It’s always interesting to see how Game of Thrones moves the pieces around its chessboard. Three of King’s Landing’s most prominent figures – Tyrion, Varys, and Littlefinger – have flown the coop, Stannis Baratheon is at The Wall, Arya is somewhere on the Narrow Sea, et cetera. Some of these stories work better than others, but I have to be up front and say that I give GoT more slack than most shows of this nature, because, well, there are no other shows of this nature. Nothing on television has the scope or the ambition that Thrones has.
That’s not to say it’s perfect, though. “The Wars to Come” was occasionally very clunky; it had characters like Varys launch into expository monologues with little to no prompting, and the sooner the show addresses its Daenerys problem the better.
The most promising development, naturally, centers around Tyrion. He and Varys have made it to Pentos, home of Illyrio Mopatis, who had Viserys and Daenerys as houseguests way back in the pilot. (This show has a long memory.) Varys says he freed Tyrion for the good of the realm, and to his credit, he actually seems to mean it. Varys might not have the honor of, say, Ned Stark, but in a show this nihilistic that’s what’s kept him alive. But unlike Littlefinger, when Varys says he gives a shit about the realm he actually does. “We need someone stronger than Tommen but gentler than Stannis…Someone with an army of thousands and the right family name,” he tells Tyrion. Tyrion comes back with “Good luck finding him,” and in this episode’s most goosebump-inducing moment Varys responds “Who said anything about ‘him’?” His plan is for him and Tyrion to ride to Mereen to meet Dany and help her ascend the Iron Throne.
The sooner they get there the better, because Dany’s story is seriously stagnating. Mereen is being plagued by attacks carried out by a vigilante group called the Sons of the Harpy, who we first meet slicing the throat of an Unsullied named White Rat. Dany ups the Unsullied presence in the streets, but there’s little more she can do; this conflict is coming to a head, and it’s just a matter of time at this point. So what that means is we get to watch Dany react to things, in an unfortunate reprisal of season two’s “Where are my dragons???” arc. The reason Dany’s story in season three was so damn good is that it kept her on the move, from Astapor to Yunkai to Mereen. It’s not impossible to tell a story around someone who stays in one location – Cersei has been in King’s Landing since season one, for instance. But that works better because King’s Landing is a more interesting setting than Mereen. I have faith in this storyline, because it’s kind of a trial run for Dany ruling Westeros, but it needs a shot of life.
Speaking of queens, Cersei is having her own problems in King’s Landing. She remembers the words of Maggy the Frog, a seer she visited when she was a young girl. Game of Thrones‘ much-ballyhooed inaugural flashback opens “The Wars to Come,” and the performances by Jodhi May (as Maggy) and Nell Williams (as Cersei) are both pitch-perfect (Maggy has kind of a hot-mess/Osha vibe going on. I dig it). Williams in particular nails Cersei’s inflection and haughty condescension. When Maggy tells Cersei “You’ll be queen…for a time,” it’s hard not to see those words playing themselves out as Cersei watches Margaery flirt with Tommen. To make things worse, her newly-devout cousin Lancel – he got Robert drunk enough to let a boar skewer him, remember? – shows up both asking for and offering forgiveness. Cersei brushes him off, obviously, but the Faith of the Seven is set to play a much bigger role in this season’s proceedings, especially once Jonathan Pryce’s High Sparrow shows up.
Look, “The Wars to Come” wasn’t perfect, but it was by no means bad. It was well-directed by Michael Slovis, longtime cinematographer on Breaking Bad, but ultimately he had a pretty thankless task. Game of Thrones is such a massive, sprawling show that trying to check in on everyone just makes everything feel rushed. It’s too early to judge GoT‘s fifth season by a single episode – that’d be a dick move – so I’m going to give it some time to find its footing. The story gets weird from here on out – even weirder once you consider that Benioff and Weiss are diverting even further from the books – but in the spirit of the show itself, I’ll take it on faith.
A Few Thoughts
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As little as I love these “checking in” episodes – their scores routinely reflect that – I don’t want to dismiss their importance, narratively speaking. I get it
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I find it hilarious that there’s a “previously on.” Who’s tuning into this show without having seen the last four seasons?
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I didn’t get a chance to talk about Jon, Mance, and Stannis on the Wall. Jon shooting Mance with an arrow before he could be burned alive was one of the more decent things I’ve seen on this show. Jon’s sympathy – empathy? – for the wildlings goes a long way towards fleshing out one of GoT‘s most boring characters
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Finally upping the male nudity, I see. Way to go, GoT, it was starting to be pretty one-sided
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My favorite shot: Brienne lamenting that she can’t find Sansa, while the camera pans over to the caravan where she’s traveling with Littlefinger, probably a hundred yards away
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