Game of Thrones: Mother’s Mercy—Analysis

This is a day that should go down in history. Mark your calendars, Game of Thrones fans. June 14th, 2015. For this was the day when the show watchers caught up with the books readers, and spoilers were no more.

For four long years, since the summer of 2011, as most of my friends were, for the first time, picking up the series and reading the Red Wedding and marveling at the horrors to come, I was reading A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 69: Jon XIII, and wondering how the books had, for the third time, pulled the exact same goddamn unreliable narrator POV trick on me. Fool me once with Ned, shame on you. Fool me twice with the Red Wedding, shame on me. Fool me three times?

Jon: I’m glad the end of the world is working out for someone.

The end of the world isn’t working out for most people. This episode was about as bleak as they come. Nothing went the way it was supposed to. Not for Stannis, not for Sansa, not for Dany, Jaime, Myranda, or Jon. And when things did go well—in the very few instances where someone met one of their goals—Brienne, Arya, Cersei, Ellaria—the price to pay (or in the case of Dorne, the price that will be paid) was steep. There was no mercy to be had.

The death count tonight was higher than any finale the show has staged. Selyse went first, committing suicide for her role in her daughter’s death. Stannis was next, and one could argue that he also committed suicide. His inability to bend had always been his greatest weakness. Having lost most of his army to desertion (because who would follow a kinslayer?) which included his entire cavalry, marching on Winterfell was a suicidal act, especially once Melisandre abandoned him.

Stannis: “Go and do your duty.”

There will be many who argue that Melisandre is a charlatan, acting in bad faith. But I believe it’s more complicated than that. Melisandre is a woman who sees visions she doesn’t understand, but she thinks she does. By this time in the books, we have seen some of her visions, and being privy to info the other characters do not have, we recognize what she’s seeing, and how badly she’s misreading it. (The show, due to their decision to avoid visions and flashbacks, unfortunately hasn’t been able to show that.) Melisandre may very well have seen “Bolton Banners Burning.” But she assumed the connection—that Stannis would burn them. Instead, the last of the Baratheons are dead, and Shireen died for nothing. Brienne even got to swing the sword and have her revenge on Stannis for the murder of Renly. (And to be fair to him, Stannis accepted it as just and right.) But at what price? In her selfishness, Brienne missed that candle in the window, and now Sansa and Theon have jumped to their fate, with no army to run to, and no one waiting to save them.

But the bitter endings don’t end there. Dorne, which this season was completely re-written from the books, ended in a shocker death. In the books, Myrcella is kidnapped by Arianne Martell (though she is too naïve to quite realize what’s happening), and when Aero Hotah attacks her party to bring Doran’s daughter to heel, Mrycella’s face is badly disfigured. Like Stannis, whose current status was “stuck in the snow” at the end of Dance, Myrcella’s current status is “under wraps” as Doran tries to keep this fact from Cersei’s envoy. The show cut through all that unnecessary convolution and kept it simple—she dies. The moment Ellaria kissed her, I knew that’s where we were going. But it was a desolate ending for Jaime’s quest, and throws into question how Dorne will play into Season 6. What is the price Ellaria will pay for her revenge?

Arya: “You know who I am. I’m Arya Stark. Do you know who you are? You’re no one. You’re nothing.”

At least we saw the price Arya pays for her disobedience. A girl took a life and a face she wasn’t supposed to, because a girl considers this assassin’s training as a means to an end. In fact, a girl thinks the idea of becoming “no one” is something to curse a man with, not aspire to. One could argue that Arya’s use of the House and Black and White to fulfill her personal mission is short-sighted. She’s gotten mixed up with something far stranger and more wondrous than anything she could have imagined, and she’s playing it for her own petty satisfaction. Not that I think anyone wasn’t cheering to see her take down Trant, but, let’s be real, that killing was straight-up psychopathic. That was some Dexter-level justice we watched her mete out. But Braavos ain’t Florida. There’s an art in How To Get Away With Murder when you work for The House of Black and White LLC, and she wasn’t using it. It’s time to start letting Arya learn what training to be an assassin really entails. Her continued training, and the process of self erasure is one of the few plots I am actually looking forward to.

At least all Arya lost was her sight. Though Cersei wasn’t fooling anyone with her “I’m sorry if the gods were offended” politician-level apology, the price she paid for it was stunning. We know she’s still plotting and planning, even as she confesses to the High Sparrow—after all, a really broken woman would have confessed it all. Cersei barely confessed to Lancel, and made sure to add excuses the whole way. But still—that walk. In some ways, reading the Walk of Shame from her POV is easier, because of her own denial of how bad it will be. Seeing it on-screen was rough. Cersei’s done some terrible things, but did she really deserve that level of public shaming? She does not realize it yet, but she cannot come back from that. She has been brought lower than she knew was possible, and though the show spared us the smallest part—that in her last steps to the Red Keep, she does break, and covers herself and run screaming and crying for the gates—this was Cersei’s darkest hour.

Tyrion: “My Valyrian is a bit nostril.”

It’s funny the things the show spares us. Dany may look rough after her wild flight from Meereen, and discover that ordering a dragon to do something is rather like ordering a cat, but at least she’s not naked. (In the books, Drogon accidentally breathed fire on her and burnt all her clothes and hair off, so that when the Dothraki find her standing in a field, she’s naked once more with a dragon, much like her last Khalasar found her after Drogo’s death. Unlike Cersei’s wigs, Dany’s aren’t going anywhere.) Though the show ended with Dany looking like she was about to be kidnapped and hauled off, the truth is, now she’s rewound the clock—the last place where she knew who she was and what her end goal was when she was with the Dothraki. By returning to that place, she has a chance to reset and find her direction again. I assume that, by the time Jorah and Daario ride up, she’ll be a Khaleesi once more. Slivers of hope among the bleak and dreary landscape. Slivers of hope, like seeing Tyrion and Varys together again, about to put the mess Dany made of Meereen to rights. Not all interim governments need be disasters.

But of course, there was the one thing the show couldn’t spare us. Jon XIII.

High Sparrow: Mother is merciful. It is her you should thank.

I could write a completely separate post—and I probably will—rounding up the last four years of denial theories put forth by the ASOIAF community on “how Jon survives this.” After all, in the books, Jon is only stabbed four times before he fades to black. Only four times, that’s not enough to kill a man, is it…? Melisandre is there at Castle Black, can’t her magic…? Ghost is there, can’t he warg…? 

The show made it quite clear tonight that—even if there is somehow resurrection in the cards—Jon is dead. Those four years of theories feel so much more like denial now than they did before. There were far more than four stabs. Olly stabbed him in the heart. There was no sign of warging. There was no sign of Melisandre—though her showing up in such a timely fashion just before the deed suggests that perhaps next season there could be. But like book readers back in 2011, right now, all anyone knows is that Jon is dead, killed by the hands of his own sworn brothers.

Olly: “For the watch.”

If Game of Thrones ever had a darkest hour, this was it. Our only hope is that having hit bottom at the end of this season, the only place we can go next year is up.

• Published on 06/15/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 06/15/2015 at 11:53 AM CDT