Directed by: Alex Graves
Distributed by: HBO
Written by Anna Harrison
85/100
Overview
In these retrospectives, I will be looking back on “Game of Thrones” through my viewpoint as a fanatical fan of George R. R. Martin’s original book series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Mostly, I suspect this will be an exercise in venting my frustration about the adaptation of the books and pointing out where things went wrong in my mind—and I have a lot to work out.
For ease of reference, the show “Game of Thrones” can be abbreviated as “GOT” or “Thrones,” and the books in “A Song of Ice and Fire” can be abbreviated as “ASOIAF.”
The books in the series are “A Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows,” “A Dance With Dragons,” and the as-yet unpublished “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.” These can be abbreviated as “AGOT,” “ACOK,” “ASOS,” “AFFC,” “ADWD,” “TWOW,” and “ADOS.”
Chapters within the book will be referred to by their point-of-view character and a Roman numeral indicating what chapter within the POV it is (ex., Catelyn I, Jaime II, Arya III, and so on), as Martin does not number his chapters nor name them besides indicating whose POV we are about to enter.
You might think, after last episode’s shocking end, season three of “Game of Thrones” might take a step back and give its audience room to breathe. You might think… and yet you would be wrong. Even though this season splits “A Storm of Swords” in half, the source material comes close to a thousand pages and still moves at near-breakneck speed. Once the gas pedal is pressed, there’s no letting up. We can only speed forward.
“And Now His Watch Is Ended” wastes no time in reminding us how the previous episode concluded, opening with a closeup of Jaime Lannister’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) severed hand as it bounces on his chest. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who serve as writers this episode, do not play coy with Jaime’s fate, tempting as it might be to draw the suspense out and tantalize viewers—no, they show us Jaime right away, because there is simply no time this season to draw out anything. Jaime immediately falls off his horse, drinks piss by accident, steals a sword, then tries and fails to escape before deciding to give up.
While there have been a few key differences between the show and the books with this plotline—Locke (Noah Taylor) and co. instead of the Bloody Mummers, condensing Jaime’s moment of sapphire-induced heroism and the loss of his hand into one scene—much of the dialogue has been nearly verbatim from the books. This continues to be the case, with some slight, critical changes.
Consider the book:
Jaime lay on his back afterward, staring at the night sky, trying not to feel the pain that snaked up his right arm every time he moved it. The night was strangely beautiful. The moon was a graceful crescent, and it seemed as though he had never seen so many stars. The King’s Crown was at the zenith, and he could see the Stallion rearing, and there the Swan. The Moonmaid, shy as ever, was half-hidden behind a pine tree. How can such a night be beautiful? he asked himself. Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?
“Jaime,” Brienne whispered, so faintly he thought he was dreaming it. “Jaime, what are you doing?”
“Dying,” he whispered back.
“No,” she said, “no, you must live.”
He wanted to laugh. “Stop telling me what to do, wench. I’ll die if it pleases me.”
“Are you so craven?”
The word shocked him. He was Jaime Lannister, a knight of the Kingsguard, he was the Kingslayer. No man had ever called him craven. Other things they called him, yes; oathbreaker, liar, murderer. They said he was cruel, treacherous, reckless. But never craven. “What else can I do, but die?”
“Live,” she said, “live, and fight, and take revenge.”
Jaime IV, A Storm of Swords
And now consider the scene from the show, whereupon, instead of calling Jaime a craven—which, as I have just noted, is right there in the source material, which the scene has thus far followed faithfully—Brienne says, “You sound like a bloody woman.”
I have already opined ad nauseam about the series’ tendency to add misogyny where there is none in the source material, or to strip its women of agency. This, however, is something new: to have the rest of the scene follow the books so faithfully and to specifically change a perfectly good line to something that is both out of character and sexist.
Why? Well, you could argue that this is some sort of commentary on Brienne’s complicated relationship to her gender, only that nowhere in the text does she disdain other women, except the ones who were cruel to her. You could argue that this is said only to prick Jaime’s pride, but if that was the case, why not use “craven”? Why opt for the misogynistic option that you invented from thin air? You could argue that this just reflects the misogynistic world of Westeros, but is that not pretty damn clear from the attempted rape of Brienne? Why add this?
And yet—it is the other women in this episode—Cersei (Lena Headey), Margaery (Natalie Dormer), Olenna (Diana Rigg), and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke)—who make “And Now His Watch Is Ended” so excellent. So what gives? Is it because these women outwardly conform to their gender more than Brienne, whose mannish features, extraordinary strength, naïveté, kind nature, and other various contrasting traits make her difficult to translate to screen? Benioff and Weiss often have a surface-level understanding of these characters: for example, they seem to take Cersei’s inner monologue in “A Feast for Crows” as the gospel truth, rather than reading between the lines and realizing that her paranoia is running Westeros into the ground; thus, show-Margaery really is a harlot hellbent on seducing the Lannister boy king to amass power, just as the rest of her family must be. Perhaps it’s that: Brienne, when she becomes a point of view character in “AFFC,” often wrestles with her gender and how it affects her navigation of the world. Well, that must mean that she looks down upon other women, and views any display of emotion like despair as weakness, and weakness is, of course, a feminine trait.
But I don’t know. By and large I have been flabbergasted at the casual invented misogyny on display even in these early seasons, something that even now—as the ending of “Game of Thrones” forced a reevaluation of its quality—seems often to go unremarked upon in the culture at large. Do the good scenes with women in this episode outweigh the chinks in the armor that Brienne’s shows? I try to think back to my first watch of the show, but I dropped off right before the Red Wedding, bored as I already knew what was going to happen. By the time I went back to watch it all, I had seen season eight and was watching with hatred in my heart, with every slipup a confirmation that the show would end badly. Maybe this was an honest misreading, maybe this misstep was an honest misreading of the text, but how do you read something like Brienne’s words above and think, Let’s throw in a dig at women being emotional and hysterical. More importantly, how do you do that and then craft such an excellent scene between Cersei and her father just minutes later?
In a clever bit of editing (drink for every time I use that phrase in this retrospective), the show cuts from Jaime staring into a fire and having an existential crisis to Cersei doing the same. The scene that follows could not exist in the books, as Tywin (Charles Dance) is not a point of view character and Cersei does not become one until her father is dead and gone. Immediately after Brienne berates Jaime for acting like a woman, Cersei berates her father for never treating her like an equal because she is a woman. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be the one who deserves your confidence and your trust, not your sons? Not Jamie or Tyrion, but me,” she tells Tywin.
She certainly thinks similar things in “AFFC,” but can never voice them to Tywin: “He [Tywin] had been a great man. I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei’s sire” (Cersei II, “AFFC”). Similarly, after a rather harebrained scheme: “If Father could only see me now, he would not be so quick to speak of marrying me off again” (Cersei IV, “AFFC”). But to see Headey and Dance go toe-to-toe is exhilarating in a way that Cersei’s inner monologue cannot quite reach.
Of course, Cersei’s criticism of Tywin does not go over well. He asks for her opinion, she immediately brings up the Tyrells, who are the main source of food for King’s Landing at the moment as well as martial protection (this, at least, is very in character for book-Cersei), and Tywin barks, “I don’t distrust you because you’re a woman. I distrust you because you’re not as smart as you think you are.” While the latter part is true, let us also remember that Tywin is a raging misogynist and not the “harsh but fair” figure the show has made him out to be (in large part, of course, due to his scenes with Arya (Maisie Williams) last season, where he seemed to afford her some amount of respect despite her gender and station, however improbable it may seem). Again the show expresses a surface-level understanding here, interpreting what Tywin says about himself—the justifications he gives for the atrocities he commits—as straightforward truths.
Still, the scene manages to illustrate the gilded cage that Cersei has been trapped in her whole life and whose keys are held by her father and, before him, her husband. Any political instinct she has might have been inspired by Tywin, but he was so busy stamping out any enemies he might have and hating his most competent son that he neglected to help Cersei, even though she possesses no small amount of intellect (just not as much as she believes).
Her other scene in this episode finds her stuck with more women than men, and again proves baffling in its competency in handling the gender roles of Westeros as the Lannisters and Tyrells stroll around the Great Sept of Baelor.
It’s the kind of moment that made early “Thrones,” despite all of its many flaws that often fill me with unshakeable rage while I’m watching, sing, and the type of thing that will become increasingly rare after season four. It’s deceptively simple: the two families are planning a wedding. That’s all. But it is also a beautiful, succinct way to show their changing relationships and alliances; Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and Margaery bond—or at least Joffrey thinks they bond—over the remains of generations of dead Targaryens, and Cersei and Olenna bond—sort of—over the idiotic men who have surrounded them their whole lives, men who have sought the glory available to them due to their masculinity: violence, something that women can only do on the margins. “We mothers do what we can to keep our sons from the grave, but they do seem to yearn for it. We shower them with good sense, but it slides right off like rain off a wing,” Olenna laments. “And yet,” Cersei replies, “the world belongs to them.” Thus Margaery must nudge Joffrey ever-so-subtly away from his mother, never outright exercising power over him but exerting it nonetheless.
It is not a particularly subtle scene, but it is an effective one populated by some of the show’s stronger actors. Who could complain about Lena Headey and Diana Rigg going head-to-head? Besides, it gives us our first glimpse at the Great Sept’s interior, and it is a thing of beauty: huge, vaulted ceilings, windows shaped like seven-pointed stars, enormous statues of the Seven themselves, intricate wrought iron surrounding the higher levels. Apparently, it was all built at The Paint Hall sound stages—you’ll just have to trust me on that one, as my source was Wikipedia and I couldn’t find Wikipedia’s source or anything else verifying this bit of information. If that’s true, it’s a handily impressive feat; writing from his desk, George R. R. Martin can create buildings as extravagant and large as he wishes, but bringing them to life on screen is a different task. The show too often opts for “realism” over anything colorful or fantastical—part of the reason I was so disappointed in Qarth last season—but the Great Sept, while not quite approaching Baroque, is nevertheless a sight to behold. Amidst our modern world of green screens and LED volumes, this set is beautifully tangible.
It’s Daenerys, however, who gets the biggest mic drop moment of the episode. After spending season two doing jack shit, she is finally allowed to let loose, and my goodness does it feel good. We have spent four episodes watching her getting berated in Astapor’s bastardized Valyrian, not knowing that Daenerys could understand every word. Thus, when she pulls the rug out from under Kraznys mo Nakloz (Dan Hildebrand), she pulls it out from under the audience, too. As sweet as the scene in the books is, this reveal here is unique to the medium, and shows “Thrones” at its best: when it uses the camera and the tricks of its trade to give us a new perspective on the source material or even improve it in ways that cannot be done via the written word.
In the book, we know that Daenerys must have something up her sleeve. We know that she hates these slavers, that she would never give up something so precious as Drogon to them, and even though Martin does his best to hide the twist, it—simply by nature of the book’s structure—does not come as much of a surprise. But we are not privy to her thoughts in the show, and to us, the selling of Drogon looks legitimate. As far as we know, she has not understood a word that the slavers have said, how they have insulted and belittled her, and she has just given up her greatest asset. The victory felt when she turns the tables is nothing less than monumental.
On top of that, High Valyrian in the books is just a smattering of words here and there, as Daenerys understands the words as easily as if we were listening to English, and therefore that is how they appear on the page. (Besides, while Martin clearly adores Tolkien, he does not share the man’s love for linguistics.) The show, however, is a different story—the language must sound different or else it won’t land, and so David J. Peterson created High Valyrian (and Dothraki and many other variations) for the show, and Emilia Clarke delivers many of her lines in an entirely fictitious language while sounding like she has spoken it her entire life. The end result is wholly “Thrones” and wholly amazing precisely because it could only exist within the show and not the books.
Of course, the scene in “A Storm of Swords” is pretty great, too:
When Rakharo put an arrow through his mouth, the slaves holding his sedan chair broke and ran, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. The old man crawled to the first rank of eunuchs, his blood pooling on the bricks. The Unsullied did not so much as look down to watch him die. Rank on rank on rank, they stood.
And did not move. The gods have heard my prayer.
“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air… and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”
“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire.
Daenerys III, A Storm of Swords
It is these moments of serendipity that make things like Brienne’s misogyny that much more frustrating. It is a glaring missteps in an otherwise excellent episode—even the mind-numbing, endless torment of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) gets a moment of grace under the guise of an escape attempt. Admittedly, the whole “your sister came to rescue you” nonsense that Ramsey (Iwan Rheon) feeds to Theon is contrived and especially boring upon rewatch, but the scene where Theon finally breaks down and expresses remorse is fine work, especially on Allen’s part. Cinematographer Anette Haellmigk frames most of this with Theon behind the bars of a sewer grate, trapped as he is in a prison largely of his own making. “My real father lost his head at King’s Landing,” Theon tells Ramsay. “I made a choice… and I chose wrong.” Was it necessary to go through all of that torture to get to this point? No, but that does not make this scene any less excellent.
Elsewhere, we also say goodbye to Jeor Mormont (James Cosmo) as the Night’s Watch Mutiny that has been brewing since episode one finally comes to a head. (Burn Gorman, as usual, plays a flawless shit-stirrer.) Varys (Conleth Hill) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) discuss revenge in a scene that would have been a beautiful setup for Tyrion’s descent into villainy had the show had any balls. Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) finally gets introduced and immediately aura farms like nobody’s business. It is an episode chock-full of well-shot and well-written scenes, effortlessly bringing some arcs to a head, raising the stakes once more with the death of an important character, deepening existing relationships, and introducing a new and pivotal player in Beric.
The show is inches away from firing on all cylinders—and yet. Somehow, we still get lines like, “You sound like a bloody woman.” Somehow, we get another stupid joke about Podrick Payne’s (Daniel Portman) sexual prowess. Somehow, the show still cannot rise above its basest impulses.
Stray Observations:
- Spoilers for “House of the Dragon” in this episode as Joffrey explains how Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) meets her grisly end. Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett) of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” fame also gets a mention.
- Margaery and Sansa (Sophie Turner) also get some bonding time, and it’s a testament to Dormer that Margaery comes across as both manipulative and genuinely kind as she proposes Loras (Finn Jones) as a husband for Sansa. In the books, it is crippled and kind Willas Tyrell who becomes Sansa’s betrothed. He has never appeared in the flesh, so to speak, but everyone else (including Oberyn (Pedro Pascal), who was accidentally responsible for the crippling in a tourney) speaks so positively about him that you can’t help but like him. Poor Sansa—her life could have been so much better if that marriage went through.
- I really don’t know what’s up with the location where Sansa is praying. Surely that random bluff isn’t the godswood… c’mon, guys.
- It feels… not great… that all of the Unsullied slaves are black. That is not the case in the books. “Mhysa,” of course, will be the worst offender of all on this point, as Benioff and Weiss apparently have trouble conceptualizing slavery as anything other than the racialized American form.
- Tywin has spent a lot of time this season writing letters, including in this episode. Undoubtedly, this one is going to Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton): as he seals it, he says, “And if I would start a war for that lecherous little stump [Tyrion (Peter Dinklage)], what do you think I would do for my oldest son and heir?” The answer, of course, is the Red Wedding.
- Ros (Esmé Bianco) continues to have a little plot of her own as she informs Varys of Littlefinger’s (Aidan Gillen) plans for Sansa. It’s very nice to see her do something other than get naked for male viewers.
- They were cowards for adapting this scene: “After the second time he [Jaime] fell from the saddle, they bound him tight to Brienne of Tarth and made them share a horse again. One day, instead of back to front, they bound them face-to-face. ‘The lovers,’ Shagwell sighed loudly” (Jaime IV, “ASOS”).
- Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) has another one of the world’s most boring three-eyed crow dreams. Can these get any duller?
- While the Theon scene is heartbreaking, he really is the world’s stupidest man if he can’t recognize that he’s back in Winterfell, even if he was blindfolded for part of the journey. Relatedly, Iwan Rheon looks pretty at ease while he’s riding a horse—sometimes, it’s very obvious when actors are uncomfortable on horseback (Alfie Allen in that very scene, for example) and it’s nice to see someone look relaxed.
- Olenna and Varys get another scene this episode. It’s so fun to have the Tyrells in King’s Landing where they can snipe with other excellent actors and scheme in a slightly less evil way than the Lannisters. Diana Rigg is such amazing casting.
- I’m going to start a Pyp (Josef Altin) watch. Where is Pyp? He should have been at Craster’s Keep! We haven’t seen him since season one!
Episode Ranking:
- “And Now His Watch Is Ended”
- “Dark Wings, Dark Words”
- “Valar Dohaeris”
- “Walk of Punishment”
“Game of Thrones” Season Three Trailer
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