Kill the Boy

Early in the latest edition of Thrones, Jon is consulting Aemon Targaryen about a plan of Jon's, one that he knows will be deeply unpopular, but Aemon stops Jon before he can get to the specifics.  Aemon says that if Jon has thought things through and is sure that this it the right thing to do, then he ought to do it.  "Kill the boy, Jon Snow, and let the man be born."  'The boy' is hesitation, insecurity.  As the Watch (and the realm) faces its gravest challenge yet, there is no room for youthful indecision from the Lord Commander.

This thought (which the reckless but confident fifth season of Thrones has also taken to heart) is appealing but somewhat ambiguous in practice.  For our three big new leaders - Jon, Daenerys and Cersei - the relevance is obvious, and particularly so for Jon and Dany in this episode.  Jon and Dany, young and idealistic, want to forge new worlds, and in this episode take brave, bold steps towards doing so.  But decisive leadership alone isn't enough, as Thrones has illustrated time and time again.  Cersei, not seen in this episode, has epitomized confidence this year but is setting her house up for political alienation and collapse.  Time will tell whether Jon and Dany's courage under fire in "Kill the Boy" will prove commensurate to the challenges they face.

Jon and Dany are both influenced by fear - Jon has seen the White Walkers and their wights, as well as the abject terror of one hundred thousand fleeing Wildlings.  The Night's Watch wouldn't have survived the Wildling invasion without Stannis; how can they expect to survive the Long Night if they don't boost their strength?  Furthermore, if they couldn't stop the living Wildling army, they can hardly stop it when the Wildlings become an army of undead wights, doing the bidding of the mysterious Walkers?  In these respects, Jon's plan - to travel to Hardhome and offer the remaining Wildlings amnesty and land south of the Wall in exchange for joining the fight against the Walkers - is entirely sound.  The Night's Watch could remove an enemy and gain some battle-hardened allies.

But the plan is as risky as it is bold.  The Night's Watch and the Wildlings have battled each other for thousands of years.  The Watch recently lost some 50 brothers in the battle at the wall, including good friends of Jon's.  Young Olly lost his entire village.  Jon's negotiation with Tormund Giantsbane goes far better than his entreaties to the Watch.  Even Dolorous Edd has reservations.  Olly turns against his Lord Commander, perhaps permanently.  Part of this is related to the content of the plan, but Jon is also partly to blame.  Never the most expressive character, Jon has trouble relaying the urgency and complete logicality of his plan to the Watch, resorting instead to vague hints like "Winter is coming.  We know what's coming with it," which sounds great in a trailer for Thrones but not especially sensible to the hate-filled Night's Watch.

Fear and hate are also at the heart of Daenerys's troubles in Meereen.  With the death of Barristan, things have gotten to a personal breaking point for Dany.  To deal appropriately with the Sons of the Harpy, Dany will have to be a little less waffling.  Like Jon, however, there are problems with her approach.  Though her eventual, diplomatic solution of reopening the fighting pits to free fighters and marrying a Meereenese local, Hizdahr zo Loraq, seems sound, she prefaces it by dragging the Great Masters to her dragon pits and burning one of them alive.  She appears powerful and intimidating, but in the context of her final move, it's actually a bit indecisive on her part.  While Jon takes bold action at the beginning of "Kill the Boy," it is Daenerys who sees the most development in this respect over the course of the episode, finally thinking through a radical decision in which she has complete confidence, and then seeing it through.

As thoughtful and even self-sacrificing as her final choice is (she is not Hizdahr's biggest fan), Dany, like Jon, may be up against a conflict that she simply cannot resolve.  Our young dragon queen is not especially well-schooled in the history of her family, but the Targaryens are of Old Valyria, the ancient enemies of the Ghiscari Empire that now has its strongest remnants in the culture of Meereen.  The old-fashioned, traditional citizens of this city hate her far more than she can possibly realize, and the fear that the Sons of the Harpy's terrorist campaign strikes in the hearts of Dany and her freed slaves reflects this hate.  Still, her solution is diplomatic, and re-opening the fighting pits is a major concession to the old traditions of the city.  As with Jon, time will tell.

This was a remarkably focused episode, thematically and otherwise.  Most of the remaining action took place at the increasingly fascinating Winterfell setting.  Sansa and Ramsay both need to grow up a lot too, and its incredibly twisted to watch them do so in the same space.  This episode was mostly focused on Ramsay, who has been given much more responsibility since his father had him legitimized.  Ramsay understands this, to a degree, but he still cannot help posturing to prove his own power.  At dinner with Roose and Walda, he brings Theon/Reek in and forces him to apologize to Sansa for killing her brothers.  Roose, Ramsay and Reek know that the Bran and Rickon aren't dead, but far nastier is the unspoken subtext that Roose betrayed and personally killed Robb Stark.  A reserved but furious Roose gets his own back by telling Ramsay that Walda has a baby boy on the way - a potential threat to Ramsay's tenuous legitimacy.

Roose then delivers fatherly encouragement that could only come from a Bolton, and in a way, encourages Ramsay to 'kill the boy' as well.  Contrasting nicely with Stannis's endearing scene last week, Roose tells Ramsay that he is a true Bolton by way of recounting the day he raped Ramsay's mother.  Ramsay has got to stop being such a shitbag if the Boltons are to survive Stannis’s coming assault.  What is particularly delicious about this scene is the level on which Roose is simply manipulating Ramsay for his own uses.  These Boltons are a cold, evil breed, and Roose is perfectly happy to manipulate his son’s only weakness for his own ends.  

The episode did leave me wanting in one major respect, though I'm not worried about it in the future.  Sansa was a part of a lot of good scenes this week, but they were relatively passive.  The Myranda scene was interesting, and Sansa was sassy, but it was ultimately a vehicle for her to be introduced to Reek.  The dinner was the same - Sansa got one zinger, but the scene ultimately amounted to Bolton power dynamics.  She's been a bit too passive, fascinating as her content has been.  I'm hoping this will change in the later episodes, but for now there's not much evidence to that effect.

Thrones has been reckless this year, especially with respect to adapting the books, but the steps that the show has taken with Ramsay, Jon and Daenerys all feel appropriate when they construct a dramatically coherent episode like this, and this episode reaches the dramatic heights of Thrones at its best.  But even in an episode like this that skimped on the action (aside from a wonderful dragon-burning scene), "Kill the Boy" ratcheted up the tension and then dished out by far the finest Tyrion scene yet this year, a majestic journey Tyrion and Jorah take through the smoking ruins of Old Valyria.  This was not just a good scene because it was exciting - Tyrion and Jorah battle some Stone Men, greyscale patients left to rot in Valyria like lepers, and Jorah is infected in the major twist of the episode - but because of a haunting sighting of Drogon.  The moment has personal resonance for both Tyrion and Jorah (Tyrion has expressed before that he's always wanted to see a dragon, and Jorah knows him) but it also serves the purpose of emotionally drawing the disparate universes of Game of Thrones closer together by reminding us that Tyrion really is on his way to Meereen.  It has felt like the show has only been including Tyrion in recent episodes because he's supposed to be the heart and soul of the series, rather than because he's actually been important to the plot.  But this episode finally made Tyrion's story emotionally compelling again while hinting at his eventual return to political relevance, albeit under very different circumstances.

B+

Bits

- Stannis again shows his own type of sensitive side - he could have been meaner to Sam for his surprising unmilitancy, but instead encourages him to "keep reading".  Stannis' practicality outweighs his judgmental side; he knows that Sam's knowledge will be invaluable when the Walkers inevitably come.

- I could do with some more Tormund.  

- I could not give fewer fucks about the Grey Worm/Missandei mess.  The show is doing many things better than ever this year, but a few bits - this silly romance and the Sand Snakes - are some of the worst stuff they've ever done.

- They are being far more liberal with the dragon sightings this year than ever before - it's almost casual.  Indicative of more money being thrown into the show and I love it.  In both scenes this week the dragon usage was meaningful.

Book Bits 

- First Bowen Marsh sighting.  I thought we'd have seen him earlier, and perhaps he may not play much of a role this season.  There's no doubt in my mind where Olly's going to land though.

- Melisandre going with Stannis is a change and has implications for that last Wall scene of Dance.  

- With respect to the death of Ser Barristan, it appears that he was killed to give Daenerys a emotional impetus to take radical action.  The reasons in A Dance with Dragons are political and complicated and far too much for the show to include in their entirety.  I'm not so sure about the Battle of Fire being included at all, it just seems too complicated.

- Greyscale Jorah - so is Jon Conningtoning somehow?  Will he take Barristan's defense of Meereen?

- Aaaannnd we get the first mention of that Hardhome setting, not actually seen in the books but mentioned in the "Day in the Life" feature and reportedly the home of the single most expensive sequence Thrones has ever produced.  The footage that I think will be from Hardhome that I can see from the 2 trailers they put out looks incredibly violent and, to be honest, scares the shit out of me.  As always, dread.