The Small Council: A look back at “The Dance of Dragons”

“The Dance of Dragons” was the second-to-last episode of Game of Thrones’ fifth season. The penultimate episodes of seasons past have usually been reserved for big moments—e.g. beheadings, battles, and awful, awful weddings. Did “The Dance of Dragons” meet expectations? WiC’s Small Council weighs in.

DAN: The last couple episodes of Game of Thrones have been defined by big, sweeping dramatic moments. Cersei’s arrest, the Massacre at Hardhome…these are the kind of fireworks that have distinguished the back half of Season 5, and “The Dance of the Dragons” did its darndest to match them in intensity. Shireen’s death by fire and Dany’s maiden voyage on Air Targaryen didn’t hold the episode together quite as well as that giant battle did for “Hardhome,” but they still packed a major punch punch ahead of the finale.

Of the two, Shireen’s death hit harder, and I’m still not convinced the episode shouldn’t have ended with it, although I understand why the producers wanted to close on a more hopeful note. The scene itself reminded me of Sansa’s wedding to Ramsay: beautifully shot but thick with foreboding. Up until the very end, I kept hoping that the show would somehow pull back, but in retrospect, it was all inevitable. Along the way, every beat hit with the force of a truck—we learned that Stannis is more committed to winning his war than we thought, that Selyse isn’t quite the monster we took her for, and that Melisandre is truly unshakable, a terrifying prospect. There have been a number of impactful moments this year, but this might be the one that sticks out when I look back at Season 5.

Although we still have an episode to go, I don’t think it’s too early to start making some observations about the season overall. More than any other year on the show, Season 5 has been divided cleanly down the middle: the first six or so episodes set up a bunch of dominoes, and these last three have been knocking them down. I won’t say too much for fear of spoiling the Unsullied in the audience, but book-readers know that this pattern will continue into the finale, which has some seriously explosive material to get through. The procession of tentpole moments has been impressive, almost overwhelming, and I’m curious to see if the season holds up when viewed as a whole, rather than on an episode-by-episode basis.

What are your guys thoughts on “The Dance of Dragons,” whether as an individual episode or as a piece of Season 5?

KATIE: “The Dance of Dragons” gave me a lot to think about—more than usual, which for me makes up for the fact that this season’s Episode 9 didn’t follow the pattern of years past. It wasn’t so much that I was hoping for another big scene like Blackwater or the Red Wedding, but I expected it.  What we got instead, though, didn’t disappoint me in the slightest. Instead of being overwhelmed by blood flow, I was overwhelmed by speculation, which makes me feel significantly less nauseated.

I loved Daenerys’ closing scene, but what’s her plan now? She escapes on Drogon, but to where? Her objective is to reclaim the Iron Throne, but now there’s a big ol’ mess to clean up in Meereen (if she bothers to take care of it, and I imagine that maternal instinct of hers would demand it). I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about this while escaping from a pit of people who wanted to kill her; I just wonder what her next step will be. It’s been a long time since Daenerys hasn’t had a plan, and now she’ll have to improvise without her advisers or an army at her disposal.

I’m looking forward to more of Arya’s adventures in Braavos, and for her to slice up Meryn Trant but good. When I first watched on Sunday, I assumed that his mini staring matches with her meant he recognized her, but after that brothel scene I’m thinking it’s more that he’s attracted to her. That certainly gives her an in to get him alone and exact her revenge, which is gonna be awesome until Jaqen undoubtedly gives her shit about it. It’s a mixed bag.

My biggest takeaway from this episode, though, is a sudden and perhaps unfounded mistrust of Trystane. I couldn’t quite articulate it at first, but I think it has something to do with his unassuming introduction and virtual nonexistence, and now suddenly he’s off to King’s Landing to assume a position of power and influence? Uh-huh, that’s fishy. Allow me to quote the great Mr. Krabs when I say, “Do you smell it? That smell. A kind of smelly smell. The smelly smell that smells… smelly.” Because this sudden suspicion also raised another question: What was with his insistence that he and Myrcella get married the next day in “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”? What’s the rush, kid? Don’t tell me this boy band punk wants a shot at the Iron Throne, too? And I just refuse to believe that it’s because his feelings for Myrcella are deep and genuine; there’s no place for that on Game of Thrones (unless you’re Robb and Talisa, I guess, and look what happened to them). I’m sure this question won’t be answered anytime soon, if at all, but I’m going to keep grasping at these straws until I find one I can hold onto.

CAMERON: Why couldn’t the Sand Snakes have been like this all season? I mean, I get that you can’t gut their primary focus, which is getting revenge for the death of their father. But couldn’t that have done that while also playing silly war games and ragging on each other like, I don’t know, SIBLINGS DO?

It’s been very frustrating for me as a fan of the Dornish subplot in the books to watch it adapted into complete irrelevance—and it’s not exactly a necessary diversion to begin with.  But barring any scenes in the finale, that’s exactly what’s happened here. Jaime and Bronn get off easy, Doran isn’t going to wage war on the rest of Westeros, Ellaria has set aside her quest for vengeance. Yay?  I can only imagine what it must be like for show-viewers to watch this story unfold and think, “this is what book-readers were excited for?”

Oh well. In the wise words of Daenerys “Leeroy Jenkins” Targaryen: “At least I have dragons.” (Or Drogon, at least.) I remember when the set photos of the Osuna bullring started coming and thinking, “man, this is gonna be cool,” and it didn’t disappoint. Actually, the production design in general has been excellent this year—it’s helped me forget about some of the writing.

ANI: *waiting impatiently to go back to King’s Landing*

Well, thank god Dany has left Meereen, and thank god Hizdahr is dead. That was a whole mess of stuff she should never have gotten herself into. Not that I think it will be that easy to totally detangle, but with 20 or so episodes left of this show, we should really try and get  across the Narrow Sea with that dragon fire in tow, should we not? As for who rides the other two, do we really need riders? Can’t we just hook them together like a dragon wagon train?

Meanwhile, every avenue I am imagining next week ends darkly. Arya’s about to screw up her first assignment by killing the wrong target, Cersei’s going to go through hell to get out of SpoonSlapVille, the Dornish are going to go sideways (they have to, there’s no other explanation for their existence otherwise), the Sansa/Brienne/Bolton/Stannis showdown will not end with the proper deaths in the right order, and Dany doesn’t have sat nav for Drogon.

And Jon? Well, unless this happens, I won’t be happy.

RAZOR: If you thought this was going to have a happy ending, then you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been repeating Ramsay’s words to Theon over and over this week, to my Unsullied and Sullied friends alike. I’ve read all the commentary on Shireen’s burning, I’ve seen the feigned righteous indignation on social media at the sacrificing of a little girl to the machinations of a religious fanatic, and I’ve lurked in message board threads that have been drowned in angry comments directed at David Benioff and Dan Weiss, HBO, and even George R.R. Martin…and my response is still the same.

How did you not see this coming? Sure, the show played up Stannis as a misunderstood good guy who had a soft spot for his daughter, who casually corrected people’s grammar, and who willingly shared his ships so that the wildlings could be saved at Hardhome. But does that negate the fact that he burned his own bannermen who refused to convert to the Red God’s religion? Does it erase the fact that Stannis approved the assassination of his younger brother by a disgusting shadow baby of his own making? I’ll answer for you—no, it does not.

I think all the shock and outrage is coming from a deep and personal place, where fans of “Stannis the Mannis” were duped into jumping on his bandwagon. Fans let their guard down and allowed themselves to warm up to Stannis only to be blindsided by a reminder of just how relentless he could be, something they should have seen coming the whole time. Isn’t that the mark of good writing? All too often, fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (myself included), are quick to ridicule the showrunners for what they perceive as the Titanic-like sinking of George R.R. Martin’s masterpiece, but if David Benioff is to be believed, Martin himself approved of this particular arc. So, aren’t they actually helping Martin’s story along, rather than killing it?

Now, more than ever, as we approach the Season 5 finale, book readers are beginning to realize that we are in the same boat as non-book readers, and that’s a scary thing. Moments like Shireen’s tragic burning at the behest of her own father are going to happen more frequently in Seasons 6 and 7, and we all need to come to grips with the fact that this is the vision that George R.R. Martin has for A Song of Ice and Fire…and the sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.

*takes his bitter pill with a grain of salt and swallows begrudgingly

• Published on 06/12/2015 at 2:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 06/14/2015 at 3:38 PM CDT