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2015-1-4 HBO’s hit drama Game Of Thrones continues to be the most popular among illegal downloaders, with the series amassing more than eight million downloads, according to new data.
After so much darkness this season, tonight’s Game of Thrones was unexpectedly upbeat, with bonding moments and hopeful news scattered across Westeros and Essos. Consider: Arya and The Hound became closer besties. Brienne and Podrick gained more trust. Tyrion found an unexpected champion.
Dany ordered up some sellsword sex. And shrewish Lysa got shoved out her beloved Moon Door.
It’s happiness and good news everywhere you turn! Except at Castle Black, of course, because life at The Wall blows like the freezing Northern wind.
Which Tyrion reminds us as we start this week’s recap of “Mockingbird”. Next we see the man Cersei has appointed as the crown’s champion: The Mountain, who is shot from below to make him seem even bigger. He grimly slashes his way through sacrificial prisoners’ entrails like an explorer hacking at jungle vines.Riverlands (at least, I think Arya and The Hound are in the Riverlands — that’s become my all-purpose “wandering around in the Westeros forest” location tag): So in this week’s Road Trip Adventure-Time, Arya and The Hound come upon a dying man and have an existential discussion.
Their Beckett-like debate is familiar to those who have watched a loved one suffer, or been jammed cart-to-cart in an endless line at Costco on a busy Sunday. “So why go on?” Arya says.
“Nothing could be worse than this.”“Maybe nothing is worse than this,” counters the dying man.“Nothing is just nothing,” double-counters Arya.The Hounds puts the man out of his misery, abruptly concluding this production of Waiting For Gregor.NEXT: Zombie attacks The HoundSuddenly we’re startled when a refugee from another cable network drama leaps his back and takes a bite out of his neck, while his companion stands nearby doing nothing. These guys are trying to cash in on the bounty put on The Hound.
But wait, wait, wait: These guys see The Hound. They actually manage to sneak up behind him. And this is their best plan? Elsewhere: Brienne and Podrick have a pleasant meal. Finally, a tavern scene where nobody is abused or murdered or arrested. Their server is —Hot Pie!
At first I’m worried, because Hot Pie escaped this story with all his limbs last season. My initial assumption is the Thrones gods have returned him so something awful can happen to him — getting baked in one of his ovens or raped with a rolling pin or something. Nobody gets off that easy in this tale. But Hot Pie simply babbles about his hot pies. Castle Black: Jon returns triumphant to Castle Black after his heroic mission against high odds. And what reaction does he get from his bosses? Cold looks and insults.
You just want him to yell: “ What do I have to do to impress you people?!” Next, Jon proposes sealing off the tunnel that runs under The Wall with ice to thwart the advancing Wildling army. Alliser Thorne shoots this down because it’s a good idea, and he hates those. I suppose you cannot expect the Night’s Watch, full of people who either volunteered for this miserable life or committed some horrible crime, to actually make wise decisions. The whole setup is a terrible way to defend a realm against its greatest threat, like putting death row inmates and the cast of Celebrity Apprentice in charge of NORAD. NEXT: Dany orders Daario to show his dragonKing’s Landing: Tyrion was hoping Bronn would be his champion. But his sellsword buddy visits his cell and flaunts Cersei’s bribe. He’s snazzily dressed and reveals he’s getting a wife who stands to inherit a castle if he kills her older sister.Bronn seems truly conflicted about betraying Tyrion, noting that while he genuinely likes him, “I just like myself more.” It’s sad.
Tyrion had two close companions aside from his brother — Shae and Bronn. Both relationships were built on a financial agreement, and now they have crumbled to condemn him to death.
Yet it’s hard to blame Bronn here. Even if he somehow won against The Mountain, Cersei would probably have him killed. Plus, as he points out, “When have you ever risked your life for me?” This is a fair point. If Bronn were in this cell, Tyrion would try to find a way to get him released. But he probably wouldn’t volunteer to put his life at serious risk to do it.
There’s some power in that line. This Middle Ages-inspired show gets slammed for its male characters treating female characters the way men sometimes treated women in the Middle Ages. (Damn you, accuracy!) Yet this scene has Queen Dany enjoying some table-turning objectification. Of course, Daario is exceedingly willing to comply, so it’s not exactly the same — yet it still makes the moment stand out among Thrones sex scenes, and should provide additional fodder for all those post-graduate “Gender Equality on Game of Thrones” thesis papers. Dany reveals she sent Daario to kill all the slave masters in Yunkai, who have re-taken control of the city. Jorah counsels against this: “It’s tempting to see your enemies as evil, but there is good and evil on both sides of every war ever fought.” We’re surprised when he actually changes her mind. Then she also lets him take the credit for the idea when he speaks to Daario — that will help show Daario that despite last night, Jorah is still an influential member of her circle.
Sex apparently improves Dany’s managerial skills. NEXT: “I will be your champion”Dragonstone: Melisandre boobs. The most interesting thing about this scene is the Red Woman’s admission that not all the magical powers she displays are real — some of what she does to impress people are merely tricks “that led them to the truth.” The second most interesting is thing is that Melisandre keeps some sort of lethal-to-the-touch poison on the shelf right next to her bubble bath.
Beta-female Selyse meekly ogles his wife’s mistress and gets steamrolled on her parental decision to leave little Shireen behind on their upcoming sea voyage. Wait, sea voyage? To re-take King’s Landing, I assume, with their wealth from the Iron Bank? King’s Landing: Have the scenes set in Tyrion’s cell been getting progressively darker all season?
Certainly in this episode, his cell has been literally darker in each passing scene, as Tyrion’s situation gets increasingly dire and he descends into despair. He’s barely left with torchlight in this scene.Tyrion has been visited by his protector ghosts of Christmas past (Jaime), present (Bronn) and now his future — Prince Oberyn. This was the first scene actor Pedro Pascal shot for Thrones, by and by, which is pretty amazing considering how formidable and pivotal it is. Oberyn tells of visiting the Lannisters’ home when Tyrion was just a baby. He gives a horrifying anecdote of Cersei abusing The Imp as an infant, and how Jaime ordered her to stop.
He recalls Cersei said, “It doesn’t matter, everyone says he will die soon. I hope they are right, he should not have lived this long.” This confirms Tyrion’s suspicions of how deeply her antagonism for him runs. It also infuriates and saddens him. He now knows that even as an infant, he was hated and tormented. It’s like he never stood a chance. He’s struggling not to cry, and we are too.
Recall here The Hound’s statement — how the worst part was that a family member was abusing him. “It’s rare to meet a Lannister who shares my enthusiasm for dead Lannisters,” Oberyn says. Also, let’s praise George R.R. Martin for this scene.
I suspect this twist plays less surprisingly on the show due to unavoidable story compression. Did many of you see this coming earlier, during this episode before Oberyn’s reveal? That may explain why producers wrote this scene’s ending a little differently. In A Storm of Swords, this beat was the best kind of shock — totally unexpected, yet completely obvious in retrospect. I actually liked Martin’s closing dialogue better, which came at the very end of a Tyrion chapter. Oberyn tells Tyrion that he will try to save him. NEXT: The Moon Door is hungry and must be fed; Teases of what’s to comeThe Eyrie: It’s snowing!
For Sansa, it’s like being home again — except almost all her family are dead, and she’s held captive by her mom’s scheming, horny suitor, her crazy aunt, and her aunt’s even crazier kid. She builds a rather competent snow model of “Winterhell” without getting any snow on herself and is interrupted by young Robin. She gamely tries to play with him, but Robin is only interested in making people fly and breaking toys. When he stomps all over her home, Sansa slaps him — which surprises us even more than it does him.
Robin runs off, and we learn Littlefinger was secretly watching. Of course he was.
He probably watches Sansa sleep through a secret spy-hole. Sansa finally grows a pair of fourth-season balls and demands to know why Littlefinger killed Joffrey. This is growth for Sansa. She hasn’t been bold enough to demand anything since her ordeal began, except perhaps for the occasional second helping of lemon cakes. Littlefinger explains that he thought Sansa’s mom was really hot, and if she had agreed to sleep with him all those years ago then Sansa could be his daughter. But since her mom didn’t have sex with him, it’s actually cool that she’s not his daughter, because now he finds her even hotter than he did her mom.
This is just about the creepiest way the man could have possibly expressed all this. Littlefinger says, “Call me Petyr,” then kisses Sansa. Viewers collectively go “ Eewwwwww!“.
Later, Lysa demands to see Sansa, and the Moon Door is wiiiiiiiide open. We’ve had a lot of Moon Door shots and references this season, and you know Chekhov’s gun rule of storytelling, right?
If we see a loaded rifle in the first act, that weapon must eventually be used.Turns out Lysa secretly saw Littlefinger Petyr kiss Sansa. Apparently, nobody has anything to do in The Eyrie but spy on that courtyard. She grabs Sansa and threatens to throw her out the Moon Door.
Littlefinger comes to her rescue and calms down Lysa. He gets all close to her and assures that he’ll send Sansa away. “I have only loved one woman. Only one my entire life,” he tells her gently, then adds: “Your sister.” Litttlefinger waits a moment to give Lysa time to understand what he said, then gives her a hearty shove right through the trapdoor — quite literally dumping her — and she plummets, brokenhearted, to her death.We don’t feel bad about this, though the prospect of Sansa being left alone with Litttlefinger is worrisome. (We’re going back to calling him Littlefinger. I get annoyed typing his first name, as if he’s a suburban girl named something like Alyce, Gennifer, Catie or Jayne — “ Oh, I’m so cool! I use a different letter!“).
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Minor spoiler alert for the broad strokes of what’s to come this season: In eight, we see Prince Oberyn fight The Mountain, which I hear is a rather amazing fight sequence. In nine, we get the biggest staged battle in the show’s history — Mance Rayder’s forces finally reaching The Wall (expect pretty much the whole episode to be devoted to that).
And in the finale you know, in previous seasons, the finale has been considered somewhat anticlimactic after major plot twists the penultimate hours (Ned Stark’s execution, the Battle of the Blackwater and The Red Wedding). This season, I’m told episode ten truly rivals nine, and I’m not telling you anything about it, because the less you know the better.
It's finally here. Game of Thrones week!
The final season of one of the biggest shows in the history of television premieres this Sunday, April 14 and it's all anyone's going to be talking about until the finale six weeks later.With now just days away, there's no time left to rewatch the entire show before the premiere and with one of the biggest casts of all time, multiple important plot points, and an ending a decade in the making, there's a lot to remember. But don't panic because we've got you covered with the ultimate Game of Thrones recap.We’ve condensed all of Game of Thrones so far (seasons 1-7) into the ultimate Game of Thrones recap video above, which will just take 16 minutes of your time to get you completely up-to-date before the final season. You can’t say fairer than that, surely? Our Game of Thrones recap covers what all the major have been up to season-to-season, the (Joffrey - yay!), and the White Walkers’ slow journey from mysterious monsters to full blown villains!Once you’ve watched the ultimate Game of Thrones recap, you can check out the best and try and work out what will happen during the. Just don’t tweet about it - I want to be surprised! And if you’re not one for videos then we helpfully have some GIF-based Game of Thrones recaps of each individual season below:.Just don’t @ me asking where season 7 is, ok? I’m working on it!
And in the meantime, you can always check out our explainer which covers all the big events. Anything else I can help you with?If you’re going to try and rewatch ALL of Game of Thrones before the final season starts you’re going to need viewing guide for how to.
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