‘I’ve survived so far’
Find out where things stand in Westeros with our spoiler-heavy recap of the season five finale, “Mother’s Mercy.’’
Game of Thrones closed out its fifth season Sunday night, leaving us a long, cold summer of the upcoming series Ballers. But there will be plenty of time to moan about the off-season. Let’s dive into the action-packed finale.
Things begin optimistically in Stannis’s war camp. The snow and ice are melting, opening the way to Winterfell, and, he hopes, conquest. Those drippy icicles came at a high price, however: Half his army deserted him overnight. Apparently, they couldn’t take the sight of watching their king burn a little girl alive as a sacrifice to a God they did not believe in.
There’s more, and worse. Selyse, Stannis’s wife and would-be queen, hanged herself in the woods. And Melisandre, the red priestess who wheedled and cajoled Stannis to murder his daughter, booked it out of camp while Stannis wasn’t looking.
But Stannis is still marching for Winterfell. He’s paid a dear price for this battle, and he’s going to have it. In that way, he’s the Stannis we know from previous seasons.
Back at Castle Black, Jon’s returned and is talking with Samwell about the lessons of Hardhome. The Whitewalkers’ king can raise thousands of zombies with just a gesture. Whatever Whitewalker-killing dragonglass Snow had is lost, and wouldn’t have been enough anyway. Valyrian steel weapons like Longclaw can kill walkers, but magic-tempered swords and axes are incredibly rare.
Now he’s home, “the first lord commander in history to sacrifice the lives of sworn brothers to save the lives of wildlings.’’ That’s made him persona non grata among his black-cloaked brothers.
“How’s it feel to be friends with the most hated man at Castle Black,’’ he asks Sam, one of his last true friends in the watch.
Of course Sam asks to leave.
He wants to take Gilly and her baby with him to Oldtown, where he can train to become a maester. With Maester Aemon dead, there’s a need for one of the learned men at the Wall, and the distance will keep mother and child safe. Jon objects, relents, and then gets Sam to admit he and Gilly broke the one vow shared by the Night’s Watch brothers and maesters, nudge nudge, wink wink.
The thaw in the weather means a thaw in the action at Winterfell. Stannis is marching — on foot — because his horses were stolen by the deserters. Sansa’s sneaking around inside the holdfast, cloaked in a hood, wearing a determined expression. And Podrick Payne, everybody’s favorite inept squire, is warning Brienne, everybody’s favorite inept non-knight, about the doings.
Brienne is staring at Winterfell’s broken tower, waiting for the light Sansa was told to light when she needed help. But you’ll recall, our lady of Tarth has two sworn oaths to keep: Kill Stannis. Save Sansa. She abandons her watch to try and manage the former, just as Sansa lights her beacon, asking for the latter. This is why you should never make too many promises.
But enough about oath keeping, there’s a battle afoot! The Boltons surprise Westoros’s greatest military tactician by riding out to meet him rather than waiting him out in a siege. Badly outnumbered, what’s left of Stannis’s army is slaughtered, leaving the would-be king badly injured. Betrayed, defeated, and struck lame, Stannis leans against a tree, looks up, and sees Brienne of Tarth, ready to speechify about his brother Renly.
“Go on, do your duty,’’ says Stannis. And so he’s struck dead outside of Winterfell.
Inside the northern capital, Sansa’s caught by Reek and Miranda, Ramsay’s pain-loving concubine. But just as she’s about to skewer some part of Sansa with an arrow, Reek grabs the slight sadist and tosses her off the parapet and into the courtyard below. Now clearly Theon again, he takes Sansa’s hand…and they jump off the parapet together. Cliffhanger.
Enough about Westeros. Over in Essos, Meryn Trant is beating three underage prostitutes, eliciting screams and tears for his own sexual gratification. But one girl isn’t crying, no matter how hard Trant hits her. She looks at him, the blonde girl with soft features. Then she tousles her hair… and it’s Arya. Trant barely has time to register his surprise before she’s on top of him, stabbing his eyes out, gagging him, and stabbing him repeatedly in the chest.
Now it’s Arya’s time for a speech, and she delivers the Game of Thrones version of “Say my name’’ before cutting Trant’s throat. This is hardcore retribution, and a repudiation of everything she’s learned about being “no one.’’
“A girl has taken a life. The wrong life,’’ Jaqen intones as she returns the face she stole from the temple. “Only death can pay for life.’’
The other temple apprentice holds Arya as Jaqen pulls a vial of poison and drinks it. Arya sobs over his body as the waif explains he wasn’t really her friend. Arya turns around to see Jaqen Haggar again.
Arya pulls the face off the dead Jaqen. And then another. And then another. And several more before stopping when she sees her own face on the corpse.
Then she can’t see at all. Arya goes blind.
In Dorne, Jamie is escorting Myrcella, Trystane, Bronn and the rest back to King’s Landing in a seemingly drama-free departure. Ellaria and the sand snakes, who seemed so menacing in earlier episodes, make no fuss at all as the Lannisters set sail.
On the ship, Jamie is trying to explain to his niece that she’s actually his daughter. Which, let’s face it, has to be about the most difficult conversation you’re ever gonna have with your kid. But Myrcella’s cool about it, somehow. She says she knows and she’s glad.
That’s when the blood starts pouring out of her nose. Back on the dock, the same is happening to Ellaria just as she pulls out a vial of antidote similar to the one given to Bronn by a sand snake. So much for that peaceful Lannister departure.
In Meereen, those Danaerys left behind are licking their wounds, wondering where their queen went with her dragon. After some quarreling, it’s resolved that Daario and Jorah will go find their queen, leaving Tyrion to govern, Grey Worm to keep the peace, and Misandei to keep Dany’s trust in those left behind.
“Good fortune, my friends. Meereen is ancient and glorious. Try not to ruin her,’’ Daario says as he departs. Just like that, three former slaves now rule the greatest slave-trading city in the world.
A fourth former slave has made it into the city, too. Varys, the spider, offers his secret-finding services to Tyrion.
Dany, meanwhile, is somewhere hilly and green, fretting about going home and the health of her very injured dragon. He’s in no shape to fly, so she sets off on foot and is almost immediately set upon by a Khalisar — a tribe of Dothraki, similar to the one led by her dead husband Khal Drogo. Maybe that sounds like a homecoming of sorts, but if you remember previous seasons of this show, you’ll know it’s never a good thing when Dothraki riders find you.
Half a world away, in King’s Landing, Cersei hears the same thing she’s been hearing for days.
“Confess,’’ the septa demands, not unkindly. “Confess.’’
Filthy, dehydrated, and at her wits end, Cersei finally relents. She is taken from her cell to the High Septon’s presence and asks him for absolution. He makes her spill all of her sins — and she cops to sleeping with her cousin. But still, even after all of this, she denies sleeping with her brother Jamie.
The High Septon accepts what she tells him, telling her a trial will detemine whether she’s still hiding anything else. In the meantime, she can return to her son in the Red Keep.
It’s the getting there that’s the problem.
She must atone for her sins. So she’s stripped naked, scrubbed clean, shorn of her blonde hair, and made to walk naked from the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. A septa follows her, prodding her forward, ringing a bell, and incessantly chanting, “Shame! Shame! Shame!’’
The gathering crowds aren’t going to make the walk a quiet experience, either. They scream all sorts of epithets at Cersei, who tries to maintain as much of her queenly stature as she can, given the circumstances.
But its hard to retain a regal bearing when your subjects empty their chamber pots on you. Cersei, who for five seasons has been one of the hardest characters on the show, finally falls apart. Bloodied, weeping, and covered in excrement, she enters the Red Keep.
There, Qyburn introduces her to a hulking new Kingsguard. The silent knight is gigantic, as big as a…OK, you know where this is going. It sure looks like there’s a zombie Mountain Clegane under all that armor.
And just like that, you can see that Cersei already has a little of her swagger back.
Back at the Wall, Jon and Davos are in a feirce argument. Stannis’s hand was sent to get troops and provisions for his king’s seige of Winterfell, and Jon’s not inclined to give him anything at all.
They’re interrupted when Melisandre comes riding into Castle Black. Jon asks her about Stannis. Davos asks her about Shireen. And they both get their answers when the red priestess says nothing and walks away, defeated.
Later that night, the young Ollie comes bursting into Jon’s chambers. It seems a wilding has seen Jon’s uncle Benjen Stark, the Watch’s first ranger who went missing north of the Wall way back in season one.
Jon pushes through a crowd of men to speak to this wildling. But there is no wildling. Instead, there’s a marker reading “Traitor.’’ Jon is subjected to the full Caesar treatment, stabbed by six of his Night’s Watch brothers, including Ollie, giving the scene the “Et tu, Brute’’ kicker it demanded.
The season ends with Jon laying on his back as his blood soaks the snow around him.
Stray Arrows
∙So Jon’s dead, right? Not so fast. There’s a red priestess in camp. Melisandre sure looks like a fraud after the disaster outside the walls of Winterfell, but, If you’ll recall, the red priest Thoros of Myr was able to resurrect a dead Beric Dondarrion several times back in season three. This may be a fan bargaining for the return of another Stark, but weirder things have happened on this show.
∙We didn’t actually see Brienne kill Stannis, either, but his death seems even more solid than the guy we just watched get stabbed in the gut six times. His only escape would be if someone killed Brienne in that last moment, like the spearman who killed the Braavosi set to kill Jorah last week.
∙What the heck happened to Podrick? He pointed out Stannis’s army and…that’s it? Did he stick around and see Sansa’s candle in the broken tower?
∙Did Theon and Sansa kill themselves? We won’t know until Season 6. That’s next April, folks. You can’t even ruin things by reading ahead in the books, because for the most part the show’s caught up — and in some cases passed — the timeline in the books.
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