In the Jon Snow-heavy first episode of this fifth season of Game of Thrones, "The Wars to Come," I wrote that disaster loomed, though you couldn't always tell where it was coming from. I've given up trying to predict what's going to happen this season - from the Sansa/Ramsay marriage to the death of Ser Barristan to the convergence of Tyrion and Daenerys, it's become impossible even for an astute reader to truly follow what has been going on. And heading into the final stretch on Game of Thrones, disaster had come to loom on many, many fronts, but it wasn't clear where, as Gandalf once said, "the hammer stroke will fall hardest."
I cannot even comprehend how, in the remaining two episodes, the hammer stroke could possibly fall harder than it did at Hardhome.
I'm floored. I have taken several passes at writing this review and keep giving up after it descends into increasingly unintelligible superlatives. This was a truly seminal episode of Game of Thrones, and more game-changing for the story and for the show than any episode I can think of excepting perhaps "Baelor", which simultaneously set the War of the Five Kings in motion and showed viewers how this show was really going to work. But structurally, emotionally and with respect to the future of the show - well, I've not seen a Thrones quite like this before.
Let's pull back a little bit before I lose myself in Hardhome superlatives again, because this was the best episode of the fifth season long before I lost my face in the last twenty minutes. The non-Hardhome headliner of the week was obviously the long-anticipated interactions between Tyrion and Daenerys, which were phenomenal. They're unsure of each other. Dany plays hardball and holds the threat of execution over his head - Tyrion bluntly tells Dany that he's deciding whether or not he is interested in working with her.
I realized that this was one of the only times, except perhaps when Jorah was exiled last year, that we've seen supplicants of Dany that we really care about. Being in Meereen's throne room and seeing it through Tyrion's eyes gave a real sense of Dany's trappings and appearance of power. The set is absolutely incredible, first of all, but Emilia Clarke - who has the affect of a seemingly once-in-a-generation ruler down to a tee at this point - simply exuded strength and influence.
This power dynamic is extremely important for this pairing, which represents the strongest narrative device connecting Dany to the Westeros canvas to date. Ser Barristan arrived, yes, but he was always a fairly minor player, a member of the old guard. Tyrion - yes, one of "The Children" - is a son of those Robert's Rebellion combatants, an informed, cynical master of Westerosi political machinations and a devastating judge of character. It's not in his character to believe in someone like Daenerys, but we can see that he's become more convinced by the end of their interactions. Dany is powerful and intelligent and good-hearted, and Tyrion sees this (as much as sees her weaknesses and recognizes her need to have someone like him at her side). By pairing Tyrion and Daenerys, the show has taken the greatest step to date of bringing Daenerys into the fold. Appropriately, it portends great things.
This was a dense episode, stuffed with a new assassination assignment (and costume!) for Arya, and the major revelation for Sansa that Theon killed two farm boys, not Bran and Rickon. Like last week, this constitutes another incomplete step towards returning Sansa to agency. Between the scalpel and this knowledge, she now has two weapons to possibly use against Ramsay. She may reveal Reek's treachery, but as she also made clear in their tense, well-acted scene together, it doesn't much matter to her what happens to Theon.
Now all of this was well and good - and Lena Headey was also fantastic this week - but HARDHOME literally blows every other conflict or interaction on the show out of the water.
Quite frankly, this was the most impressive single sequence Game of Thrones has ever put together. "Hardhome" was a full hour of television, and you really feel the weight of those against the comparatively flighty 50-minute episodes that D+D occasionally fling our way. Structurally, "Hardhome" was brilliant. When the show has a standout or climactic sequence to get to, they approach them in one of three ways, depending on the character of the sequence. With battles (Blackwater and Castle Black) they devote the entire episode. Sometimes (see the third and fourth episodes of Season 4 for Daenerys) they stuff an important climax into the beginnings or ends of episodes and ignore them thereafter. The best approach, in my opinion, is to spend a major chunk of the episode in a major set or location and flesh things out before we get to the the good stuff. This served "The Rains of Castamere" and "The Lion and the Rose," two of the series' very best episodes, very well. But what is done here is somewhat unique even within that last category - the creators devote an uninterrupted half hour to Jon and Tormund's mission to rally the Wildlings huddled at Hardhome to the cause of the living.
The sheer number of amazing things that happened in this powerful mini-narrative is astonishing. Jon and Tormund arrive at the coastal fishing village of Hardhome, which is a beautifully photographed, seamlessly enhanced Northern Ireland coast. Even before Jon and Tormund reach land, we feel the significance of this moment. Ramin Djawadi's score pulses menacingly and hostility looms from every corner. But Jon and Tormund are convinced of the necessity of their mission, and when the charming Lord of Bones shows up and starts talking shit, Tormund beats him to death. It's ostensibly because Rattleshirt insulted his masculinity but also because there just isn't time for such squabbles when winter is coming.
It's not easy to get the Wildlings to accept the help of the Watch, and they don't completely succeed in that endeavor - only about 5,000 of the remnants of Mance's army voluntarily join the alliance, and the Thenns are especially opposed. The foul-mouthed giant huddled in the corner doesn't seem too happy about it either. But chieftainess Karsi (Birgitte Sorenson, and I'm butchering that) speaks up for Jon and Tormund's cause, and it's because the cause is truly desperate, not because of any lost love. "We're not friends," Jon Snow says of himself and Tormund. "I'll never trust a crow," says Karsi. But ultimately, some of these Wildlings recognize the reality of the situation; that they are a broken, battered people holed up on a frozen shore at the end of the world with unstoppable enemies descending, and they need all the help they can get.
Jon, Tormund, Dolorous Edd and Karsi are helping Wildlings into boats when the cold winds rise. An unearthly storm descends from the cliffs pressing Hardhome to the sea, moving much faster than any meteorological event I've ever seen. The winds of winter sweep through most of the Wildling camp until the Thenn leader, knowing what's up, orders the gates separating most of the camp from the dock area to be shut, locking most of the wildlings from escape. Thousands of them, doomed to their frozen fate, die and are resurrected as wights.
The White Walkers attack in force at Hardhome, sending in their unstoppable horde of wights, and the final fifteen minutes of this episode details this horrifying battle and the escape of those few living lucky enough to get out. The logistical and emotional interior narrative of this pivotal sequence was just astonishing. Everything made such good sense. The Thenn, who strongly opposed the alliance with the Night's Watch, stands fast with Jon against an actual White Walker, to his doom. And wouldn't he? These are the White Walkers - they are death incarnate. Feuds between humans, no matter how ancient, falter completely in the face of such ruination.
The insanity continues. Hordes of Wildlings flee in utter disarray to the sea as the wights struggle to break through the gate, drowning each other and overturning boats. Karsi, having just sent her daughter away, stands and fights to protect them. At a desperate moment, Jon Snow rallies the Night's Watch to make a stand.
The visceral horror that has been achieved by the production team of Game of Thrones cannot be overstated. The wights are terrifying, detailed in varying states of decay, ranging from the totally-decomposed skeletons like those that took out Jojen Reed last year to the very newly-dead Wildlings from the other side of the gate. The Walkers first appear in apocalyptic fashion, four dread horseman directing battle from high above the snowy cliffs. The wights are fast and hard to kill - they keep clawing back at you, no matter how dismembered. This is part shocking Thrones medieval action, part brutal, undead horror, achieved at a visual level that takes the already impressive production quality to soaring new heights.
What separates this battle from the maw of zombie thrillers is the intensely realized sense of fear at the prospect of the undead, and the fascinatingly story that is behind the sequence. Great action tells a human story amidst the maw, and this story is already deeply powerful. This tense, barely-forged alliance between two ancient enemies is the backdrop to an assault by the White Walkers on the living, Night's Watch or Wildling, which makes every other conflict in the show seem utterly superfluous.
I'll leave it to you to watch for the rest of the highlights - giant smashing wights with a tree trunk is my personal favorite - but I really need to emphasize the importance of this sequence. When the sinister leader of the Walkers strolls out onto the docks to stare down Jon and Tormund, who barely escaped with their lives, what he's doing is issuing a threat to the living, to the world of Westeros, more brutally and powerfully than either Game of Thrones or, to be honest, George R.R. Martin himself, have ever achieved. This is where the real battle lies.
That the show constructed a deeply powerful, entirely original climax and situate it structurally within the season so that people wouldn't actually know what was coming - this was episode 9 level stuff - represents a huge payoff in the liberties that D+D have taken with the books this year. This was simply one of the very finest episodes in series history and though it diverged from the books, I really did feel that it was telling the same, important story. Their handling of Jon Snow and the Wall this year has just been stellar, and this gives me extreme confidence going into the final two episodes.
Bits
- So that's at least a massive chunk of Mance's 100,000-strong army, which makes all the emphasis of that number last year continually harrowing.
- Lena Heady was absolutely terrific in her cell. The creepy-faced septa, who I was hoping wouldn't return, totally returned. She's a great tormentor for Cersei, who is reduced this week to lapping up water from the ground.
- One of the show's most ominous "somebody talks about a character then we cut to that character" transitions with Olly and Sam, on so many levels - "he always comes back".
- Really, really great sparring by Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. The script emphasizes their many personal connections, which you don't realize until the two of them are paired like this. It makes you hope they can stick together. Daenerys seems a good bet to fight the Walkers with her "break the wheel" approach to things. And dragons.
- I've become a huge fan of Kristofer Hivju as Tormund. He's sheer force and just a ton of fun.
Book Bits
- Wun Wun! Will "For the Watch" be playing out in the same way? I mean Wun Wun could cause a lot of trouble in Castle Black.
- Valyrian Steel kills White Walkers - confirmed. Most people know in the books but it was not confirmed.
- Is there a Night's King in the books? Idk but this guy is super scary.
- Ramsay plots a raid against Stannis. I am very scared for Stannis's life this year, and I really think he's going to die at the end, but if Ramsay kills him with twenty of his Bastard's Boys in a little wintry raid I will be livid.
- Of course, this Tyrion/Daenerys pairing is necessarily shortlived, as next weeks episode is called "The Dance of Dragons". Nice to get a taste. I do feel that their paths will cross eventually, despite the near-miss at Daznak's Pit.
- Hardhome is heard of in the books as this really horrible place where there are "dead things in the water" and the Wildlings are slowly being picked off. This was pretty nasty too.
I cannot even comprehend how, in the remaining two episodes, the hammer stroke could possibly fall harder than it did at Hardhome.
I'm floored. I have taken several passes at writing this review and keep giving up after it descends into increasingly unintelligible superlatives. This was a truly seminal episode of Game of Thrones, and more game-changing for the story and for the show than any episode I can think of excepting perhaps "Baelor", which simultaneously set the War of the Five Kings in motion and showed viewers how this show was really going to work. But structurally, emotionally and with respect to the future of the show - well, I've not seen a Thrones quite like this before.
Let's pull back a little bit before I lose myself in Hardhome superlatives again, because this was the best episode of the fifth season long before I lost my face in the last twenty minutes. The non-Hardhome headliner of the week was obviously the long-anticipated interactions between Tyrion and Daenerys, which were phenomenal. They're unsure of each other. Dany plays hardball and holds the threat of execution over his head - Tyrion bluntly tells Dany that he's deciding whether or not he is interested in working with her.
I realized that this was one of the only times, except perhaps when Jorah was exiled last year, that we've seen supplicants of Dany that we really care about. Being in Meereen's throne room and seeing it through Tyrion's eyes gave a real sense of Dany's trappings and appearance of power. The set is absolutely incredible, first of all, but Emilia Clarke - who has the affect of a seemingly once-in-a-generation ruler down to a tee at this point - simply exuded strength and influence.
This power dynamic is extremely important for this pairing, which represents the strongest narrative device connecting Dany to the Westeros canvas to date. Ser Barristan arrived, yes, but he was always a fairly minor player, a member of the old guard. Tyrion - yes, one of "The Children" - is a son of those Robert's Rebellion combatants, an informed, cynical master of Westerosi political machinations and a devastating judge of character. It's not in his character to believe in someone like Daenerys, but we can see that he's become more convinced by the end of their interactions. Dany is powerful and intelligent and good-hearted, and Tyrion sees this (as much as sees her weaknesses and recognizes her need to have someone like him at her side). By pairing Tyrion and Daenerys, the show has taken the greatest step to date of bringing Daenerys into the fold. Appropriately, it portends great things.
This was a dense episode, stuffed with a new assassination assignment (and costume!) for Arya, and the major revelation for Sansa that Theon killed two farm boys, not Bran and Rickon. Like last week, this constitutes another incomplete step towards returning Sansa to agency. Between the scalpel and this knowledge, she now has two weapons to possibly use against Ramsay. She may reveal Reek's treachery, but as she also made clear in their tense, well-acted scene together, it doesn't much matter to her what happens to Theon.
Now all of this was well and good - and Lena Headey was also fantastic this week - but HARDHOME literally blows every other conflict or interaction on the show out of the water.
Quite frankly, this was the most impressive single sequence Game of Thrones has ever put together. "Hardhome" was a full hour of television, and you really feel the weight of those against the comparatively flighty 50-minute episodes that D+D occasionally fling our way. Structurally, "Hardhome" was brilliant. When the show has a standout or climactic sequence to get to, they approach them in one of three ways, depending on the character of the sequence. With battles (Blackwater and Castle Black) they devote the entire episode. Sometimes (see the third and fourth episodes of Season 4 for Daenerys) they stuff an important climax into the beginnings or ends of episodes and ignore them thereafter. The best approach, in my opinion, is to spend a major chunk of the episode in a major set or location and flesh things out before we get to the the good stuff. This served "The Rains of Castamere" and "The Lion and the Rose," two of the series' very best episodes, very well. But what is done here is somewhat unique even within that last category - the creators devote an uninterrupted half hour to Jon and Tormund's mission to rally the Wildlings huddled at Hardhome to the cause of the living.
The sheer number of amazing things that happened in this powerful mini-narrative is astonishing. Jon and Tormund arrive at the coastal fishing village of Hardhome, which is a beautifully photographed, seamlessly enhanced Northern Ireland coast. Even before Jon and Tormund reach land, we feel the significance of this moment. Ramin Djawadi's score pulses menacingly and hostility looms from every corner. But Jon and Tormund are convinced of the necessity of their mission, and when the charming Lord of Bones shows up and starts talking shit, Tormund beats him to death. It's ostensibly because Rattleshirt insulted his masculinity but also because there just isn't time for such squabbles when winter is coming.
It's not easy to get the Wildlings to accept the help of the Watch, and they don't completely succeed in that endeavor - only about 5,000 of the remnants of Mance's army voluntarily join the alliance, and the Thenns are especially opposed. The foul-mouthed giant huddled in the corner doesn't seem too happy about it either. But chieftainess Karsi (Birgitte Sorenson, and I'm butchering that) speaks up for Jon and Tormund's cause, and it's because the cause is truly desperate, not because of any lost love. "We're not friends," Jon Snow says of himself and Tormund. "I'll never trust a crow," says Karsi. But ultimately, some of these Wildlings recognize the reality of the situation; that they are a broken, battered people holed up on a frozen shore at the end of the world with unstoppable enemies descending, and they need all the help they can get.
Jon, Tormund, Dolorous Edd and Karsi are helping Wildlings into boats when the cold winds rise. An unearthly storm descends from the cliffs pressing Hardhome to the sea, moving much faster than any meteorological event I've ever seen. The winds of winter sweep through most of the Wildling camp until the Thenn leader, knowing what's up, orders the gates separating most of the camp from the dock area to be shut, locking most of the wildlings from escape. Thousands of them, doomed to their frozen fate, die and are resurrected as wights.
The White Walkers attack in force at Hardhome, sending in their unstoppable horde of wights, and the final fifteen minutes of this episode details this horrifying battle and the escape of those few living lucky enough to get out. The logistical and emotional interior narrative of this pivotal sequence was just astonishing. Everything made such good sense. The Thenn, who strongly opposed the alliance with the Night's Watch, stands fast with Jon against an actual White Walker, to his doom. And wouldn't he? These are the White Walkers - they are death incarnate. Feuds between humans, no matter how ancient, falter completely in the face of such ruination.
The insanity continues. Hordes of Wildlings flee in utter disarray to the sea as the wights struggle to break through the gate, drowning each other and overturning boats. Karsi, having just sent her daughter away, stands and fights to protect them. At a desperate moment, Jon Snow rallies the Night's Watch to make a stand.
The visceral horror that has been achieved by the production team of Game of Thrones cannot be overstated. The wights are terrifying, detailed in varying states of decay, ranging from the totally-decomposed skeletons like those that took out Jojen Reed last year to the very newly-dead Wildlings from the other side of the gate. The Walkers first appear in apocalyptic fashion, four dread horseman directing battle from high above the snowy cliffs. The wights are fast and hard to kill - they keep clawing back at you, no matter how dismembered. This is part shocking Thrones medieval action, part brutal, undead horror, achieved at a visual level that takes the already impressive production quality to soaring new heights.
What separates this battle from the maw of zombie thrillers is the intensely realized sense of fear at the prospect of the undead, and the fascinatingly story that is behind the sequence. Great action tells a human story amidst the maw, and this story is already deeply powerful. This tense, barely-forged alliance between two ancient enemies is the backdrop to an assault by the White Walkers on the living, Night's Watch or Wildling, which makes every other conflict in the show seem utterly superfluous.
I'll leave it to you to watch for the rest of the highlights - giant smashing wights with a tree trunk is my personal favorite - but I really need to emphasize the importance of this sequence. When the sinister leader of the Walkers strolls out onto the docks to stare down Jon and Tormund, who barely escaped with their lives, what he's doing is issuing a threat to the living, to the world of Westeros, more brutally and powerfully than either Game of Thrones or, to be honest, George R.R. Martin himself, have ever achieved. This is where the real battle lies.
That the show constructed a deeply powerful, entirely original climax and situate it structurally within the season so that people wouldn't actually know what was coming - this was episode 9 level stuff - represents a huge payoff in the liberties that D+D have taken with the books this year. This was simply one of the very finest episodes in series history and though it diverged from the books, I really did feel that it was telling the same, important story. Their handling of Jon Snow and the Wall this year has just been stellar, and this gives me extreme confidence going into the final two episodes.
Bits
- So that's at least a massive chunk of Mance's 100,000-strong army, which makes all the emphasis of that number last year continually harrowing.
- Lena Heady was absolutely terrific in her cell. The creepy-faced septa, who I was hoping wouldn't return, totally returned. She's a great tormentor for Cersei, who is reduced this week to lapping up water from the ground.
- One of the show's most ominous "somebody talks about a character then we cut to that character" transitions with Olly and Sam, on so many levels - "he always comes back".
- Really, really great sparring by Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. The script emphasizes their many personal connections, which you don't realize until the two of them are paired like this. It makes you hope they can stick together. Daenerys seems a good bet to fight the Walkers with her "break the wheel" approach to things. And dragons.
- I've become a huge fan of Kristofer Hivju as Tormund. He's sheer force and just a ton of fun.
Book Bits
- Wun Wun! Will "For the Watch" be playing out in the same way? I mean Wun Wun could cause a lot of trouble in Castle Black.
- Valyrian Steel kills White Walkers - confirmed. Most people know in the books but it was not confirmed.
- Is there a Night's King in the books? Idk but this guy is super scary.
- Ramsay plots a raid against Stannis. I am very scared for Stannis's life this year, and I really think he's going to die at the end, but if Ramsay kills him with twenty of his Bastard's Boys in a little wintry raid I will be livid.
- Of course, this Tyrion/Daenerys pairing is necessarily shortlived, as next weeks episode is called "The Dance of Dragons". Nice to get a taste. I do feel that their paths will cross eventually, despite the near-miss at Daznak's Pit.
- Hardhome is heard of in the books as this really horrible place where there are "dead things in the water" and the Wildlings are slowly being picked off. This was pretty nasty too.
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