Game of Thrones: Kill The Boy – Analysis

This week on Game of Thrones, we concentrated on only a few stories. It’s a rare episode when King’s landing is completely absent, but tonight we didn’t set foot in the capital. Nor did we catch up with those as far south as south goes in Dorne—not Jaime, not Ellaria, not Myrcella. As for Arya, we must assume she’s washing the dead with gusto, waiting for her chance to be called up. “Kill the Boy” focused on four locations: Meereen, The Wall, Winterfell and Old Valyria.

Dany: “Children. Some say I should give up on them. But a good mother never gives up on her children. She disciplines them if she must. But she does not give up on them.”

This lack of location jumping is more indicative of the bringing together of characters than it is the show moving away from the round robin format that has characterized all four seasons. Once again, all the locations were joined by one over arching theme—making the hard choices and not giving up on your beliefs. We saw this reflected in the smaller moments, like Stannis ordering Sam back to his books to learn more about dragonglass. Likewise, Brienne may be staying at the same inn where we first met Tyrion so long ago in the first season, but our moment with her reminded everyone that not only is she not giving up on the Starks, neither is Team Servants.

Up at the Wall, Stannis and company took their leave and headed down towards Winterfell. With the loss of Stannis’ men as a distraction, Jon Snow is now left with 50 men to guard The Wall, and not much to hide the fact that he’s about to become a very unpopular leader. But Maester Aemon is not about to give up on Snow. It doesn’t matter what his plan is. Leaders lead, and if they believe in the plan, then they must execute it. So what if Olly and Edd question him publicly? Though if you ask me, Jon never spelled his strategy out properly. I kept waiting for him to ask, “Do you want the Giants on the army of the dead, or on our side? The enemy of my enemy….” And yet that explanation never came, and Olly left that room looking less than impressed with his Lord Commander.

Sansa: “This isn’t a strange place, this is my home. It’s the people who are strange.”

When Aemon tells Jon to “Kill the boy,” he’s talking about making the hard decisions that divide childhood from manhood. Aemon’s advice could apply to all of our main characters tonight. Dany must kill the girl inside her, and, as Missandei gently reminds her, make the hard decisions only she can make. Sansa is equally killing her inner girl as she sits through Dinner with the Boltons.

Ah yes, the Boltons. I think this marks the most time the show has spent with that family where I neither flinched away, screamed in horror, or fast forwarded through a genuine snuff scene. Not that tonight was easy, as both the aforementioned scene with Theon and Sansa’s trip to the kennels, engineered by Myranda, were both terribly tense moments. (Also, how weird was it to see Ramsay and Myranda having something of a healthy, if twisted, relationship?) But Ramsay was saving Theon for a later humiliation, and Myranda may hate Sansa to the point of psychopathic behavior, but she’s not a fool. Both survived just fine tonight, but I have a feeling Sansa will be taking a trip to the highest window of the broken tower sooner rather than later.

That feeling was only intensified by the dinner. I will go on record right now and say that if Littlefinger had been at that dinner, he would have recalculated faster than SatNav on this plan to have Sansa wrap Ramsay around her little finger, as it were. “Why are you doing this?” asked Sansa, as Ramsay amused himself by humiliating Theon in front of his bride-to-be. Why indeed? It’s a symbol of the hubris and lack of self-control Ramsay has that he would both reveal what he had done to Theon and think Sansa would not be horrified by it. Roose is correct that he disgraced himself, but he also handed Sansa a big fat warning. Ramsay has turned Theon into the kind of person who willingly sleeps in a kennel and who smells so bad that Fat Walda looked genuinely ill at the thought of him walking Sansa down the aisle—there are large red flags that Sansa should see. She might be able to smile now as she watches Roose shut Ramsay down, but once they are married, and Roose and Walda are off elsewhere, Sansa won’t be have that luxery.

Dany: And in order to forge a lasting bond with the Meereenese people, I will marry the leader of an ancient family. Thankfully a suitor is already on his knees.

Meanwhile, a curious thing happened in Meereen. Dany, after her talk with Missandei, decides to step forward and announce that she was wrong, and open the Fighting Pits. But much like Cersei, the producers once again chose to make Dany the agent of her own destruction. I noted last week that, rather than allowing the High Sparrow to basically manipulate a drunken and distracted Cersei into arming the Faith Militant, they made the entire thing her idea, so that the forthcoming destruction of the merchant class in King’s Landing was now a direct result of her actions, instead of one born of passive negligence. I think it’s notable that the show made this same choice this week with Dany. In the books, Dany’s choice to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq is one made because she is bowing to the pressure of those around her. It’s something she doesn’t want to do, but feels she has no choice. Hizdahr is also not taken completely unawares. In fact, at that point, he has been one of the most aggressive of her suitors*, and she’s giving in to his continuing advances. Here, she’s dropping news of the engagement like a surprise grenade from the sky. But it fits with the theme, and the overall pattern of giving Dany and Cersei the control that will only come back to haunt them.

*I understand why most of her suitors have been dropped from the show, since they complicate things and would take up screen time. But tonight I realised how much I miss the insanity of Dany’s court from the books, and the dozens upon dozens of hangers-on that lounge around her as she hears out her subjects on a variety of issues. It’s an outward sign of her lack of control in Meereen in general that all these people just keep showing up around her, sitting there in court, giving nothing and taking up resources. I miss the show had found a way to include it.

Speaking of choices coming back to haunt those who make them, let’s not forget our final scene tonight and the amazing fight with the stone men. Tyrion and Jorah long ago made their choices to kill the boys inside them, and as Tyrion points out, they have a lot in common. This could have been a great buddy road trip comedy duo the likes of which we haven’t seen since One and a Half Man, Throne Together, or last year’s Bri&Pod.

Tyrion: “Long, sullen silences and an occasional punch in the face: the Mormont Way.”

But unfortunately, tonight we learned that although the Griffs are cut (or at least if there are False Dragons, we won’t be meeting them this way), Jon Connington’s story of slowly going mad as he’s infected with greyscale is not. Poor Jorah. At least he didn’t give up on Tyrion when the going got tough. And with the loss of their boat and a long road ahead, it looks like it’s time for the tough to get going.

• Published on 05/11/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT