Spoilers for the latest episode 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 we plunge even further into the unknown as Jon heads to meet the Wildlings in Hardhome, Daenerys and Tyrion have their first strategy session, and the zombie apocalypse begins.
As Tyrion stands before the throne room of the Great Pyramid, Daenerys presents his first advisory task: tell her what to do with Ser Jorah, the man who both abducted him and saved him, who loved her and betrayed her. Her voice is hard, the way it is when you still care too much about someone you hate.
Tyrion suggests that while it's unwise for a ruler to execute her most devoted subjects (remember Mossador?) Jorah did betray her, and shouldn't be at her side when she takes the Iron Throne. Daenerys accepts the counsel and banishes Jorah from the city once again. After gazing sadly at his terminal greyscale, Jorah heads back to the slaver who bought him and essentially asks to be re-enslaved. With nothing else to live for, he wants to fight at the Great Pit before Daenerys, and if he accepts "I'll belong to you." Because if there's anything Daenerys loves, it's people selling themselves into slavery!
Over a glass (or several) of wine, Tyrion and Daenerys get down to brass tacks. She wants the Iron Throne, and knows little of its games or its players. He suggests that the surest path to succeed might be not playing that particular game at all; perhaps she can do the most good staying in Meereen and ruling well. He wisely points out that she has little support from the wealthy and powerful of Westeros, the same problem that has plagued her in Meereen. She disdainfully observes that the game of thrones is really just a wheel—a flat circle, even—where winners and losers rise and fall like spokes, crushing the rest of world beneath their conflicts.
"I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel," she says, sounding every bit the revolutionary. And sure, yelling "dracarys!" at the injustices of the world might feel satisfying, but it's not a great long-term strategy for winning hearts and minds. As Tyrion points out, overthrowing the system might be a nice dream, but it's certainly not a new one; nor can force alone achieve it. There's something lovely about seeing Dany's ambition and idealism tempered by the cool practicality of Tyrion's political savvy, like a great machine finally assembled and lurching into motion.
In the books: We've officially moved past the books in (parts of) this plot line. Jorah and Tyrion haven't met Daenerys (yet) in the books, a different character contracts greyscale during Tyrion's journey.
A stone-faced septa enters Cersei's cell, where she is now as tattered and dirty as the young queen she was so pleased to lay low. Somewhere, I like to think Margaery is laughing. The septa holds out a ladle of water to her parched lips, but does not let her drink. "Confess," she says. Cersei asks about her son instead, and the septa slaps her with the ladle, scattering the water on the ground. After she leaves, Cersei screams a deep, animal scream, trapped inside the nightmare she designed so carefully for someone else. She's spent her life clawing for control and feeling it stripped away, and then the moment she finally ascends to real power, everything goes to hell. Sure, there's a causal relationship there, but it's hard not to feel a little bit bad for her.
Qyburn enters, a friendly face with bad news: she's been charged with fornication, treason, incest and the murder of King Robert—all of which she has actually done. Worse, there's no word from Jaime, Tommen refuses to leave his room and do anything, and her uncle Kevan Lannister—the man who belittled her and left the capital rather than serve her—has returned and taken charge of the Small Council. Qyburn says that there is one way out: confession. Cersei is too proud, of course, and refuses. The disgraced maester leaves, after noting enigmatically that "the work continues." When the septa returns with another demand for confession, Cersei wishes vocally for her death, and the woman pours more water on the ground. After a desperate moment, Cersei lowers her face to the ground and licks it up. The cost of holding on to one pride is losing another.
In the books: The woman who comes to ask Cersei for her confession is Septa Unella, but she doesn't withhold water from her or strike her. Rather than becoming a recluse, Tommen is unable to act because he's a much younger boy, and willing to rubber stamp anything proposed by the Small Council. She reaches out to Jaime, but he's off in Riverrun trying to remove the last of Catelyn's family from power, not fighting in Dorne.
"My name is Lana," says Arya. Like her sister Sansa, she has had a lot of different names now: Stark, Arry, Lana, No One. She tells Jaqen a story: she's an orphan who walks the streets by the canals of Braavos selling oysters and clams. Aside from the name, quite a bit of it is true now. Jaqen agrees that it is a good story, and one that can serve the Many-Faced God.
He tells her to sell her wares in the harbor and see what she can learn, and soon a man at a table stacked with gold buys some of her oysters. Later, Jaqen describes him as a sort of gambler, but in truth he is a nautical insurance salesman, and a fraudulent one at that. When ships go down, he doesn't always pay out to the poorer families of the dead men, leaving them penniless. "To whom can they turn for recourse?" Jaqen asks, and presents her with the gift she must give him: a small glass vial of poison. After Arya leaves, smiling, the young blond girl warns Jaqen that Arya isn't ready yet, but Jaqen seems unworried. Whether she succeeds or fails (or lives or dies), it is all the same to the Many-Faced God. For the Faceless Men, isn't death the greatest gift of all?
In the books: When Arya pretends to be an urchin girl, she goes by the name Cat of the Canals, an orphan of King's Landing. Every time she goes out as Cat, she has to learn three new pieces of information before she returns. Later, when she is sent to assassinate the ship insurer, she takes a different identity as an "ugly little girl" disfigured by abuse. His assassination isn't framed as justice, and when Arya tries to justify it by calling him an evil man, Jaqen says it is not her place to judge him.
After betraying Sansa utterly—and getting some poor woman brutally murdered in the process—Theon creeps uncomfortably into his foster sister's bedroom with a tray of food. She only has one question for him: why? He insists that in his own pathetic, broken way, he was trying to help her. He remembers what happened to him after his escape attempt, how Ramsay cut away the man he was, piece by piece as payback. He apologizes for killing "those boys," a slip ending in a confession: Bran and Rickon still live.
Elsewhere in Winterfell, Lord Bolton strategizes for the impending siege, and seems confident that they can simply let the armies of Stannis fall apart on their own from starvation and cold. Ramsay, of course, wants to take the fight to them, and promises he'll only need 20 men to make it happen. He's always been a fan of impulsive, impractical violence, unlike the more surgical brutality of his father. Something tells me this approach may finally have consequences in the battles to come.
In the books: Sansa's still back in the Eyrie, while her former friend Jeyne Poole is married to Ramsay as "Arya Stark." Neither Sansa nor Jeyne have learned the truth about Bran and Rickon, from Theon or anyone else.
With Tormund at his side, Jon arrives at Hardhome and comes face to face with the Lord of Bones. When he accuses Tormund of being a traitor (and being gay with Jon), the red-haired man takes a staff from the Lord of Bones and quickly beats him to death with it. Wildling problem-solving at its best! When the elders gather, Jon makes his pitch: come live south of the Wall and fight the White Walkers when they arrive. And if they buy now, they'll even get a free gift of dragonglass weapons! The Long Night is coming, he warns, and it's time to think of the children. Many of the elders agree to head south, though the Thenns choose death threats and factionalism instead.
All of that changes as the biggest fight scene of the season begins. As Jon starts loading the boats with Wildlings, all the dogs in camp suddenly go crazy. At first it looks like an avalanche coming down the mountain, but it's something worse: an army of undead wights. They're the fastest of fast zombies, and incredibly skilled with blades to boot, and things take a turn for the horror movie as they start pouring over the gate of Hardhome World War Z-style.
Rather than getting the hell out of there, Jon goes back for the dragonglass after seeing White Walkers—the icy masters of the wights—looming above the fray on their shadowy horses. One of them attacks, his icy blade cutting through the steel of men's swords like they're made out of glass. Fortunately Jon has Valyrian steel on his side, and when the Walker swings at the Lord Commander, Longclaw doesn't break. Jon quickly strikes back, shattering the White Walker like crushed ice.
Jon races to a boat and heads out to sea with Tormund and Wun Wun the giant, turning back to watch the remaining Wildlings get slaughtered on the beach. For the coup de grace, the icy king raises his hands, forcing all the dead wildlings to lurch to their feet, their eyes snapping open as blue as sky. This is the great and terrible gift of the White Walkers: the ability to turn your foes into an army of your own. While the rest of Westeros fights among themselves, they are coming.
In the books: Jon never travels to Hardhome, but rather sends Mance's sister-in-law Val to find Tormond and his remaining men, and sends a Night's Watch brother named Cotter Pyke to gather the remaining Wildlings at Hardhome. When Pyke arrives, he writes to Jon that things are "very bad" there, that the Wildlings are eating corpses, and that there are "dead things in the woods." It's not a pretty picture, but also not quite one that evokes the catastrophic battle we see in the show. The letter is the last we hear from him.
