*Note: This review contains spoilers for the episode and light references to the books.
The title “Dance of Dragons” kind of implies something fun, right? It conjures up images of brightly colored, cartoon dragons flying and swaying, playing with one another. But if there’s one thing this episode wasn’t, it’s that. The big moment in this episode was possibly the most terrible and affecting of the season, and that’s saying something considering what we’ve seen thus far. But first, the small stuff.
We got a resolution to Jaime and Bronn’s sojourn to Dorne, and boy was it underwhelming. That entire plot line seemed like an afterthought from day one, as if the writers needed to find something for Jaime and Bronn to do, and this was the best they could come up with. We got a few highlights, like their fight upon entering Dorne and the scene where Jaime enlisted Bronn in the first place, but overall, the story didn’t really have much tension to it. Jaime and Bronn arrive at Dorne with little drama, they get into a little fight, they head to the Water Gardens, they get into another little fight, they get captured for a little bit, they’re released with the only punishment being Bronn’s broken nose. I’m assuming this is all we’ll see of Dorne this season, and that’s a huge misuse of potentially cool characters and a really cool, different setting to anything else on the show. Dorne is this sandy oasis compared to the gross city of King’s Landing and the wintery bleakness of The North. So now Jaime, Bronn, Trystane, and Myrcella are headed back to King’s Landing. I imagine Cersei wouldn’t be too happy about Myrcella’s continued engagement to Trystane, you know, if she wasn’t rotting in a cell for being incestuous. I’m mostly curious to see what happens to Jaime when he gets back, he’s guilty of a lot of the same sins as his twin, but I can’t imagine him going away without a bigger fight than Cersei put up.
We spent a little time with Jon at Castle Black, but that was mostly just to see the arrival of the Wildlings, and the general hatred that pervaded through his sworn brothers watching them come through the gate. Ser Alliser gave one more jab at Jon about this plan being a mistake, but I’m glad he at least opened the gate. I understand Jon wanting to ease tensions with Alliser in order to get shit done, but Alliser definitely doesn’t seem to have lost his distaste for Jon’s decisions. And when shit hits the fan, I won’t be surprised to see Alliser sacrifice every wildling in sight if it means saving his own skin. “All the realms of men” doesn’t seem to have the same meaning to him.
Over in Braavos, Arya’s assassination of The Thin Man was delayed by the arrival of Ser Meryn Trant and Mace Tyrell. As a quick aside, I love the character of Mace Tyrell; he’s so jovial and ridiculous, it’s a great contrast to all of the gritty, self-serious characters we see on the show. I can’t wait for him to be brutally murdered at some point in the future. But getting back on track, Meryn Trant is an asshole, right? That’s been established for quite some time now, both from him slapping Sansa back when Joffrey was king and killing Syrio Forel. My question is, did we really need the scene with him picking out young girls? It just goes back to my diatribe from last week about the difference between being gratuitous and serving the story. I suppose this instance served as a reminder for casual viewers about who this dude was and why he was on Arya’s “shit list” to begin with, but it still seemed unnecessary, or at least too long. I loved Jaqen’s look to Arya at the end of the scene, though. He knows she’s lying about going after The Thin Man, but he seems content to let everything play out. This is another test for Arya, and just like with her not letting go of Needle, she seems prepped to fail.
Now, onto the big stuff. Let’s talk about Dany first. Overall, I loved the fighting pits scene. It reminded me a lot of the film Gladiator, with onlookers screaming for bloodshed. And we had the potential redemption story of Ser Jorah, who pretty quickly moved his way up the ranks to fighting before the queen. Good for him, except for the fact that he clearly isn’t the fighter he used to be. He pretty much should have lost all three of his bouts, especially the second one. That sucker really lucked out. Good on Dany for sticking to her “Jorah is so not my friend anymore” guns, that is until Jorah speared a dude in the chest as he was trying to assassinate her. I probably would have forgiven him, too.
The Sons of the Harpy have gotten increasingly menacing and creepy with each appearance, and that’s good because at the beginning of the season, they were basically supposed to just be regular people. I still think the Unsullied turned out to be chumps the whole way through; no wonder the slave master gave Dany such a good deal on them, they’re getting their asses kicked constantly. The coliseum was like a clown car of masked dudes there at the end, and not even 50 Unsullied would have been able to hold them off. It was actually a bit ridiculous. I mean, lots of the Harpies had been killed already, are we really supposed to believe that there are hundreds and hundreds of them? Either way, the movement has clearly grown beyond Dany’s control. And then just like Yoda at the end of Attack of the Clones, Drogon swooped in at the last moment to save the Jedi, I mean Unsullied, and he BURNED SHIT LIKE HE’S NEVER BURNED SHIT BEFORE.
It’s pretty insane to keep in mind that he’s basically still just a child. Once Dany has all three fully grown dragons, everyone else is pretty much screwed. I’d wager even the White Walkers would have trouble dealing with them. I’m not sure where this story will wrap for the season, though. Dany peaced out, but Tyrion and everyone else were left behind. Game of Thrones spin-off potential: Tyrion, King of Meereen?
And now for this season’s Red Wedding moment, brought to you by The Lord of Light. Fucking Stannis, am I right? Just when you thought you were ready to forgive him for murdering his little brother with a demon baby, trying to murder Gendry (Robert Baratheon’s bastard) for his king’s blood, sexing up the red witch Melisandre (though you can’t exactly fault him for being tempted), consistently burning up anyone that disagrees with him, constantly giving poor Davos a hard time, and just generally being a sour puss, he goes and does that. He had so many chances to deny Melisandre that sacrifice, but he just couldn’t hold out. Kudos to the writers for giving him such a redemptive story line, what with rescuing the Night’s Watch last season, taking a liking to Jon, and marching to take back the north for the northerners. It made his inevitable corruption all the more disheartening.
So now what? He just watched his only daughter be burned alive, all for the sake of begging a fire-demon god to keep his quest alive. He doesn’t even know that it’ll work! I mean, R’hllor has proven that he exists, both through Melisandre’s future-seeing powers and through Thoros of Myr being able to bring Beric Dondarrion back to life a million times, but there’s no guarantee that Stannis is the guy that’s meant to lead the Seven Kingdoms. And after witnessing just how far he’s willing to go for power, I can’t imagine any of the onlookers really want him to be king anymore. For now, they just want to survive. Interesting too that it was Selyse that broke down at the end and tried to save Shireen, considering she’s been the most devout follower of Melisandre up to this point. And all this begs another question: do we actually want Stannis to beat the Boltons now? I mean, sure, Roose is responsible for Robb and Catelyn dying, and Ramsay raped Sansa and tortured Theon into madness, but Stannis chose to let his only daughter burn alive. There are no good men left in this world and it’s both horrifying and completely compelling. Hopefully we get a resolution to that battle in the finale.
It’s insane that we now only have one episode left after this season’s relatively slow start. Things have been moving pretty quickly from an intensity standpoint lately, but a lot of the story lines aren’t really progressing. Dany still isn’t married (and it looks like that won’t happen at all now with Hizdahr seemingly dead), the Boltons and Stannis have yet to meet on the field, Cersei and Margaery are still rotting in cells, Sansa is still trapped at Winterfell with Brienne helplessly waiting, and Arya needs to commit her first assassination. I’m really not sure where this season will end, especially with them needing to set up some stuff for next season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see plenty of things roll over into season six, but expect something big to happen with Arya and between Stannis and the Boltons. Those plot lines have been building all season, it’ll be pretty disappointing to leave those threads hanging. And for the record, I make those predictions not from the books, just from general TV viewing experience. The show has moved almost completely past the books now, and it’s pretty damn exciting. One more episode to go!