so here we are. after ten weeks (or 11, really, counting the weird week-long break) season 4 of game of thrones has come to an end. and what an end. this little blog project has followed the series through, starting off as pretty well-informed and finally just degenerating into absolute chaos as i got more and more obsessed and frantic. so it is with a heavy heart that i must post this final entry. game of thrones is loaded, ready to stream; i have a jar of reeses peanut butter and a peroni
i legit shed a little tear as the opening themetune played. i watched it last night live and wasnt sad but now im sad whats going on
Game of Thrones Season 4 Episode Ten:
The Children
1. jon at the wall
so after the end of last weeks episode in which jon snow wanders off into the snowiness (in a scene very reminiscent of 'prologue' in the first ever episode) we manage to catch up to him again and oh yes he's still in the snowiness of course. jons off to meet mance rayder, the 'king beyond the wall', who is commanding all of the wildling armies and the attack on the wall. mance has a proper grumpy cat face, its hilarious. but anyway, mance is a bit miffed at jon snow for lying to him and betraying his trust after mance allowed him to live amongst the wildlings.
jons there to try and assassinate mance in order to bring an end to the fighting. he knows that, if he kills mance, his own life will be forfeit, but he's taking one for the team. like jesus. he doesn't get the chance too, though, because before you know it theres suddenly loads of riders streaming in from all sides in what is probably the most deus ex machina and un-tense/lacking in build-up arrival of riders ever. i'm not quite sure if they were going for a 'gandalf turning up at helms deep' kinda thing here but it didnt work, it seemed a bit slapped on. BUT IT'S STANNIS SO WHO CARES.
i love stannis.
stannis arriving at the wall is part of the 'big plan' that melisandre predicted in her fires. he is the only one of all the supposed kings in westeros who actually turned up to help the nights watch (or the kunigits watch, as ser davos called it when reading the letter). melisandre believes that this is their true task, to fight the forces of darkness; that is stannis's purpose as the king she belives the world has been promised in a prophecy.
the prophecy in the books is this: ""When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, [the promised king] shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone."
it sort of obviously (almost to obviously, so im probably wrong) seems to be referring to daenerys. the red star is a comet in seasons 2, and she is 'reborn' amidst smoke and salt (tears) when she survives the fire of drogos funeral pyre and hatches the dragon eggs, boom. but as i said, probably too easy, george r. r martin probably has something else planned for that prophecy.
anyway, hello stannis. nice to see you doing some actual king stuff instead of moping around.
2. clan lannister
gonna skip forward to the ending now, as it makes sense to keep the lannisters together (even if they dont want to be *chortle chortle chortle hahahaha*). ok here be spoilers.
so if you havent seen the episode yet then obvs dont read. but if you havent seen it yet then WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?????!
first of all; shae. im not sure what to feel about shae dying. i think i mentioned in an earlier post that the shae in the books and the shae in the show are two completely different characters with different motivations. bookshae is just a prostitute who is only interested in tyrion for his money, so we dont really care that she dies. showshae appears to have genuinely loved tyrion and turns against him when she thinks he is trying to get rid of her (once he's married to sansa). so im sad that showshae dies. but im even sadder for tyrion. like, bad enough that she betrayed him but to then find her naked in his fathers bed. and to hear her say 'my lion' (her nickname for him) when she thinks it is tywin approaching.. oh its horrible.
GAME OF THRONES STOP TORTURING TYRION I DONT THINK I CAN TAKE ANYMORE HEARTBREAK.
then its off for a chat with dad. ok so i knew tywin dies in the books. and, just like oberyn, i was hoping and praying that the show would somehow change the plot and keep him in but- JUST LIKE OBERYN AGAIN- his death is the catalyst for some future plot points, so of course he had to go. but that doesn't make it any easier for me, or for any of us. because tywin lannister as played by charles dance was hands down one of the best characters on the show, and im not quite sure what im going to do without his beautiful deep voice and his sage wisdom from now on.
so tyrion kills his dad. and its not suprising really. this whole season has been a massive build-up of bitterness for tyrion as he learns just how much his family (except jaime) despise him and want him dead. i mean, they've always been pretty cruel to him, but they've been laying it on especially thick this season. i still havent emotionally recovered from tyrions trial and that speech he gave, it was heartbreaking.
why does tywin hate tyrion so much? because he's a dwarf. because he isnt the valiant and beautiful warrior that jaime is. because he killed his mother in childbirth. tywins wife, joanna, was the only woman in the world that tywin truly loved, that made him truly happy. i think theres a quote somewhere in the books that the only time he ever smiled was the day he married her. however (and i think i mentioned this before) there is a theory that joanna may have been a bit naughty. there is a theory that tywin is the illegitimate son of king aerys targaryen (making him danaerys's half-brother). so all that talk about 'all dwarves being bastards in their fathers eyes' may be more than just talk. and do we remember the coversation between tywin and tyrion when tywin says how he cannot prove tyrion is not his? i don't know, it's speculation. but it adds an extra layer of meaning to the discussion they have before tywin gets shot.
tyrion is smuggled out of the city by varys, who has been his ally all along. tyrion thought that varys had betrayed him too (remember at the trial, when varys testified against him?) but varys is good at playing the game, and he was on tyrions side all along. now they are both sailing off, away from kings landing, away from the lannisters, away from westeros. where/who to? we'll see next season.
3. daenerys
wow. for once, the season didn't end with daenerys. but did anyone else notice that her hair was wonky? really bothered me.
so the whole 'freeing the slaves' thing isn't really going to plan. particularly when the slaves want to return themselves to slavery because their lives as slaves were better than they are now. oops. plus her dragons are getting huge and uncontrollable and have killed a child, so she decides to trap them in the catacombs so they cause no more harm. only two of them, though, because the biggest and fiercest (drogon. yes the dragon is called drogon) is M.I.A. where could he be.
4. bran. i dont care about bran.
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| haha no one cares |
so they finally have got to the place they were looking for, the home of the 'three eyed raven'. who of course isnt a raven at all but a super old guy on a tree-root throne thing. because, like everything in game of thrones, 'three eyed raven' is a metaphor. and there's a reason he's called a raven, which i wont disclose now as that'll probably come out in next season and i dont wanna spoil it.
we know that bran is a warg, aka. he can put his soul into other living things, which is why he can control his direwolf and hodor. note: living things, not necessarily just animals.
but who is the creepy little girlchild with the throwing fireness? she is part of a race we have heard of but never seen before; the 'children of the forest', otherwise known as just 'the children'.this is where game of thrones is going to get a liiiiiittle more 'fantasy'. ok yes i know it's always been fantasy (dragons being the major clue) but this is where it all gets a little bit more weird and surreal. i was a bit dubious about how the producers would deal with this plot point, whether they'd cut it out altogether and keep things a tad more 'real' (minus the dragons) but it looks like they're planning to roll with it, so here's a wee explanation. ceebs typing it all out though so i'll copy and paste from a game of thrones site.
"The Children of the Forest are a mysterious non-human race that were reportedly the original inhabitants of Westeros. They were already living in Westeros when the First Men migrated to the continent, 12,500 years before Robert's Rebellion."
- so they are the indigenous people
"The Children of the Forest worshipped nature gods, the countless and nameless spirits of every tree, every rock, and every stream. Their religion devoted to the Old Gods of the Forest had no complex temples, but according to legend it was the Children that carved faces into the sacred Weirwood trees.These carved heart trees were the closest thing to a shrine in their religion."
- weirwood trees are those special trees we see every so often with the white bark and red leaves, like the one bran touched that gave him a vision.
"The Children of the Forest weren't very technologically advanced, though they were very woodcrafty and had a great knowledge of the plants and animals of the forest. They hunted using bows made of weirwood and used blades made of Dragonglass."
- dragonglass is another name for obsidian, which (along with fire) is the only thing that can kill whitewalkers. sam tarly used a dragonglass knife to kill a whitewalker in season 3
5. arya
the custody battle is pretty self-explanatory, so i wont go into that. but we don't see the hound die, do we.
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| fabulous jaqen |
so there we have it. game of thrones season 4. we've laughed. we've cried. we've made friends, we've lost friends. we've had to hug ourselves tight and rock backwards and forwards to console ourselves as YET ANOTHER FAVOURITE CHARACTER IS STRUCK DOWN IN THEIR PRIME. i don't think i can bear to let go just yet. might be time to have a marathon from the beginning of the season. or maybe season 1. yeah i havent seen season 1 in ages. i cant cope. im in pain. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
