Game of Thrones: Trial Without Combat

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.

Kornhaber: “I choose violence” has been the headline quote in Game of Thrones teasers for months now. Tonight, Cersei Lannister finally spoke those words within the show’s narrative—but it still turned out to be a tease. The episode repeatedly toyed with characters’ and audience members’ expectations for carnage, with the most memorable scenes made up of dialogue, surrenders, and Meereenese comedy slams.

 

Just take a tally of aborted or strangely muted fights that took place. Arya’s climactic duel with the Waif happened off-screen. The Hound only took compromised vengeance against the men who massacred his friends. Jaime’s siege of Riverrun ended peacefully, save for the slaying of the Blackfish—which, again, happened off-screen. A battle for Meereen commenced, but barely. And Tommen thwarted Cersei’s big plans to resolve her predicaments via combat, except for when it came to that poor missionary in the Red Keep courtyard.

Perhaps these relatively unwarlike developments made for a necessary pendulum backswing after the previous episode’s pacifist massacre. But tonight’s series of unspectacular confrontations sometimes just felt like stalling or shoddy plotting. The hour had its twists, but they resulted from circumstances the viewers have never had a chance to fully understand, which is to say they weren’t super-satisfying twists

The episode opened with Lady Crane giving Tonys-worthy treatment to the same feelings that Lena Headey has earned Emmy nominations for portraying. The motif of mothers’ fierce loyalty to their kids would recur through the night, including when Crane took in the wounded Arya as if she were her own child. Their fleeting moments of bonding were poignant, but much like Tyrion’s later talk of starting a vineyard, the wandering Stark’s professed goal of seeing the West side of Westeros made me nervous: Thrones isn’t a show where people get to imagine happy endings long before dying.

It turned out, though, that the terrifying assassins guild Arya had offended wasn’t actually all that terrifying. Recently, wild theories that have flown around the internet regarding the House of Black and White plotline in part because it seems hard to believe that the Waif’s really as reckless as she seems on screen. Yet tonight’s episode kept her raging-incompetent routine going, with the nameless assassin gloating like a Bond villain upon thwacking Arya’s hostess (which, bafflingly, happened only after Arya awoke from a drugged sleep). The Waif then let herself be lured into her target’s lair, where she was promptly defaced.

It’s possible the aforementioned wild theories (investigate at your risk) could explain how Arya was allowed to get into the temple’s inner sanctum and threaten Jaqen H’ghar, a man who until now has seemed the most unthreatenable person in the realm. But it’s also possible showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are simply ripping this portion of Arya’s story from the kind of airport-paperback thriller George R.R. Martin likes to subvert. Viewers have no choice but to view the latest happenings in Braavos with some bewilderment—the information needed to make what’s happened fully comprehensible just isn’t there.

Meereen is also feeling a bit blurry lately. Tonight’s episode told us that the Lord of Light’s minions had unified the city, with little rationale given for “why”—was there not a religion there before? We also saw that the slavers had strongly declined the deal Tyrion offered them, sans any mention of forewarning—what were Varys’s little birds doing before he left? The most charitable interpretation of this latest development imagines Tyrion as an audience surrogate, blindly holding to certain modern-seeming ideals in a land ruled by very different values. At least now that the slavers have laid siege, Tyrion might not have having to justify his seven-years-of-slavery compromise to Danaerys, who typically abhors compromise on the issue of slavery.

In King’s Landing, another main character’s confusion is also the audience’s confusion. Cersei by now is so isolated in the capital’s political scene that she’s caught unawares by her son’s pronouncement that she stand for non-combat trial. Why have the machinations in King’s Landing, once the source of so much fabulous intrigue, been obscured from viewers? Probably for suspense’s sake. It’s clear that Margaery and the High Sparrow’s grand plan may involve the elimination of the Queen Regent; it’s not clear whether they realize how hard it is to kill the Franken-Mountain, regardless of whether he’s legally allowed to crack skulls. Another mystery is the rumor Cersei and Qyburn discussed. What’s it about: a High Sparrow abuse scandal? A secret Wildfire supply? Hillary Clinton’s VP pick?

Jaime might be the perfect Thrones hero: morally compromised, yet still striving not to cause more brutality.

The developments in Riverrun also were built on viewers’ ignorance. Before this episode, there was little reason to suspect that rank-and-file Tully troops would rank or file Edmure above the Blackfish to the point of giving up the castle. In retrospect, it does make some sense that the prospect of slowly starving over two years to lose some war that’s long been finished would give the average man incentive to let down the drawbridge. And Jaime’s confrontation with Edmure—about serving Cersei above all else—was crucial in that it underscored how personal desires, not abstract duty, motivate many of the realm’s most passionate people (though not in all cases: “Lots of horrible shit in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves,” the Hound said, with chilling relevance).

For the first time in quite a while, the audience is reminded of why Jaime’s such a compelling character. Really, he might be the perfect Thrones hero: morally compromised, willing to do anything, yet still striving to survive a brutal system without needlessly perpetuating more brutality. He threatened to murder an entire house—but in doing so, he ended up reducing the body count to one old man holding fast to a lost cause. (And even then, who knows? The Blackfish might be swimming down that waterway below Brienne.)

What did you two think of the night? Got any jokes for Grey Worm? Appreciate the Hound’s chickens callback? Interested in investing in Tyrion’s winery?

Entries from Lenika Cruz and Christopher Orr to come.