Frewns - GoT S7E2 spoilers

Old Man Rating: 8.9634/10

Obvs it's late and I've just watched it but...

Dany's War Council: enjoyed the flashes of the Mad Queen. Minus points for the Varys dialogue: all good stuff but they've just been on a boat for some time and this has only just come up?

Olenna has gone Full Nihilist and given Dany some bad advice. And frankly I'm with Yara - they should have just taken Kings Landing, rather than dividing their unstoppable force into two more easily digested morsels.

Anyone who went through what Theon did would never, really, recover and it's good that they showed that. One of the themes of the series is the realistic consequences of war, for the smallfolk as well as the nobility - the Hound scene in ep 1 covered the former as this covered the latter. Notwithstanding I expect him to try to rescue her later this season. I have no clue whether he'll succeed or not, live or die. I quite like that unpredictability.

Arya: loved the Hot Pie reunion and that the inevitable Nymeria reunion wasn't All Good (as I predicted last week - yay, me). I'm still not entirely clear what "it's not you" meant - maybe that the following Arya North is not what Nymeria-as-now would do. They are both, in a sense, lone wolves. I hope I'm wrong about that because we all know the quote about the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

Norf: better this time. Jon showed some trust in Sansa and listened to her and (rightly) put her in charge. I've been thinking about last week's decision some more and I still think Jon is right tactically but Sansa is right strategically. In the end I think Jon is the better war leader but Sansa would make the better ruler and that may be where it's going.

Two of the Sand Snakes are dead. Yes!

A bit disappointed that Jorah essentially has to live through getting flayed - I thought Gilly would discover something around the ingestion of dragonglass, both proving her worth intellectually as well as Sam's emotional relief, and challenging the Citadel's patriarchy.

Tarly - f**k Tarly.

Overall a well written and really well paced episode - I thought last week was brilliantly paced and this was too.

Posted By: Old Man, Jul 24, 03:29:26