Spoilers for the fifth episode of Season 5 of Game of Thrones follow, obviously.
We’ve reached a fascinating point in Game of Thrones: Not only is the show departing dramatically from the plot of George R. R. Martin’s books, but they’re catching up to them, and even moving beyond them. As I dissect the changes between the two, I’ll do my best not to spoil any important plot points. But remember: We’re entering uncharted territory where we won’t always know what a spoiler, or the "real" story, actually is.
This week, Sansa deals with another sociopathic fiance, Jon makes an unpopular choice, and the dragons are back—and they're hungry.
"Long sullen silences and an occasional punch in the face: The Mormont way," says Tyrion, muttering his jokes into the endless abyss of Jorah's wordless frown. He sighs and tries again, apologizing for his snark in one breath and asking for wine in the next. He pauses when he finally realizes the route they're taking to Meereen: through Valyria. The name has come up a number of times throughout the show; Valyria was the original home of the Targayren dragonlords, a lost city of great enlightenment and power, perhaps a bit like Atlantis. Despite living hundreds of years ago, they were far more advanced than the Seven Kingdoms in nearly every craft—including weaponry, which is why Valyrian steel is still so rare and prized. Their civilization was suddenly lost in a great, mysterious cataclysm called the Doom of Valyria about four hundred years ago, but men still fear to sail on the Smoking Sea, which is why Jorah has chosen this route for his valuable, easily pirated human cargo.
"I suppose this is it, then," says Tyrion. "This is what remains." As they gaze at the marvelous ruins, Drogon suddenly soars through the sky, a symbol of what is lost to Jorah, and perhaps what is yet to come for Tyrion. Of course, Valyria was also mentioned in a recent episode as the home of the Stone Men afflicted by greyscale, and soon enough they attack the boat, snarling like monsters. Jorah warns Tyrion not to let them touch him, but still bound and with no way to fight back, Tyrion ends up tossing himself overboard to avoid a Stone Man. A hand grabs him from beneath the water, but he wakes to find Jorah shaking on the beach where they've been stranded. After announcing a new plan to walk up the coast and try to find a fishing village, Mormont pauses and looks sadly back at Valyria, before pulling up his sleeve to reveal a secret horror on his arm: a tiny patch of greyscale.
In the books: The show is conflating two parts of Tyrion's tedious voyage through Essos. Before being taken by Jorah, Tyrion was headed toward Meereen by way of Volantis with a man named Griff, later revealed to be Jon Connington, the former Hand to to the Mad King Aerys Targaryen. They didn't go through Valyria but rather the ruined Rhoynish city of Chroyane, which was destroyed by Valyrian armies before the mysterious Doom. When Tyrion and Griff are attacked by Stone Men, they don't lose their ship but recover and continue on their way, though Griff is infected by greyscale as a result of the battle. Not long afterwards, Tyrion is kidnapped by Jorah.
We soon learn the fates of the two warriors who fell in battle last week: Grey Worm was badly wounded but survived, while Ser Barristan has died. Hizdahr zo Loraq arrives to offer his condolences to a mourning Daenerys, just as Daario suggests that they start hunting the Sons of the Harpy street by street. Daenerys has a more radical idea: seize the leader of each great house of Meereen. "But, I'm the leader of my family," says Hizdahr, not quite realizing what's happening until they grab him.
Soon, all the heads of the great families find themselves with an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a dragon, up close and personal. Daario pushes one man deeper into the tomb, where the dragons light him on fire, and then tear the man apart like a wishbone. Standing before the fiery feast, Daenerys casually discusses giving the rest of them to the dragons as well, and Hizdahr turns into a surprise badass, replying, "Valar morghulis."
Missandei sits by the bedside of Grey Worm as he recovers, and he wakes wracked with guilt that when he fell beneath the knife, he felt fear: not of death, but that he would never see Missandei again. Loving people has a way of making you afraid. Perhaps that's why the masters took so many things from the Unsullied: so they could be no one, love no one. But it seems that even their best efforts cannot stop these two; Missandei leans in and kisses him.
As she contemplates her next move, Daenerys feels almost as torn as the guy she just fed to her dragon. Ser Barristan counseled mercy and moderation above all else, so should she really seek vengeance in his name? She asks Missandei for her advice, and after some hesitation the girl says that while Dany is often wise to listen to her advisors, other times she has done well to ignore them, "because there was a better choice, one that only you can see."
When the door to Hizdahr's cell opens, he assumes that it's dragontime, and begs for mercy. Instead, Daenerys does something unexpected: she says she was wrong. "I was wrong and you were right about tradition," she tells him. She agrees not only to reopen the fighting pits for free men, but to go one step further and forge a more lasting bond with Meereen. "I will marry the leader of an ancient family," she tells Hizdahr, as he lies prostrate before her. "Thankfully, a suitor is already on his knees." She leaves, and leaves the door to the cell open.
In the books: Ser Barristan doesn't die in the books so far, and neither he nor Grey Worm is attacked by the Sons of the Harpy. Although one advisor to Daenerys suggests killing a man from each of the great houses of Meereen in reprisal for continued Harpy attacks, she refuses; instead, she takes a boy and girl from each family as cupbearers, aka hostages. She never kills anyone with her dragons—the fact that Drogon ate a child remains a terrible secret—nor does she imprison Hizdahr, but agrees to marry him only if he can make the attacks on her people stop for 90 days as proof of his peacemaking powers.
At Castle Black, Sam reads aloud a message about the troubles of Daenerys to Maester Aemon Targaryen, who happens to be her great-uncle. Once offered the Iron Throne, he abdicated to his brother Aegon instead and chose to go to the Wall to prevent dynastic complications. Aemon laments that Dany has "no family to guide her or protect her, her last relation thousands of miles away, useless, dying." Jon enters, looking for some fatherly advice. There's something he has to do, but half the men will hate him the moment he tries to do it. "Half the men hate you already. Do it," Aemon responds instantly. "Kill the boy and let the man be born." In its own way, it's the same advice that Missandei gives Daenerys: while there's a time to listen to counsel, ultimately every leader has to follow their own internal compass, even when it points them in very unpleasant directions.
Jon sits down with Tormund, hoping this conversation goes better than the one with Mance did. He tries to convince Tormund to lead the Wildlings and bring them south of the Wall, before the army of undead claims them. If they'll fight with him "when the time comes," he'll give them lands, and they won't even have to kneel. Tormond finally agrees—but only if Jon will come North with him the make the case to the Wildlings himself.
The talk with the men of the Night's Watch goes as badly as expected, since they've just spent the last several months—and really, most of their institutional history—fighting the Wildlings and watching the Free Folk kill their friends. Almost everyone is against the idea, especially Olly, the young boy that Jon took under his wing. He's the one who killed Ygritte, and the one who saw his entire family brutally murdered by the Wildlings. But Jon is adamant: if the Free Folk stay North of the Wall, they're bound to be turned into monsters when the White Walkers march south. "We can learn to live with the Wildlings, or we can add them to the army of the dead," he tells his men.
Then it's finally time for Stannis to head out for Winterfell; Davos suggests that they wait for the Wildling reinforcements, but there's no time. Winter could descend at any moment, and the odds are only in their favor if they strike now. And so they set out down the Kingsroad towards Sansa and Theon and the Boltons, accompanied by Lady Selyse, Shireen, and of course, Melisandre.
In the books: Olly isn't a character in the book, but he represents what so many men in the Night's Watch feel: that making peace with the Wildlings is bullshit. The situation with the Wildlings plays out a little differently: Tormund agrees to bring his people south of the Wall before Jon sends any ships to collect the Wildlings at Hardhome, who had fled the Battle of Castle Black. When Stannis sets out for Winterfell, Melisandre stays behind at the Wall, where she says her powers are stronger. We've never actually found out what happens when Stannis arrives at Winterfell, so anything that takes place in his storyline will be all new.
Ramsay is still fooling around with Myranda, the young woman who once helped him hunt other women in the woods for sport, which might be the ultimate metaphor for internalized sexism. She's super jealous of Sansa, and pissed off that he's not going to marry her like he promised. He insists he meant it at the time, but now he's a Bolton, not a bastard, and has to marry accordingly. "I'm furthering a dynasty," he says proudly. When she tries to strike him, he warns her that jealousy bores him. "You remember what happens to people who bore me," he says.
In a darkened room, Sansa sits alone in black, wearing a massive amulet as a power accessory. An old woman comes in and whispers that she's not alone: Friends in the North are ready to help her, if she lights a candle in the highest window of the broken tower. That's the same tower from which Bran fell so long ago, the one where he saw the Lannister twins. When Sansa goes and looks at it, Myranda sidles up to compliment her dress, make sympathetic noises about her dead mom and lure her into Winterfell's kennel for what she says will be a fun surprise! It seems like she's setting her up for a mauling, but instead Sansa is horrified to find a crumpled, broken Theon sleeping in the last stall.
At dinner that evening, Ramsay doubles down by bringing her former foster brother out to serve them, and insisting that Theon apologize to Sansa for "killing" Bran and Rickon. It's all a bit of dinner theater, not so different from the shenanigans Joffrey used to pull with Sansa, so she knows the drill. Ramsay then suggests that Theon give Sansa away at the wedding, and even Lord Bolton seems over this nonsense.
"Walda and I have some good news as well. We're going to have a baby," he interrupts, wiping the smile off Ramsay's face. "They think it might be a boy." And a trueborn son, at that. Ramsay is nothing if not a jealous creature, and later he confronts Roose, worried that the new baby will steal his father's attention—and his claim to the North.
Roose responds with the truly terrible origin story of Ramsay: apparently, Roose had a miller hanged, raped the man' wife beneath his dangling corpse, and Ramsay was the result. They're clearly cut from the same repugnant cloth, and Roose assures his son that he's the true Bolton heir, and that they must fight together. "Stannis has an army at Castle Black. He means to take the North. But the North is ours. It's yours and mine. Will you help me defeat him?" Ramsay agrees with shining eyes, because paternal affirmation and killing people are his two most favorite things in the world.
Nearby, Brienne and Pod are still biding their time, though Pod wonders aloud if Sansa might not be better off now back at her old home. "Better off with the Boltons?" Brienne asks, in her "Are you high?" voice. I feel like Brienne is maybe the only person on this show who understands how dangerous Ramsay is. She talks to an old man at their inn who says he knew Lord Eddard, and asks if he can get a message to Sansa. "I served Lady Catelyn. I serve her still. Who do you serve?" she asks. Something tells me she's going to get on very well with the stubborn, honor-bound Northerners.
In the books: Brienne and Pod never go North. Myranda also doesn't exist in the books, though there is a kennelmaster with a daughter at Winterfell. Theon executes the kennelmaster during his brief rule over Winterfell and the daughter ends up as a captive at the Dreadfort and isn't heard from again. Rather than Sansa, an impostor Arya is sent to marry Ramsay, whom Theon immediately recognizes as Sansa's childhood friend, Jeyne Poole. There are what I will simply call extremely unpleasant interactions between Ramsay, Theon, and the fake Arya, which basically every book reader desperately hopes will not happen on the show. When Roose's wife Walda becomes pregnant, there is no confrontation between him and Ramsay; instead, Lord Bolton simply assumes that Ramsay will kill the child before it reaches adulthood: "That's for the best. I will not live long enough to see new sons to manhood, and boy lords are the bane of every house."
