explains he’s been trying to get a Targaeryan back on the Iron Throne for years. (So that’s why he’s always being so sneaky). Tyrion can’t be bothered to listen, though. He just wants to drink. And barf. And drink some more.
[fragment number=4][fragment number=5]
Later, when Tyrion’s sobered up a bit, he agrees to go to Meereen to meet the Targaryen queen, and decide if he’d rather drink his life away or fight for her.
In Meereen, the Unsullied soldiers of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) are pulling down a statue of an old Meereenese god from atop a pyramid. More of that ‘they can live in my new world, or they can die in their old one’ stuff from last season.
[fragment number=6][fragment number=7]
Having finished a job well done, one of the soldiers heads to a brothel for a good time. Being a eunuch, he only wants to snuggle, but during his cuddle sesh, his throat is cut by one of the Sons of the Harpy, a new group who don’t take kindly to Dany’s freeing the slaves.
Dany knows she has to find a way to restore order. Should she reopen the fighting pits, as Hizdahr (Joel Fry) suggests? Or use her dragons to get people in line, as her secret lover Daario (Michiel Huisman) advises? She chooses the latter, but upon visiting them, she finds that her dragons don’t exactly treat her like the Mother of Dragons anymore—and they’ve gotten a lot bigger.
[fragment number=8][fragment number=9]
At Castle Black, Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) is training with the little guy who shot his Wildling lover Ygritte last season, and Jon’s surprisingly cool about the whole ‘kid-killed-your-girlfriend’ thing. Melisandre (Carice van Houten) interrupts, telling Jon that King Stannis (Stephen Dillane) wants a word at the top of the wall. They have a pretty creepy ride in the medieval elevator, with Mel getting handsy and asking Jon if he’s a virgin, for some reason.
[fragment number=10][fragment number=11]
At the top of the Wall, he gets an ultimatum from Stannis: Make Mance Rayder (Ciaran Hinds) bend the knee and give Stannis his Wildling army, or Mance will be killed. Jon knows it can’t be done, though—Mance would never want to look like a pushover in front of his people.
In the episode’s final moments, Mance is trotted out in the courtyard at Castle Black to be burnt alive for not bending the knee to Stannis (or for being a heathen and not worshipping Melisandre’s fire god, depending on whom you ask). Stannis asks him one more time if he’ll join him, and when Mance refuses, that big grin on Stannis’s face suggests that the would-be king of Westeros actually respects him for it.
The pyre is lit. As Mance starts to scream, some look on in horror. Some are totally into it, like Stannis’s creepy wife Selyse (Tara Fitzgerald). Tormund (Kristofer Hivju) and the rest of the Free Folk watch with anger but also pride, as Mance is staying true to them to the last.
But Jon can’t take any more. He grabs a bow and shoots Mance with an arrow to the heart, putting him out of his misery. The King-Beyond-the-Wall is dead.
[fragment number=12][fragment number=13]
What a shame. There was a real mutual-respect-triangle-thing happening between Stannis, Mance, and Jon. Three tough guys, strong leaders all, and each expressing their admiration for one another throughout the episode’s Wall scenes. In a perfect Westeros, they would have worked out their petty differences and teamed up to kill off the Boltons and Lannisters. But just like with The Beatles, their egos were too big for them to work together. Also, Davos would be Ringo, and Melisandre definitely would be Yoko.
So, we’ve had a good glimpse at where most of the major players stand at the start of this season, with alliances being made and broken. Tywin, who held much of the country together by rule of fear, is gone, creating a power vacuum. The love between Cersei and Jaime seems lost, as does the brotherly bond between Jaime and his brother Tyrion. Tyrion is on his way to meet Dany, a queen from a family his own relatives helped depose. Stannis wants to team up with the Wildlings, and Jon’s not sure whether or not he wants to compromise his vows to assist him. And Sansa Stark and Littlefinger have become uncomfortably close. Littlefinger tells Sansa they’re going “to a land so far from here, even Cersei Lannister can’t get her hands on you.’’ Where could that be?
[fragment number=14][fragment number=15]
Stray Arrows:
—Did you notice the Boltons’ “flayed man’’ sigil on Winterfell in the opening credits, where there used to be a Stark direwolf? That’s a small detail that really hurts.
—The writers’ newfound willingness to use flashbacks as a storytelling device is huge for this show. Think of the implications for unraveling Game of Thrones’ biggest mysteries, like Jon Snow’s true parentage—now that we have access to the past, we’re closer to the answers.
—HBO is getting good at casting younger versions of their stars. Marc Pickering, who they picked to play a young Nucky (Steve Buscemi) in Boardwalk Empire, was perfect—and now Nell Williams has nailed a child’s version of Cersei’s (Lena Headey’s) pissy tone and facial expressions.
—“All I ever wanted was to fight for a lord I believed in,’’ Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) tells Podrick (Daniel Portman). “Now all the good lords are dead, and the rest are monsters.’’ Let’s fact check that: Stannis burns people, the Boltons skin people alive, the Freys pulled off the Red Wedding, and the Lannisters had incestuous relations next to a kid’s corpse … but I don’t think the Tyrells ever did anything bad. In fact, they got rid of Joffrey, arguably the biggest ‘monster’ on the show. Brienne should go work for them!
—Mance’s reaction when Jon tells him he’s to be burned alive is priceless. Ciaran Hinds will be sorely missed. Maybe all the show’s sex and violence really was too much for him to take.
[fragment number=16][fragment number=17]
—Also, we haven’t seen Arya, Theon, or the Boltons yet. What are they up to?
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com