Game of Thrones – S07E06 – Beyond the Wall

This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series:
Game of Thrones Season 7

Again with the leaked episodes? Really HBO?

To pre-cap this article, I shall steal a very clever line from ‘The Verge’, which is a site that I’ve been using to remind myself what happened in the last episode because I never write on time, wassup.

“We’ve stuck with the zombie-and-dragon show long enough to see ourselves stick with what is not a zombie dragon show.”

The Verge

Okay, off with their heads and on with the story.

Jon Snow and the boyz:

Look, I might be biased here, but perhaps some camping trips can be skipped. A lot happened out there… Jon tried to give Jorah’s dad’s sword back, for some reason still not catching on to Jorah’s daddy issues. Tormund, I must say, is my absolute favourite character at this point. He’s out here addressing all kinds of pressing modern day issues.

For example; the boys were discussing the possibility of some lady action out beyond the wall. I guess poor old Jonny was still a bit cold about how his ginger woman (Ygritte) died three years ago, (I think he’s over it now, but we’ll get to that later) because he said: “There’s not a living woman within 100 miles of here”. A statement, which, in my mind at least, referred to the white walkers. So I was off in my own little conspiracy for half a second, until, of course, Tormund looks at Gendry and goes “You have to make do with what you’ve got” wink. He then goes on to contradict the homo feels, ranting lovingly to the Hound about Brienne of Tarth. He then says, (excuse my accent) “WONTS TO MEK BEHBIS WITH HER”. Tormund then addresses another issue, trying to debate with the Hound about how “gingers are beautiful”. But as we all know, the Hound isn’t budging any closer to that head of fire-flavoured fairy floss.

Back to the swords giving, I’d like to just quickly comment that 87% of this content will just be me shipping Dany and Jon. Apparently, Jorah hasn’t picked up on how he’s out of the picture because he says to Jon “Give the sword to your son” and Jon, in response, just looks sad. I mean, how many times has his girl said that the dragons are the only children she’ll ever have. As cool as Ned was, I don’t think that Jon really feels like following in his footsteps with the whole bastard-making stuff.

Now would be a good time to mention that, this time, I don’t feel that the entire character-by-character structure that I’ve been using so far is going to work. So I’ll come back to Jon.

Sansa and Arya:

Is it just me or do the writers just pick a different dead dad to mourn every week? We were all talking about Mr Crazyass Targaryn, and now suddenly it’s all about Ned.

Anyway, Arya tells Sansa all about how Ned had watched her struggle through archery. Once again, the Stark girls are used as icons of feminism groan as Arya says the whole “Girls can do whatever boys can do” speech, except way more awesome; “He was smiling, so I knew it wasn’t wrong. The rules were wrong.”.

The girls have that argument, with Arya standing her ground on those good wholesome values of “you don’t betray your family” and “you shouldn’t like wearing pretty dresses”. To be fair, she has to throw everything she’s got at Sansa before the girl responds with her lack of stance. Arya threatens to show the letter that Sansa wrote six years ago to the northern lords. Of course, the only resistance that Sansa displays is the whole “Oh waaahhhh, I’ve been through so much, and I won a battle that I didn’t fight because my mum’s stalker is in love with me”.

In my second most favourite interaction of this episode, Sansa says “Sometimes anger makes people do unfortunate things”, to which Arya responds, “Sometimes fear makes them do unfortunate things. I’ll go with anger.”. Yeah, that line has me full on Arya’s side. Also, girls got the skill to kill. You open yourself up to the possibility of being in her bad books, and she opens up your neck dude. Pick your battles, because some of your enemies will pick you apart with a sword. Then before you have the chance to back off and take the stick out of your bum, you become a human kebab. Just saying.

Okay, back to Jon and the boyz:

As we come back to the snowy camping trip, we are greeted with a great lesson in English; having explained to us the many names of the male genitalia. Jon and Beric talk about dying and coming back to life real subtly.

And now we switch to Daenerys and Tyrion:

Tyrion is drinking (surprise surprise) and showing off his talents of “drinking and knowing things” when he knowingly asks if Dany has a crush on Jon.

She starts the conversation saying:

Daenerys: “You know what I like about you (Tyrion)?”
Tyrion: “No idea.”
Daenerys: “You’re not a hero.”

She goes on to explain that heroes do stupid things and die. They all try to outdo each other in bravery and stupidity. She then lists a peculiar list of names.

Then Dany gets cranky when the dwarf suggests that she should choose an heir.

We’ll come back to that one.

Jon, the boyz, and CRAZY ZOMBIE POLAR BEARS!:

Okay, I don’t think I have to talk about that one too much, it’s obviously self-explanatory. What I want to know, however, is whats the go with the flaming swords? Is this “lord of light” a real guy or not???! Make up your mind dudes. But it ripped up Thoros (did I know he was a person before he was killed by a zombie polar bear bite infection? Of course not. If I died like that I’m sure they wouldn’t care whatever else I did. #deathgoals.)

We then get a completely unnecessary Sansa and Littlefinger scene. But then, what scene between those two has ever been necessary?

We come back, and Jorah and Thoros are discussing the benefits of being high functioning alcoholic soldiers. This to me sounds appropriate, even if Thoros is out here killing stuff and all Jorah does is get stabbed in the heart by unrequited love and going on camping trips with all Dany’s boy-toys.

Meanwhile, Jon kills a White Walker, which then destroys five more at once (um obviously, it’s as if y’all never seen a zombie movie.) Then Jon sends Gendry back on the man-trek to send a raven to his GF because Gendry is “the fastest”. Obviously, during this man-hike, they had raced to see who pulled the chickas in primary school.

Then Jon and the boyz™ meet up with the army of the dead and homeboy Night King, and just as an icebreaker, send a heap of White Walkers plunging into the icy water, (because that would definitely kill them, you know because walking snow men can die from hypothermia huh?), Oh, and then Jon and the boyz™ get stuck on a little island playing snow zombie survivor, and that dude that I don’t know dies, they have this cute little cremation ceremony.

And back to Sansa:

Sansa has been invited to Kings Landing to have a chat with Cersei, but Sansa’s like ummm no thanks boo I’ll be right, so she makes Brienne go, which can’t be good for Tormund and his future giant babies. Brienne is all “No, but Littlefinger is a creep” and Sansa is just over here like girl you don’t think I know that???

Back to MY GIRL (+ Jon and the boyz™):

So Dany struts on out with her crazy majestic snow-dress, helllooo pretty lady, nice wedding dress boo! She has to go save her hopeless BF, an action which, may I say, completely un-typical with her character so far, but it’s cool Dany, the world is ending, so you might have to come to terms with the possibility of you and your nephy ending up being the only two people left.

Then the Hound throws a rock at the White Walkers, but I guess he’s better at fetching than throwing, so then they all nearly get killed. Of course, just as we all have to face the second resurrection of baby Jesus snow, Dany comes along to save his ass (because she wanna save herself a nice sweet slice of it).

Somewhere in the craziness, a doom impedes that only anyone who has watched this torture for the last couple years could have seen coming… the Night King throws his ice wand into the dragon, and he’s gone.

Okay ice princesses, chill out.

So Jon, who is on his way to the Night King at this point, notices that Drogon and Dany are next for the kill, half-heartedly convinces them to leave him behind. The saddest part about this scene is that Jon, through ‘being a hero’ has to watch his only chance at a new girlfriend fly away. Gladly, Uncle Stark puts Jon on a horse and goes off to die (finally).

Sansa:

Oh yeah, Arya has a school bag full of faces, and you have a lot of learning to do… but just to up the classy fight that’s going on here, Arya threatens to hack her sister’s face off.

But back to Dany and Jon (but not the boys this time, get out, give them their privacy):

A+ hand holding, A+ taking advantage of her late child’s death, A+ for the new zombie dragon, A++ for how absolutely perfect Jon and Dany were… thankyou, television, for once again raising the standards and lowering my chances of ever finding anyone to live up to this stuff.

Also, I’m sorry, but the writers just put every human feeling into that one scene… like think about it, this guy nearly died trying to save the world you’re going to conquer, but poor little boy needed your help. And because he needed your help, your baby got killed. Then you aren’t even mad at him, you just walk in and eye off his wounded abs… you cry, and we don’t know if it’s because he smells, or because his hand-holding skills are just too much to handle, or if it’s because your kid just died or what?

Anyway, we’ll get around to irrelevant Lannister’s and zombie-dragons next week.

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“A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of a sheep,”