Game of Thrones: What Is Dead May Never Die

Every week, for the sixth season of Game of Thrones, Christopher Orr, Spencer Kornhaber, and Lenika Cruz will be discussing new episodes of the HBO drama. Because no screeners are being made available to critics in advance this year, we’ll be posting our thoughts in installments.

Orr: And thus ends the most emphatic, if never particularly persuasive, effort to deny a widely foreseen plot development in television history. Forgive me if I sound judgmental, but I find the never-ending denials by the Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss that Jon Snow would be restored to life—and their clear mandate that everyone else involved comply with said denials—more than a touch obnoxious now that said development has in fact occurred.

There’s maintaining appropriate suspense, and then there’s flat-out dishonesty, and I think that this fell on the wrong side of that line. Maybe there’s some as-yet-unknown narrative trapdoor—he’s not really Jon Snow, but a reincarnation of Ned Stark!—but even if so, it will likely be a depends on what the meaning of is is level distinction.

In my preview of the season, I expressed concern that Benioff and Weiss might struggle now that they’ve (mostly) passed George R. R. Martin’s novels and are thus working without a narrative safety net. And while I don’t want to read too much into just two episodes, the evidence to date has not reassured me.

Begin with Jon’s resurrection. All signs pointed to its failure: Melisandre had never performed this magic before; her faith is at an all-time low ebb; last episode’s Big Reveal suggested her hard-earned frailty and exhaustion. Perhaps this effort might fail but a future one would succeed? (A rebirth by fire, maybe?) Instead we got the annoying bait and switch of oh, no it didn’t work followed by gasping life-breaths. I got enough of that for the year in Batman v Superman.

Not that we didn’t have yet more reason to assume that Jon would be coming back. The episode opened with a squawk, followed by Bran Stark dreaming in tree roots with the Three-Eyed Raven, now played by the always magnificent Max von Sydow. Bran sees his father Ned as a child, practice-fighting in Winterfell with his younger brother Benjen (whatever became of him?). And then he sees his long-dead, ever-enigmatic aunt, Lyanna. (The “scenes from next week” suggest we’ll see more of Ned and Lyanna both.) Suffice to say that it would be a little silly to resolve the mystery of Jon’s parentage if he were going to remain a corpse. Moreover, now we get the mini-mystery of how Hodor—a.k.a., “Wyllis”—lost the ability to speak anything other than his own name.

Moving somewhat south, we pick up where we left off at Castle Black, with Ser Alliser and his fellow Night’s Watch rebels about to break down the door to claim Jon Snow’s body. (Of course, they could have had it all along if they hadn’t abandoned it to freeze in the courtyard.) Ser Davos’s “I’ve never been much of a fighter”—you’ll recall, he’s a smuggler by inclination—“apologies for what you’re about to see” is among the most endearing lines yet uttered by one of the show’s most endearing characters.

As last week, however (see: Brienne & Sansa), we have an extremely well-timed intervention by Edd and the wildlings. It’s not a bad development by any means, but the transition from a Night’s Watch run by Ser Alliser and, um, the rest of the Night’s Watch, to one run by Davos and the wildlings is a touch abrupt.

Then we’re down to King’s Landing, where Ser Robert Strong is wasting time crushing a drunken idiot who flashed Cersei during her Walk of Shame. The capital is always home to many of the show’s best plots, and we’re beginning to get a sense of the direction for the season: Cersei and Jaime are aligned against the High Sparrow, and their son, young King Tommen, is seeking amends for not standing up to the latter earlier. (Only time will tell where Margaery and the Tyrells wind up.)

It would be a little silly to resolve the mystery of Jon’s parentage if he were going to remain a corpse.

The source of power of the High Sparrow and his Faith Militant continues to be a bit vague, thanks in part to their ridiculously hurried introduction last season. The Lannisters do, after all, have tens of thousands of armed and armored soldiers at their command, right? Oh well. The High Sparrow’s line “Everyone of us is poor and powerless, and yet together we can overthrow an empire” sounds a tad less absurd in a campaign season that’s seen the political establishment upended by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

My two favorite scenes tonight were one-offs. (I don’t know what you guys thought, but this episode seemed to me more choppy than usual.) Tyrion going deep down in the crypt with the dragons offered a wonderful opportunity for Peter Dinklage to play a note other than the typical one (“I drink, and I know things”) that he played instants before. And the dragons themselves have never been so evocative. The moment in which the second dragon—I lost track whether it was Viserion or Rhaegal—turned its head to be unshackled was, well, modestly magical. I was, however, a tad disappointed by Tyrion’s closing line to Varys (wisely waiting at the top of the stairs): “Next time I have an idea like that, punch me in the face.” I suspect George R. R. Martin winced at that one.

I also really liked the (brief) scene with Brienne and Sansa, too, talking about Arya. The Stark children have been scattered so far for so long that it’s nice to be reminded that most of them are, against all odds, still alive. I’m not so sure about Theon’s decision to head “home,” however, which was the most explicit use of this episode’s title. Events in the Iron Isles had moved forward more quickly in the books, and tonight’s catching up seemed a little awkward. To cite just one example, in Martin’s telling, Balon Greyjoy (Theon and Yara’s dad) fell off a bridge in a storm long ago, as an apparent consequence of Melisandre’s penile-blood leech barbecue. (Remember that?) Introducing an unnamed brother-murderer tonight (Euron?), plus another presumed brother (Aeron?), who is not even described as such at the watery funeral, smacks of some narrative confusion.

Which brings me, at last, to Ramsay. Regular readers will know that I think he has been from the start, and continues to be, the single biggest failure of Benioff and Weiss’s adaptation. Always in the background in the books—and vastly more subtle—he’s taken center stage on the show, to the extent that he’s occasioned the invention of implausible new characters: his lackey, Locke; his lover, Myranda.

I had a very brief moment of hope tonight when his father, the only moderately psychotic Roose, told him “If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you’ll be treated as a mad dog.” Yes! Finally, a rational take on the character. And then Ramsay, in front of witnesses that we’ve been given no reason to believe have particular loyalty to him—a Karstark heir, a maester—stabs the lord of the castle.

It seems to be a trend. Last week, the concubine of a prince of Dorne murdered its ruler with the help of her illegitimate children. Tonight the Bolton bastard kills his father and feeds his mother- and brother-in-law to the hounds. Is it just me, or has the show entered a world in which the whole concept of noble/royal succession—or, to borrow a phrase, the game of thrones—has been forgotten?

We will be updating this post with entries from Lenika Cruz and Spencer Kornhaber.