Episode 28 – Second Sons – Analysis

Navigating the Expected: The Second Sons of Westeros

By Tyler Davis

The second sons of Westeros are a troubled bunch, but one thing Thrones makes clear is that marginalization is in no way dependent on age or lack of inheritance alone. Aptly titled “Second Sons,” the eighth episode of the show’s third season centers on characters who fail to neatly accord with environmental pressures. Due to their diminished statuses within their respective arenas, these characters must contend with unwelcome duties demanded by families, affiliations, or professions. But to complicate a straightforward assessment of these figures, the show is equally invested in moments of mercy, refusal, or challenge–instances where these characters turn from the paths they’re expected to walk without sidestepping the destinations they’re intended to reach. This episode explores how characters can shape their destinies within the confines of their obligations rather than by avoiding or denying those obligations entirely. In so doing, many key figures reveal essential truths about themselves.

While this may not seem like an especially action-packed or visually dramatic focus at a time when one might expect the show to begin ratcheting up the visceral tension in prelude to the final two episodes, it works because ample attention is given to each major storyline on display; the episode is a rare instance where Thrones pauses many of its narrative threads in order to let a select few of them unspool for longer. “Second Sons” is structured around three locations: King’s Landing, Dragonstone, and the encampments surrounding Yunkai. Scenes set in these locations are framed by two, shorter bookend sequences involving characters traveling toward a crucial destination: Arya and The Hound en route to The Twins, and Sam and Gilly en route to Castle Black. Of particular interest is how this narrower scope changes the dramatic structure of the show, and how we watch it.

Much has been written about the unique adaptation challenges Thrones faces, and none are more pressing than its responsibility to balance tens of storylines simultaneously, even when many of these storylines cannot payoff within individual episodes or a single season’s arc. This requires the show to dance from location to location, sometimes touching on characters for the briefest of moments – hopefully pushing their stories forward – before moving to the next cluster of geographically-related players. Season two’s “Blackwater” offered an antidote to the broader approach Thrones usually employs by taking place in a single location. And while “Second Sons” isn’t as concentrated as “Blackwater” was, its notably narrower interest as compared to the average episode – eliding multiple narratives entirely – serves its storytelling admirably.

This more intimate focus is a natural choice: at present, the show lacks an overarching dramatic thrust of singular geographic importance like the one provided by Battle of Blackwater Bay, and has recently seen moments of satisfying resolution for other characters which justify a brief respite from their adventures: Jaime’s redemption in Harrenhal, the climbing of the Wall, Littlefinger triumphing over Varys with his “ladder” speech, or Robb leaving the war for one night upon learning of his impending fatherhood. Less satisfying is our resignation to Theon’s perpetual torture (which may prove rewarding, but hasn’t yet), and Bran’s more plodding journey of personal revelation. But because these latter storylines are slow-burners, they aren’t especially missed despite what they’ve lacked in dramatic closure.

The change of pace allows the episode to hit multiple beats within individual stories while still providing us with a sense of the show’s immense scope. Because it’s something of a Thrones-anomaly in a structural sense,”Second Sons” is a unique exercise in narrative balance; the careful choice of prologue and epilogue sequences allows the episode to tonally link with preceding and succeeding content without deviating from the episode’s primary thematic interest.

Sandor Clegane – the second son of his house – is someone whose lot in life has, at least until recent events, been characterized by service. Although Arya considers him monstrous for his actions in the name of that service, Sandor continues to reveal a moral core which suggests his ongoing internal conflict, or disunity between preference and performance. The exposure of this underlying morality, strained as it is by the cynicism cultivated during his secondary status as dog-to-the-king, promises to complicate Arya’s reading of events. If Sandor is honest about his intentions to return Arya to her family, it must be acknowledged that he is doing so while perpetuating the revocation of duty we first saw in season two’s “Blackwater.” Indeed, the most monstrous acts we’ve seen from The Hound were made in service to truer monsters: Joffrey, and the very Westerosi institutions which allow a butcher’s boy to be slain to satisfy royal standards being arbitrarily enforced. As far as Arya is concerned, the Hound may come to serve as a lesson in the difference between the innate evil of men and the evil which shapes or makes demands of men.

But the scene is also about a pairing and a destination: two characters brought together by unforeseen circumstances and forced to find a logical response to their present reality. So while Robb and company aren’t in this episode, the fact that Arya and her captor are headed to The Twins establishes Walder Frey’s home as a point of convergence we shouldn’t forget about. More broadly, this serves to emphasize continuity with previous episodes, and to tantalize us with the possibility of a Stark family reunion.

The epilogue has a similar linking function; if the prologue partly serves to remind us of the impending intersections of long-standing characters, the pairing in the epilogue – Sam and Gilly – reminds us of the larger threats at work within Westeros. The final sequence in which Sam finds his courage in the face of necessity despite his reputation as a coward is thrilling, and the final shot of Sam and Gilly running from a flock of ravens literally sweeps us forward and out of the frame and into credits which preface the next episode. The sudden introduction of cliffhanger action in an episode otherwise lacking action of any kind suggests that what follows will be similarly kinetic and eventful.

What precedes this sequence is a revelation about Sam – not the second son of his house, but the unwanted and thus expendable heir forced to abandon his inheritance by joining the Night’s Watch under threat of murder by his father. Sam has never been the most competent character despite his natural intelligence and formal education, but his rescue of Gilly and her son (a child formerly of tertiary status; another would-be sacrificial lamb in a show replete with sacrificial lambs) – even if she remains his superior where most survival instincts are concerned – signifies the willful adoption of a new, personal responsibility even while he retains a duty to the Watch. While Sandor had to reject his position at Joffrey’s side in order to become a free agent in Westeros (eventually capturing Arya only to secure her safe passage home), it took a mutiny and the murder of the executive figurehead of the Night’s Watch in order to provide Sam with the opportunity to help Gilly escape. In either case there’s an element of self-interest which underpins but does not invalidate their efforts: Sam’s personal affection for Gilly, and Sandor’s grudging sense of what’s right (even if it’s compounded by his need for coin).

Elsewhere, other characters are similarly concerned with finding ways to express their personal values while navigating through or beside what’s expected of them. Consider Stannis – the second son of the Baratheon line – who must balance his honest apprehension of Melisandre’s powers – and the expedience they promise – with his personal code. Tyrion – the second Lannister son and legal heir to Casterly Rock – is condemned to an obligatory wedding that neither he nor his bride wants, and struggles to make his displeasure known while also satisfying the terms of the union. Daario Naharis – the odd lieutenant out among the Second Sons sellsword company – must follow his intuition when the dictates of his captain, Mero, stand in opposition to Daario’s desires.

Stannis says that “we must do our duty – great or small, we must do our duty” in an effort to bolster his faith in destiny–to underscore the idea that there is only one path to his desired end. He is tempted by this idea. He has seen Melisandre’s powers. He knows they work. And what of his compelling question: what’s one bastard boy’s life worth when weighed against an entire kingdom? Yet he’s sought out Davos, his loyal advisor, knowing full well that the Onion Knight is the one man who will offer truth at all costs, even if that means a show of outright opposition to the temptation of blind allegiance to a strange god’s recipe for success.

Davos advises mercy and restraint not because he wishes to see Stannis fail in his mission to claim the Iron Throne, but because he believes that the man sitting on the throne should be a paragon of justice; when grasping for the crown, a rightful king cannot sacrifice the worthiness which justifies his ascent in the first place. Gendry shares blood with Stannis, and unlike Renly, Gendry has done nothing to wrong Stannis on either a customary or personal level. The fact that Stannis seeks Davos in this moment is testament to his inner trouble; there is no doubt that Davos will advocate a more bloodless path than Melisandre might, so to seek this advice is to beg to be dissuaded.

The Lord of Light that Melisandre worships has established itself as a real force within Westeros – a source of power capable of resurrecting dead men and producing shadowy assassins. But the moral value of this strange power is unknown. Melisandre’s compact with her god has given her many gifts, but like a dragon’s flame turned against an innocent countryside, the agenda these gifts serve matters above all else, and that agenda is a mystery. Davos, not unlike Ned or Brienne, recognizes a different kind of strength: the embodiment of virtue. By framing both Stannis and Davos on either side of a cell’s gate, each man seems imprisoned by their respective positions at the beginning of the conversation–Davos physically and Stannis subjectively. Yet by the end, Davos is freed–the aspiring king is reunified with his conscience. It’s natural for an audience to respond to this for the same reasons that we responded to Ned’s honor or Brienne’s embrace of knighthood. But just as we remain unsure of R’hllor’s agenda, we are left unsure of the likelihood of a Baratheon victory if Stannis retains his sense of justice while denying Melisandre her sacrifice. As we’ve seen on many an occasion, moral superiority is no guarantee of success.

Like Stannis, Tyrion is a man utterly confounded by duty: duty to his love, duty to his family, duty to his innate sense of propriety. Many have complained that show-Tyrion has been whitewashed when compared to his book counterpart, but I’m less convinced. As I’ve argued in the past, show arcs demand a pace best suited to the screen and the storytelling format Thrones employs. It’s not much of a spoiler to mention how Tyrion’s relationship with Shae is something altogether more substantial on screen than on the page, and as such his love for her feels more grounded. This has implications for how he conducts himself, and how thoroughly he’s persuaded by his temptations. Little would be gained by visibly demonstrating Tyrion’s lust when Sansa begins to disrobe; a slavering and self-sabotaging Tyrion at the moment of impending consummation wouldn’t be “morally greyer” and thus more interesting, but merely out of character and dishonest to the Tyrion we’ve come to know. The conversation with Bronn earlier in the season more than adequately established Tyrion’s reluctant attraction to Sansa. A subtler approach in the bedroom was the more intelligent writing choice for this different but not lesser iteration of the character.

Before that moment arrives, Tyrion conveys his agitation and humiliation in a scene-stealing drunken show which culminates in a thinly-veiled threat of castration. Classic Thrones! This sequence was especially satisfying because it demonstrated how Tyrion is able to find self-expression in the context others have established for him: he may have lecherous, sottish appetites, but his display was distinctly performative–a kind of hyperdrunkenness used to his advantage. Having internalized a lifetime of insults hurled his way by fellow Lannisters and other members of the court, he has a willingness to adopt the very postures that judgmental fathers and conniving sisters expect of him. And it is through this posturing that he is capable of speaking truth–or threatening the king himself–and getting away with it. There are many ways of subverting power in the world, and this is one of Tyrion’s.

The scenes set in Yunkai were no less performative. We know that Dany’s confidence is growing exponentially, but let’s not forget her shaken visage when Grey Worm pledged his life and endorsed the name he had at the moment she freed him. The ramifications of Dany’s choices are slow to catch up with the quickening pace of her conquest, so it’s these moments of personalization which most affect her. There’s a quieter dimension of Dany’s character which hasn’t received much attention since she sacked Astapor: her uncertainty and fundamental dislocation in the world. When foul Mero, with his threats of rape, and attendant lieutenants enter her tent, Dany’s poker face is impressive. But in her request that Barristan slay the Titan’s Bastard first when it comes to battle, her composure is momentarily fractured by anger. This is some of the same righteous indignation which aided the liberation of the Unsullied, but it’s also an acknowledgment – and perhaps some disgust and fear – of the depths of the world’s immorality.

When discussing language with Missandei later in the episode, Dany’s revelation that her Dothraki isn’t quite as fluent as it once was serves to emphasize how much she’s had to let go of in order to reach her current position. The choice to move on was the very essence of her vision in the House of the Undying, after all. And while the exchange can be interpreted as a humorous nod to Drogo pitying his wife in her failings at learning a new language (if we presume that Dany never achieved the expertise she thought she did), I prefer to see it as a measure of increasing disconnection– not unlike the remaining members of her khalasar vomiting aboard the ship to Astapor earlier in the season. Dany’s time with Drogo was the period of her first ascendancy; it was an elevation and extrication from the dragging emotional cage Viserys had crafted for her. And yet from the Dothraki Sea to Qarth to Astapor to Yunkai, Dany’s journey has been one of ceaseless momentum. Now at the gates of yet another ancient city, she has begun to lose much of what was responsible for the initial strength she earned after a lifetime with her brother. I imagine her as a spotlight in the dark, the trail behind her disappearing into blackness with the speed of her forward projection into the unknown.

And then there’s Daario. With far greater ease than Tyrion or Stannis – an ease that’s indicative of both his thinner characterization to date as well as his slick personality – the sellsword lieutenant manages to free himself from an assassin’s duty. How? By assassinating the man giving the order. A Second Son by title, Daario’s arrival is compelling not because we have a strong grasp of his character, but precisely because we don’t. Here’s a man who ranks among the uppermost levels of a sellsword company and yet is willing to betray his comrades because he only does what he wants to do. And what he wants to do is state a vow: motivated by little other than her demeanor, reputation, and beauty, Daario offers Dany his life. Did he offer a similar vow to Mero on some other day, some time ago? We don’t know, and so can’t measure the worth of his gesture. But it’s impressive and somewhat radical.

More impressive is Dany’s measured reaction to Daario’s sudden appearance–something that can only lead to a discussion of how nudity features in the episode. Some may call me an apologist, but I’m remarkably unbothered by HBO’s approach to bare skin in Thrones. Aside from Podrick’s foray into a brothel – a very direct, funny, and wholly deliberate moment in which Benioff and Weiss flip the cinematic bird to those who insist they reduce the show’s use of flesh to repetitive exploitation – I’ve had little trouble understanding the show’s diversity of birthday suits as serving far more than mere titillation in almost every case. And while I can understand the argument which seeks to equalize nudity by looking at quotas (as if, disregarding for a moment that they’re not at all the same, every merkin must be matched with a cock), I think it’s a lazy critique which presumes poor writing on the part of the show’s staff (rather than encouraging productive analysis), and ignores the in-universe realities which modify the odds for the likeliest gender of Westerosi nudists.

Dany’s bold emergence from her steaming bath provides a counterpoint to her escape into the tub’s protective heat in season one. There is no Viserys sizing her up in this sequence–she’s a different woman: no longer traumatized, no longer passive. Less important than the audience seeing Daenerys nude is her nonchalance while appearing nude before Daario. In this moment she declares her equality if not superiority. She will not cower or condescend. That there’s a sexual undertone to his appreciation of her body and her willingness to present herself is secondary to her inversion of presumed vulnerability: she was naked when her dragons hatched, and is to be feared and respected just as she is. He cannot surprise her, even in a tub. He cannot take her unawares.

Elsewhere, calls of exploitation have centered on Melisandre’s nudity in her “seduction” of Gendry. Beyond my unwillingness to consider this sequence anything close to a true seduction, I contend that if anyone was exploited in Dragonstone, it was Gendry (the character) and not Carice van Houten (the actress). For the second time in as many episodes, a powerless male figure has effectively been raped by women. Neither Theon nor Gendry have any recourse in these scenes, and both are subject to the whims of vastly superior powers. (An aside for anyone concerned with my definition of rape: even if you disagree with the terminology I use, please, let’s not begin a semantic debate or presume that the presence of an erection somehow defeats the truly frightening power dynamics on display in either scene.)

But where Theon’s torture was carried out by peasant girls following the orders of an imposing and ultimately powerful male figure, the stimulation of Gendry’s blood is carried out by Melisandre–one of the most deadly women in Westeros–who has a stunning degree of influence over a king. And much like with Dany, we know to associate Melisandre’s nakedness with the birth of fearsome power. The recurrence of her nakedness – just like her sipping the potentially poisoned wine when we know she’s immune to poison’s effects – is precisely what gives the scene an added level of uncertainty and tension. But unlike Dany, who we’re relatively convinced is possessed of positive moral values, Melisandre is still inscrutable and grey. To take the scene as nothing more than another opportunity for breasts – or as a missed opportunity for penis – is to ignore the visual pattern of Melisandre’s femininity being associated with danger and darkness.

Nakedness, or the refusal of nakedness, is central to the episode. Another disrobing scene figures prominently in Tyrion and Sansa’s wedding, but unlike Melisandre’s weaponized nudity or Dany’s authoritative and competent naked posture, Sansa gets to keep her clothes on. Like Gendry, Sansa is effectively a pawn in someone else’s game, but unlike Melisandre’s eager objectification of Gendry, Tyrion is unwilling to further terrorize Sansa for personal or familial reasons. This is yet one more way that Tyrion is capable of subverting the destiny his father has chosen for him while adorned in the trappings of that same destiny. Tyrion may have been forced to marry the girl, but he cannot be forced to deny her the last of her innocence in an act of marital rape. His choice to adopt the words of the Night’s Watchmen as a wink to the celibacy Sansa prefers isn’t just a comedic beat–it’s also a wry and somewhat sad promise to protect her, to honor the wall between them. Emphasis given to underlying attraction on Tyrion’s part would have diminished the dramatic effect of this moment, and weakened the thematic clarity of the spectrum on display across the episode’s scenes: the refusal of a sexually defined relationship by Tyrion and Sansa, the strikingly unidirectional sexual use of Gendry by Melisandre, and the possibility of sexual equality between Dany and Daario.

There are alternating threads of volatile escape from and resignation to duty laced throughout “Second Sons.” Stannis, unsure of how much he wishes to commit to Melisandre’s plan but utterly dedicated to his quest for the Iron Throne allows his Red Priestess her compromise of leeches and leather straps. Tyrion, unsure of how to best modify his father’s plans, must maintain appearances while honoring his values, even if it means indulging everyone else’s worst opinions of him in the process. Arya, unsure of Sandor’s true intentions, must face up to the possibility that the story which led to his name becoming a part of her nightly mantra is more complex than she’d rather admit. Either way, the young Stark is stuck where she is for now, and it’s unlikely that she’ll trust her own strength enough to take the Hound up on his offer anytime soon.

A second son’s lot is often unkind. Ned, never the man his older brother was, took up the Stark mantle on his own. The insults Tyrion suffers emanate from the same family which gives his name value. Sandor paid a price of his own long ago, half his face burned away by a psychopathic brother, and he’s been playing pet dog to men whose souls resemble his scars ever since. Sam was born first, but came last in his father’s estimation. Daenerys is a woman and wasn’t second-born, but every choice she makes in the present comes after a lifelong prelude of subjugation by her elder brother’s hand. Arya is a girl who must pretend to be a boy to survive, and remains in great danger even then.

But a second son is not without his options. The tension between duty and mercy pervades the episode, resulting in one of the most thematically coherent entries in Thrones history. Both Sandor and Arya are defenseless in different ways, each responsible for finding a way to deal with the pressure applied by the other. Dany must contend with the reality of an expert killer who can walk into her camp, and Daario must contend with the ferocity of the Mother of Dragons–a woman who has already led to dramatic changes in his daily routine (the rolling heads at his feet representing the price of his willing sacrifice). Stannis must seek mercy on his blood to preserve the values he’s defined by, and Tyrion must protect his bride to preserve the innocence she embodies.

We’re left with two people alone in all the cold and all the dark. Each has heretofore known a world heavy with expectation, and each is momentarily freed by the small cataclysm at Craster’s Keep–a tragedy which unchains them from institutional forces. We’d like their freedom to mean more than it does–their fire to burn brighter in the night. We’d like for them to have more time to choose the names they most like for the child they wish to save. Yet cold forces encroach–Walkers beneath the moon demanding a price, demanding service. Neither Sam nor Gilly will sacrifice the infant boy without a fight, and Sam’s small victory is a moment of triumph for a young man sent to the edge of the world on charges of cowardice, albeit one which cannot last. They must run, in the end–swept ahead toward this season’s close–desperate for the peace that would let them choose for themselves, and not in response to the world they inhabit. In this, all second sons are alike.

• Published on 05/27/2013 at 11:16 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:02 PM CDT