S01.E10: Fire and Blood (Re-watch spoilers)

[Anothermi]

WARNING!!! This thread was created for an Unsullied RE-WATCH after the end of Season 6 and will contain SPOILERS.

This Forum is for Unsullied Members to post in: those who have vowed to not only not read the books, but also to not watch previews, read information on the Viewer's Guide, or seek any information outside of what has been IN THE EPISODES ONLY.

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Unsullied = Only watch the show from HBO static to closing credits. Nothing else, nada, zilch, zip. = Welcome to post in here.

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Partially-spoiled Bookwalker = Have read some of the books but none beyond where the show has broadcast. = Please post in the main GoT forum, where the No Book Talk episode thread caters to you.

Fully-spoiled Bookwalker = Have read either all of the books or past where the show has broadcast. = Please post in the main GoT forum, where the Book Talk episode thread caters to you.

 

Unless you fall into the Unsullied category above you should be in READ-ONLY mode in this thread (and sub-forum). That also means NO LIKING POSTS.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Episode Synopsis: (re-watch version)

Ned last seen by youngest sons. Tyrion gets Handy. Jaime needs a wash. Robb formally joins The Game. Arya informally joins a convoy. Jon and Sam renew their vows. Sansa enters the Vestibule of Hell.

 

This re-watch is planned for Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016.

[gingerella]

Ahhhh, the three eyed raven. I remember well our WTF moments to the three eyed raven. 

The crypt scene with Bran, Osha, Shaggy Dog, and Rickon...I think that is the most lines we ever heard Rickon speak, and all the more heartbreaking to see knowing that poor kid's fate. He really didn't have a chance in life there did he? I totally forgot how he said he saw Ned there last night, in the crypts, while he was sleeping there with Shaggy.  He also had the gift of sight, but it seems like he never really developed it at all past being able to see his dead father on th eve of his death. I am finding it odd, this dichotomy between Rickon the near-mute, and Bran, both the youngest of the Starks, both apparently with the gift of sight of some sort even in S1. Did/does it mean anything though?  probably not.

i forgot this was where we saw Joff force Sansa to look at the heads of Ned and her septa. I remember thinking things can't get much worse, oh how wrong was I! 

Robb's King of the North scene, it's funny how the Lord Commander (when the NW votes for Jon) and the King of the North take 2 (when Lady Lyanna of Bear Island declares her allegiance to the King of the North, Jon again), scenes are pretty much the same, aren't they? 

Ahhh, cousincest, I remember how skeeved I was the first go round. but the Lannister army meeting was painful. to see how much Tywin cared about rescuing Jaime, knowing that his father probably wouldn't care that much about rescuing him. Then the declaration that Tywin always thought Tyrion was a stunted fool, but perhaps he was wrong...Then the look on Tyrions face when he hears he is to go to KO and serve as Hand, it is so against his nature, to actually work?!? Then his face when his father tells him it is because he is his son...but no taking Shae to Court. There is si lunch emotion in Tyrions face during that entire exchange. Fear, loathing and laziness in realizing he has to serve as Hand now. Shock and perhaps even filling a deep void that has haunted him his entire life as his father finally acknowledges his smarts and his lineage as heir, then dismay at being told he cannot take this woman whom he already loves, with him to KL. Dinklage is just amazing as Tyrion.  I wasn't sure quite what to make of him in S1, but he has wow'd me with each passing season.

And as if killing off Ned in S1 wasn't shocking enough, we lose Drogo. A Show was ruthless, but this is child's play compared to what is to become. 

The witty repartee between Varys and LF...the beginning of many verbal tete a tetes.

It's amazing that Arya has managed to maintain possession of Needle all this time, isn't it?

Jon's future starts...are you a brother of the nights watch, or a bastard boy who wants to play at war...and so it begins...

DRAGONS!!!!!! remember how we cheered about that the first time we saw them?!? And just like the recurring KING OF THE NORTH scene, we see the first time Dany emerges from flames naked and alive, a true Dragon. An echo of what is to come again years later, when she take on the Dothraki again and walks out of an inferno, alive as a true Dragon. It's interesting to see themes and know they will be revisited and or replayed over the next 6 years after this.

ETA:

I was thinking about how almost silly the baby Dragonettes looked last night on rewatch. I remember the first go round we were all amazed and astounded and couldn't wait to see more of the dragons growing up...but last night they looked a bit silly 6 years later.

I was also thinking about how much some of the characters have seemed to grow up over these last  six years, and some not really at all.  For example, my initial impressions of Tyrion, Sansa, Jon, Sam, Dany - they were all mixed after S1. I felt like Tyrion was a manwhore asshat but funny on occasion. Sansa was a sad little teen with misguided stars in her eyes, now living the horror of her dreams coming true, but the real life version. Jon was sort of a spoiled emo brat boy trying to become a man, good looking but could be hella annoying at times. Sam was pathetic and bafoonish and I didn't think he'd live through S2. And Dany, she was a kid sold by her asshole brother into basically becoming a sex slave of a Dothraki Khal. What he didn't bank on was that she would manage to capture the heart and soul of that Khal to the point where he, the brother and self anointed future King became superfluous. And now, after six seasons? They all have grown into characters that are so rich and so vibrant and so different in so many ways from when I first met them. 

Then I think about Cersei, Jaime, Littlefinger...all three feel like they have never grown even one iota since S1. They feel like they are people so stuck in their own metaphorical boxes, that they are literally captive slaves of their own lives. They cannot break free and grow into different people. The only one of those three who might have a chance in hell of redemption is Jaime, and I think that will come at him paying the ultimate price, his life while taking out his sister, who is now so polluted with hate and vengeance that she is a cancer upon the Seven Kingdoms, and woe to anyone who looks at her even sideways...ditto LF.

Edited September 26, 2016 by gingerella

[Llywela]

Dammit. Someone remind me whose bright idea it was for us all to torture ourselves in this way? Unlike the last couple of episodes, I didn't take any notes while watching - because I was too busy being an emotional wreck, quite frankly. I don't even have any coherent comments to make, beyond that almost every scene brought tears to my eyes - everyone is so broken now, and it is only going to get worse, the downward spiral begins here. But the richness of the tapestry woven by the story is amazing, spread across such a wide canvass, each character in his or her own little corner, reacting to their own situations yet all feeding into the wider whole. So many journeys just beginning, as Ned's execution sends the story pinballing off in all kinds of new directions, impacting on so many people in so many different ways.

[gingerella]

Ummm, it might have been my idea Llywela, I'm sorry...I know how you feel though!

7 hours ago, Llywela said:

I don't even have any coherent comments to make, beyond that almost every scene brought tears to my eyes - everyone is so broken now, and it is only going to get worse, the downward spiral begins here.

^This!^

What I find myself wondering after reading your above post, is...I wonder what it was like for the bookwalkers to experience A Show the first time around, because they knew - as we know now on a second full watch - what is supposed to be coming...I really feel for them right now, because they knew...for us it was shocking the first time, but I feel like A Viewer is being put through the emotional wringer on this rewatch because we are watching with the knowledge of just how bad things are going to get for many of these characters. Oof!

[Pallas]

First and last moments: in the one hand, head of Ned; on the other shoulder, baby Drogon. Seeing (I think) Ned's own sword wiped clean of Ned's gore, bound for Tywin's foundry...and seeing one of the young saviors of this world emerge from fire and blood, wearing her own living armament.

More to come on this and "Baelor" too, after I catch my breath. One thought: Mirri Maz Duur's reasoning in killing Rhaego not only had a kind of Spock's-very-Vulcan-fiancee's-logic to it; it also changed the world. Saved the world, perhaps. A conquering army of Dothraki only, led by Drogo, is a very different things from what we are about to see five years later.

Drogo's Dothraki were a long way from the Iron Throne. They had nothing like the resources Dany acquired and could employ. They would not have formed alliances with the Unsullied, with the Seven Sons, with armies from all the city-states of Essos, with the Martells and the Greyjoys. They would not have been counseled by Tyrion and Varys. As Drogo's teen Khaleesi, Dany herself would have been no Queen, no conqueror, no ruler, no Breaker of Chains, no Breaker of Wheels, no demi-deity. Of course the Seven Kingdoms -- not yet razed by their war -- might have united to expel this foreign horde. And the dragons? Dany might have candled eggs until the cows came home, but would they have hatched in any other circumstance?

Mirri Maz Duur (claimed that she) wanted to prevent the mounting of the world, Dothraki fashion: by slaughter followed by desecration, rape and slavery. She did; and it is she who first put a spoke in the wheel that Dany now seeks to break; she created the Dany who could break it.

Mirra Muz Duur and Melisandre were priestesses called witches, and too much trusted by a prince. Melisandre led Stannis to order the death of his only child, as a sacrifice to what he believed was his destiny; Mirra Maz Duur tricked Dany into a bargain that seemed to cost her everything, including her one child. Melisandre inadvertently brought Stannis to ruin; Mirra Maz Duur inadvertently gave Dany all she needed. And yet -- Melisandre also drove Stannis to the North, where he intervened in time to (ultimately) set up the truce between the Watch and Free Folk, and where she was in place to resurrect Jon, when he was murdered for effecting that truce.  

Believing she was empowered by her god, and acting in good faith to the lord she saw as a great king, Melisandre mostly wreaked failure and death: yet after that, when she most doubted in herself as a vessel of her god, she saved the new young King of the North. Even after witnessing her god's temple destroyed, Mirra Maz Duur had no doubt that she retained her power to kill a great king in the womb; acting in bad faith to his mother, she did. By doing so, she created a great Queen. Tough luck? Or is it possible that she was moved to do so by a power she did not know?

[gingerella]

Great twists there Pallas! Mel thought she was doing right, but did so much wrong. And Mirra thought she was doing wrong for the right reasons, and in the end instead of destroying a future Khal and his hoarde, she ended up creating a future Queen and Wheel Breaker. In A Show, good intentions often lead to bad outcomes, while bad intentions all too often lead to good outcomes, at least for the perp.

[Llywela]

5 hours ago, gingerella said:

Great twists there Pallas! Mel thought she was doing right, but did so much wrong. And Mirra thought she was doing wrong for the right reasons, and in the end instead of destroying a future Khal and his hoarde, she ended up creating a future Queen and Wheel Breaker. In A Show, good intentions often lead to bad outcomes, while bad intentions all too often lead to good outcomes, at least for the perp.

Thus continuing the ongoing theme that any decision made by any character always has consequences, some of them very far-reaching, and almost all of them impossible to fully foresee.