Hi. Julie here. Your friendly neighborhood amalgamation of Kylie and Julia, who have slowly lost their sense of self during 7 seasons of the worst TV show to ever receive universal acclaim. That’s right, we’re talking about the masterpiece of David Benioff and Dan Weiss (D&D), Game of Thrones! The good news is, this is going to be our last retrospective for Season 7. The bad news is that it’s about 50 different characters, few of whom have a real “arc” of which we can speak.
Backing up, for anyone who is new to us, or The Fandomentals, or this corner of the internet, Julie’s favorite pastime is water acrobatics. But her second favorite activity is rewatching Game of Thrones one finger plotline at a time, to truly immerse herself in its tale to see what this highly lauded show is saying. So far, the results have been…not much. Also possibly sexism.
This time, however, she’s closing out Season 7 by taking care of all those geographically inconvenient plot threads that didn’t fit into the previous categories. Or rather, did (at least tangentially), but Julie was already writing 15,000 word pieces to the chagrin of her editor.
Who’s involved this time? Well, basically everyone. Sam, Theon, Yara, Euron, “Ellaria Sand”, Tyene, Nym, “Barbaro”, Olenna, the merry band of brothers traveling north, their snappy canine, Jorah the Andal, some red shirts… It’s a long list.
While we’d normally use the space right here to provide Bachelor contestant-style picture frames alongside their assigned monikers, we also didn’t want 7 pages of images to kick things off. Instead, we’re going to provide a guide to newly mentioned nicknames in each section, and if there’s any names you spot that you don’t recognize, please refer to the one and only Book Snob Glossary.
We also recognize that we can’t possibly recap these completely unrelated events and talk about each character in one document. Well…intentionally unrelated for D&D, anyway. While our format has generally been to give you a:
…and then talk through the implications in a serious analysis (normally a second article), this time, we’re going to give you an:
…for each of the plot threads alone. It will be humorous in tone, yet take a genuine crack at deeper analysis along the way. Because mood dissonance is the way to get taken seriously on the internet!
In this first piece, we’ll look at Sam, Jorah, and the Brotherhood with Vague Continuity (with their pet Hound). You can also check out Part 2 to read whatever we can find to say about Dorne, the Greyjoys we are supposed to root for (we think), the Greyjoy we are not supposed to root for, and whatever we can say about the Dowager Sasstress Olenna.
So without further ado, let’s chat Sam.
Showboating Sam Drops out of School
Nicknames of note:
Slop. Scrape. Gag.
For anyone who doesn’t recall, when we last left Sam, he had just ditched his girlfriend and his adopted son in a hallway so he could look at the library of Oldtown State. You see, it has the best maester program in the land (and not just the only one), so no wonder he’d be in awe.
“What’s the most effective way to train maesters?” you ask. Why with a training montage, of course. And what else would fill such a training montage other than serving soup to people, stacking books, and cleaning chamber pots. In increasingly rapid succession. There’s a rhythm to it, and the fluids being poured into the bowls and out of the bowls all resemble each other.
Was this how Maester Luwin trained too?
In the middle of this coursework, Sam also notices a gated area of the library: the Restricted Section. He stares at it wistfully a lot. He also has one actual course, which we assume is “Human Dissection 201.” In it, Sam assists Maester Slughorn, who appears to be Sam’s personal professor at this school. Also the Archmaester? It must be a private university…
Slughorn seems like he’s actually somewhat qualified to teach people, though he doesn’t exactly encourage his student’s curiosity. Or any curiosity at all. While Slughorn is preoccupied with the weight of an alcoholic’s liver, Sam asks about gaining access to the Restricted Section so that he might go about his research project on the White Walkers. You know…the whole reason he’s there. Maester Slughorn says that while he believes Sam about the menace in the north, The Wall has been there a long time—even during the last Long Night apparently—so the research is probably unnecessary. It’ll be fine.
Sam, frustrated by this first and minor setback, decides to take matters into his own hands. He puts on his invisibility cloak and sneaks into the Restricted Section to look for books on Nicholas Flamel. We mean…he steals a key from a sleepy maester and lets himself in. Once there, he haphazardly pulls random books from the shelf nearest to him and puts them in his bag.
Pause. Okay, supposing the Restricted Section is truly where all the Long Night books are since Sam apparently hasn’t been able to find them anywhere else (does this mean that The World of Ice and Fire is restricted?), our question is: why would these be restricted? As far as skeptical maesters are concerned, these are just fairy tales anyway. What is the harm in having their students read about this? In fact, what function does Sam having to steal the books even have on the plot? He gets to be more active this way? But not really, since he was already looking for books. Maybe it’s some kind of excuse to portray the maesters as out of touch, since this plotline is full of lots of cheap (and kinda earned) shots at academia. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because D&D yet again did not have enough material for a full season of episodes (or 70% season), and were padding their 52 minute run-times with everything they had. But of course we couldn’t be shown the Stark siblings plotting together because reasons.
Anywho, after stealing the books immediately within reach, Sam goes to his mysteriously nice loveshack where Gilly and Baby Sam live. Baby Sam cannot be over 18 months. We refuse to believe it, and have a pretty good metric against which to measure right now. He’s adorable, sure, but still shrinking. Need we remind you, he was born at the beginning of Season 3!
We have no clue how their apartment exists. Our best honeypot is that they live over a pub in which Gilly works, and she’s been having amazing, wacky off-screen adventures that would rival Arya’s meat pies, or the Unsullied this year. Though it’d make the demeaning way Sam talks to her that much more grating if she were the one working to pay for his soup-slopping courses. Frankly, that makes the most sense, right? We find it hard to believe that a college that explicitly forbids students to date put them up with this.
Gilly is super excited about all these stolen books, because goddamn is she bored in this relationship. As they engage in a joint-reading session, Sam stumbles across a fact so amazing, so outrageous, and so surprising, that we have to ask you to sit down if you’re not already. You see, there is dragon glass on Dragonstone. Dragon. Glass.
The Watch needs some, so finding this information out makes Sam go, “Oh yeah, Stannis already told me lol.”
By the rate of baby-growth, maybe that was just two months ago, but it was also in Season 5, so… The long and short is that he needs to send Jon this ~brand new information~ that is militarily crucial, and thus forgotten until right now. It’s not like they’ve known about obsidian killing White Walkers since Season 3.
The next day, Sam goes back to class, and someone sticks their hand out of a room and jump scares him, asking about the whereabouts of Deadpan. Rude!
wikiHow Plague Cures
We guess Sam was super intrigued by that jump-scare, because next thing we know, he and Maester Slughorn are standing in Jorah’s room with him. Slughorn pokes the plague patient with a metal pointer. “The infection has spread too far.” Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Also Jorah is going to go crazy like the people he and Tyrion met in Valyria. Remember when?!
Sam looks mildly grossed out by the whole thing. He also asks rather pertinent questions about if there’s any way to cure or help Jorah out. Slughorn seems to get rather annoyed and low-key insults Sam’s intelligence.
Sam: I met Stannis Baratheon’s daughter at Castle Black. She had the greyscale as a baby and was cured.
Slughorn: No.
Sam: …Isn’t there some way—
Slughorn: Does this look like a baby to you?.
Stupid students and their follow-up questions!
There’s no hope for Jorah: Slughorn tells him it’s either Valyria or suicide. And apparently this is because he’s highborn; the lowborns would just get sent to Valyria. Where all ship captains want to go.
Sam seems to be moved by Jorah’s plight and asks about sending word to his family. That’s when he finds out that this guy is a MORMONT! Sam knew a Mormont!
Owing to this deep connection, Sam can’t seem to move on, and is super distracted when Slughorn babbles at him about how he’s going to go write the best research paper on the War of V Kings, with some highly precise and dry title. This is honestly the best representation of grad school that we’ve seen to date.
Sam brings up how he just happened to come across a cure for greyscale in a book earlier that day. It’s even worked on a couple of people! Shouldn’t they try to save their patient? Also why was this not considered for highborns instead of Valyria? You’d think for enough money, someone would have tried. Slughorn is dismissive, though, and points out that the guy who wrote that book died of greyscale himself. So, don’t do it.
Sam ignores that. We next see him coming into Jorah’s cell, pushing a little Hogwarts Express trolley full of medical instruments. He tells Jorah that he knew his daddy, and therefore he can’t let him die. We guess Jeor’s Tough But Fair love was effective for Sam.
It’s here that we find out about the super secret unknowable cure: exfoliation. No, literally. Jorah is covered in greyscale. The cure is to peel it off, and then put on some Polysporin. There’s also these really amazing pictures in the book that show the step-by-step process.
Sam takes a giant swig of rum, as any surgeon should, and then gets to work. It’s gross.
The next day (we think, cause Jorah wasn’t shoved off to Valyria), Slughorn is examining Jorah again, and wouldn’t you know it? He’s entirely cured. Like…the disease is gone. His skin is barely red, and he says he’s only in “a bit” of pain. We’ve had scabs that fell off with longer recovery times! Jorah decides to cover for Sam and tells Slughorn that he just magically started feeling better. Overnight. Good one! Slughorn doesn’t buy it at all, but leaves the room with a shrug. “Bye Jorah, have a good life.” Sam shakes Jorah’s hand and he looks moved to finally be touched on the hand again.
Later, in Slughorn’s office, Sam gets berated for curing an incurable disease. Slughorn definitely has a point that it was dangerous, but this whole thing is just so, so silly. Sam is then given busy-work as a punishment for his medical prowess. He has to copy a bunch of secret diaries that contain gigantic and unknown political bombshells.
F-ck This Sh-t I’m Out
You may not remember, but Bran decided on one random day to peep on the army of the dead and see how it was doing. Bigger! And Nearer! Then he wrote to Jon, the Citadel, and probably other people too. You also may not remember, but Sam’s dad and brother were brutally executed by dragon. That’s a thing.
Sam doesn’t know yet though, because he’s completely unphased as he delivers his freshly copied secret diaries to all the maesters sitting in their faculty lounge. They all agree that the maester at Winterhell is probably a dumb dumb, like those other Northerners. Then when they try to joke about other conspiracy theories, Sam interrupts them and vouches for Bran as once having been north of The Wall. He then also reiterates that he—meaning Sam—has personally witness the army of the dead, and it’s a real thing, so maybe these old fart bags with a lot of power and influence could do something about it. Slughorn dismisses it with his own conspiracy theory that it’s Deadpan-based propaganda to leave the south undefended. SAM SAW THE DEAD PEOPLE!
To throw him a bone, however, Slughorn agrees to write back to the dumb-dumb maester for “clarification”. What would that have looked like? “Hey, Maester friend: when you say ‘army of the dead’, how dead do you mean?”
When Sam leaves the room, they gossip about his recently burned family members. Slughorn reveals that he hasn’t had the heart to tell him yet. We agree: it’s much more important for us, the audience, to see the reaction of a bunch of old guys to this news than it is to see Sam’s.
Sam is getting increasingly disgruntled, though, and decides to take out his frustration back in his love shack. Gilly is having the time of her life with Secret Diary, written by [s]Tom Riddle[/s] High Septon Maynard, who was so powerful that he had a name. He also liked to count things, like windows on a building, or poops taken each day. No, we’re not kidding: we were told this.
Gilly tries to share with Sam some of these fun facts, which also includes the documentation of the time when Septon Maynard annulled the marriage of the Crown Prince, disinheriting his two children, before remarrying him in a secret Pornish love ceremony to some lady from the North. Sam, apparently uninterested in this world-changing political implication, instead retorts that he doesn’t care about the many shits that Maynard counted. Gilly seems sad he wasn’t listening.
We don’t know why, but this is Sam’s breaking point with the entire university system. He storms out of his love nest, steals even more Restricted Section books, and then decides he is done with the Fightin’ White Crows of Oldtown State. He leaves in a wagon with Gilly and baby Sam. Gilly points out how Sam had been excited to go to school and become a maester, like he always wanted. He even ditched her in a hallway because he was so into the campus tour. But no. Sam is “tired of reading about the achievements of better men,” in a direct quote of his now-late abusive father.
WHAT? EXCUSE US?
The best spin we can put on this is that Sam learned about his father’s death off-screen at some point, and this is his not very healthy way of processing his grief. Abusive dads can still be mourned in a complicated way, or spur action. See: Guardians of the Galaxy 2. However, there’s no reason for us to think Sam was told about his dad, since we learned Slughorn purposely kept it from him. And also, this isn’t really the kind of thing that can live on implication if it was supposed to be the motivator behind Sam leaving, especially when we were given scene after scene of him becoming disillusioned with the maesters.
Don’t get us wrong: we understand quitting Oldtown State. It is a terrible, terrible academic program where cleaning chamber pots is a course, books are locked away, and questions are met with disdain. It’s clearly not what Sam had in mind, not to mention, he tried to get them to move on the whole army of the dead thing, and they could not have been more dismissive. He legitimately will be doing more good out of that atmosphere, especially with all of his newly acquired stolen books.
But why the hell was he quoting Randyll? Last year, thin and confused as his arc was, we at least had him stealing Heartsbane in defiance of his father, and rejecting his father’s views. Sam clearly valued knowledge over brute force, no matter how emasculating Randyll told him it was, and when he ends the season grinning in a library, it’s kinda nice. Kinda dumb, since Gilly was literally left behind awkwardly, but nice. He took a stand against Randyll the only way he could (since he was viscerally triggered in Randyll’s presence), and we’re glad that he got out of there.
Last year is also when Randyll tried to shame Sam about how as a maester, he’d only read about the achievements of better men. It’s not just that it’s an anti-intellectual implication, which is rude, but also that this is an abuser’s words to his son not filling a toxically masculine mold. We thought Sam rejected it, just like everyone else at Horn Faire seemed to. But no! This year, we learn Randyll was right! Learning is stupid, and maesters really are just “lesser men” who joke with each other rather than facing the truth.
Clearly, we don’t find Randyll’s words compelling, and we don’t think every viewer will. But now, canonically, Sam does. He quotes that in a way of saying that he will finally go and be as ~active~ as Randyll wanted him to be. Which means his two year character arc was learning to listen to his abuser. Hooray.
Oh yeah, and Sam appears in a scene with Bran at the end of the season. He takes credit for reading about the secret marriage. What a great boyfriend.
You know what? We don’t really like Sam on the show. He’s been demeaning to Gilly from the start, he isn’t attentive to her needs, he’s super sex obsessed in a way that borders on concerning, and his only addition to this story this year was to remember something we were told two years ago, or to prompt Bran to look at a memory he should have already wanted to examine. A few years ago we nicknamed Sam “Showboating Sam”, because unlike his book counterpart, he likes to brag about his killing of White Walkers and Thenns. He may be bragging less these days, but he doesn’t seem to have grown much at all. And the fact that his culminating line of the season was basically to the point of, “yeah, learning about things is dumb and useless” doesn’t really make our hearts beat any faster.
We’re still bitter we didn’t get a plotline about Gilly making it work in the bar below her apartment.
Why did Sam even leave The Wall in Season 5? Seriously? There’s plenty of books there, and he probably could have found a circled map of dragon glass in one of them, had D&D really wanted. Last year, he had one moment of standing up to his abuser (behind Randyll’s back, albeit, but it was still significant), only for that to get completely dialed back this year. So the whole point of Sam’s journey away from The Wall was to get a sword, randomly heal Jorah, and then learn that Randyll sometimes had a point? We’re usually the last people to talk about plot function, but Sam just hasn’t had any, really, or at least not any function that wasn’t so completely contrived it couldn’t have been given to anyone else.
It almost feels like—and forgive us for suggesting this—D&D don’t plan more than one season at a time. In the books, Sam is sent off to be a maester, so they did that, but then they never had anything to say about it, or any reason to explore it. Because learning is dumb.
We suppose we should just count our blessings that they didn’t stick a cross-dressing Sand Fake at the Citadel for Sam to brag to.
Jorah the Andal Finds a Cure
Nicknames of note:
Since we already talked through Jorah’s miraculous recovery, we figured we’d now take you through the rest of his Season 7 journey. The only thing worthy of note in the Sam episodes previously discussed is that Jeor Mormont is mentioned a lot. Like aaaa loooootttt. At every conceivable opportunity, we hear about Old Bear.
It’s not that we think it’s a bad thing to bring up previous ties, but Jorah (as far as we can tell) hasn’t been bothered to even think about his father since Tyrion told him he died in Season 5. Even that was a 4 second reaction at most. It was always just about gettin’ back to Khaleesi for him.
And that’s exactly what he does this season, too! After being fully healed and good as new, Jorah makes his way to Dragonstone, where he is greeted by Dothraki who don’t recognize him. We suppose that’s possible since maybe they weren’t focused on his face when Deadpan had burned down their temple, but this is also the dude who speaks their language and always seemed to make an effort to build a rapport with those around him, so it’s a bit odd.
Either way, he’s trotted on down to where Deadpan and Jonny are engaged in some sexy talk about whether Jonny had been dead and resurrected, and boy is she happy to see him. Like, actually very happy. Her face moves and everything! Also, we’ve never thought much of Emilia Clarke’s acting, but she came so alive here for a change that we read this moment as interest, or even mild flirting.
Jonny is initially happy to see him too, but when Jorah and Deadpan kind of ignore his “I worked with your dad” comment to keep eye f-cking, Jonny gets sad and puts on a poo face. We think this is a love triangle, because who doesn’t need more of those in media.
Later on in the episode, Team Deadpan comes up with the brilliant wight-hunt plan and Jorah immediately volunteers to run into danger for his Khaleesi once more. But then Jonny also volunteers as tribute in a way that frames both their actions as competing for Deadpan’s romantic attention. How nice. It’s like when cavemen brought back mammoth carcasses.
Next, it’s time to leave for this stupid mission. Hey, remember when Jorah and Tyrion had a buddy duo dynamic for a season? And remember how that involved them being sold into slavery by a cock merchant played by Mr. Eko? Well, at the time, Jorah and Tyrion had been given a “wage” of one coin, which was meant to last them their lives. Because lol slavery! (Thank god Missandei smacked Tyrion down later for this.)
Tyrion was so affected by this experience that he’s been carrying that coin in his pocket ever since. We’re sure that’s gonna be great luck for Jorah on this trip. Tyrion gives it to him, and Jorah’s laughs, remembering the good times.
Also coming to say ‘goodbye’ is ‘Khaleesi’. They reminisce about all the other times they said goodbye, but conveniently leave out the fact that it was normally her kicking him out of her service because he was a creepy stalker or helped to almost get her killed. Hugs!
Jorah travels on up to Eastwatch to meet all of Team Gumbo. Then when everyone is playing a “who’s who,” Thoros and Jorah recognize each other from that one battle they were in that one time, and then Tormund recognizes Jorah’s last name and once again mentions his daddy.
It’s finally time to capture a wight! If you want to read about the tortured walk and talks, then we will direct you to our Dragonstalled retrospective for the umpteenth time this article. As far as Jorah is concerned, he really only has a conversation with Jon. It’s about…wait for it…his father!
Basically, Jorah tells Jonny he was a shitty son. Jonny feels bad (?) and offers him Longclaw, the sword that Jeor gave him. It’s the ancestral Mormont sword, so naturally he never offered to Lyanna (his best advocate), and instead figured the disgraced slaver was the good choice. Jorah, either a changed man or an uninterested one, rejects the sword because he “forfeited” his right to it. It has a wolf on it now anyway. Then, he tells Jonny to pass it on to his children. You know, the implication being children with Deadpan. The ones he’s now allowed to make, because Jorah gave him permission. Hooray!
Then he helps fight some zombies. The end.
So…what can we possibly say about this wonderful arc?
Let’s ignore some of the issues with his disease and such. Zooming out, Jorah’s story this year is that he really wanted to get back to his Khaleesi, so he did, and when he did he found that she was into someone else. However this time, unlike the other 500 times that happened, he was cool with it, because he’s a changed man, or his father liked Jon, or something.
To be fair, he did have that growth moment last year when he decided not to stay around Deadpan because he had the plague. That was less selfish than his character would have been prior to that. We suppose the easiest reading is that given he thought he was a dead man, being cured again gave him a new lease on life and a new perspective, wherein he could prioritize Deadpan’s happiness. This makes enough sense where we don’t really think we have to search for any other meaning.
There is, however, that thread about Jeor that resurfaced. We honestly don’t think that tied to him being chill about Deadpan and Jonny, even if we joke it about. We are confused why this was suddenly brought up again, though. Jeor seemed to have already made his peace that his son is an asshole, at least on the show (where his dying words were just a grunt, or something), and Jorah for his part seems to have made his peace with the fact that Jeor thinks he’s an asshole. He definitely looked sad when Tyrion told him Jeor had died, but it wasn’t in any way where it appeared to weigh on him, or make him reconsider his actions, or really change at all. And how does it relate to the plague, exactly?
It’s not subtle to us that this was a season where D&D rewatched Season 1 immediately before writing, and then just shoved in a bunch of callbacks and characters talking about previous relations to one another. Don’t get us wrong: it’s good to remember characters’ shared histories and connections. It’s just that the way to explore them is not to have people just walk up and talk about “hey remember this?” For all the Jeor mentions, it’s really hard for us to view it any differently than Tyrion pulling out that slave coin, or Deadpan reminiscing about that time Varys tried to kill her. We’re glad Jorah didn’t snap up Longclaw, but it just didn’t really matter at all, did it?
Also something that didn’t matter at all: Deadpan’s opinion about this love triangle, apparently. The Wight Hunt episode is one of the worst examples of action men doing actiony things while the women either fight with each other on the sidelines, or just aren’t considered first in any way. It mildly helped that Deadpan rescued everyone on Drogon, but even that was framed as her bailing out the men she loved, so…
The Jon/Jorah conversation is a great microcosm of this. Maybe Deadpan should have been the one to say who she wanted babies with! As far as we can tell, she was down to bang either one of them. Not to mention book!Jorah was the one to suggest she should have two husbands at one point.
But no, Jorah’s function is to always be there for his khaleesi, even if he has to randomly stumble across a guy with a wikiHow that will fix his situation. Deep.
The Lord’s Mysterious Plan
Nicknames of note:
Fire Reading and Pointy Mountains
Let’s not bury the lede: this is the section where we talk about the Brotherhood with Vague Continuity (who we’ll just abbreviate as BWB for simplicity) and their new bestie Sandor Clegane. They exist this season, just like last season! They’re still moving in the same geographic direction! And they feel as random this season as they did last season, though thank god there wasn’t another Shire for us to feel bad about.
For those who don’t remember, last season, they met up and decided to go “north.” And by the way, this was after not seeing the BWB since Season 3 (and no Sandor in Season 5). Sandor had been convinced to come along, because of the promise of fighting, and that he’d help in some cosmic way.
When we catch up with them, they’re still traveling in the riverlands, and it’s all snowy now. They come across an empty farmstead and plan to stay there, but Sandor recognizes it from that one time in Season 4 where he robbed a guy who wanted to employ him to drive off bandits. At the time, Sandor told Arya that the guy was weak and he and his daughter would be dead by winter.
Lo and behold, inside the farmstead, they are super dead and mummy-looking. Beric decides to play “guilt trip CSI” and tells Sandor that they clearly were starving to death and the dad had to kill the daughter, and if only they’d had some silver to buy food. Sandor and Beric then have a conversation about how mysterious the Lord of Light is for raising Beric from the dead, even though he’s just some dude.
Then, Thoros tells Sandor to look into the fire. He does, and he sees, in stunning detail, the entire army of the dead marching towards the Wall, currently at a mountain shaped like an arrowhead (unlike all the others!). Beric comments on how significant it is that Sandor, traumatized by fire, is a fire reader. Thanks D&D! We never would have gotten that on our own.
Later, Sandor buries the father and daughter’s bodies, and tries to say something nice. It somewhat works.
We guess getting North is even easier than we thought, since the next time we see this merry crew, they’re imprisoned by Tormund at Eastwatch. Why did Tormund lock them up? We still don’t know, but we’re contractually obligated to always point it out.
When Jonny’s crew arrives, the BWB and Sandor participate in the fun game of “I know you!”. Jon knows Sandor, Gendry knows the BWB, Jorah knows Thoros and Beric, and Beric’s just thrilled they can all be there together.
So now it’s time for the BWB’s walk-and-talks! The most significant is Gendry, who yells at the BWB for selling him, getting him raped, and almost getting him killed. The BWB smirk, while Sandor tells Gendry to quit complaining because his rapist was hot. Gendry looks annoyed but literally no one is on his side, so that’s the final word on the matter.
Sandor also walks and talks with Tormund, because they both knew Brienne. They trade gay jokes and discuss synonyms for “cock.” One of them is “dick.” Jorah walks and talks with Thoros. He wants to know how drunk he had been during the attack on Pyke. The answer is blackout. Finally, Beric walks and talks with Jonny, because they were both dead once. They don’t know what it means, but Beric seems satisfied to think the Lord of Light has a purpose for him.
At last, they reach Mount Arrowhead, which Sandor points out. Then they walk more and fight a wight polar bear. Thoros gets badly wounded. Then they have to run to the Plot Convenience Pond and spend, at least in terms of emotional experiences, one long night there. Thoros dies (reasonably, actually), and Sandor tries to steal his alcohol when they realize this the next morning. The group discusses how they have to burn the body, and Beric lights up his sword by cutting his hand. At this point, we’re super confused by his sword, because other times it’s been a lightsaber, like five minutes before with the wight bear.
Later, the army of the dead attacks, and they participate in the fight and escape on Drogon. Beric says he wants to stay with Tormund at Eastwatch rather than sail back to Dragonstone with everyone else. Sandor opts for the latter for no articulated reason.
Some amount of time later, Sandor joins the wight hunt team for the wight moot dragonpit meeting. He’s incredibly rude to everyone, and also tasked with carrying around the wight in a backpack. The one exception is during another walk and talk with Brienne, where they talk about how they both know Arya. She is physically safe, which pleases them, even if we’re personally quite concerned about her emotional well-being.
At the wight moot, Sandor recognizes his zombie brother, and runs up to yell at him and tell him that he will eventually be the one to kill him, as is his destiny.
After the wight moot, the Wall falls, and Beric falls with it. He might or might not be alive; it’s very unclear.
Okay…?
We are a bit confused how to approach this, but we think the one thing we can focus in on is Sandor’s arc. This season, he came face to face with a bad deed from his past, learned to read flames, and got to yell at his brother. If these things seem wildly disconnected, we don’t disagree one bit.
In terms of his character…arc…he’s been completely stagnant since one of his jokes landed a few seasons ago and turned him into a meme. We talked last year how, in what should have been an arc about him learning the futility of violence, he was actually validated for his pessimistic, aggressive worldview. This year, he’s quite clearly still as violent and revenge-driven, since he ends the season saying he’s going to kill his brother. That, dear readers, is zero character growth for this dude. And just hilariously far from what happens in the books.
There’s a chance that Sandor’s not as nihilistic, we suppose. It’s hard to tell, but he seems shaken by what he viewed in the fire and he gladly goes on the wight hunt mission. That could also have related to him now wanting to be a force for good in the world, since he was clearly bothered by the fate of the daughter and father he stole from. That would mean he’s reforming and growing from his past, right?
The issue, however, is that what we’re given on the screen with Sandor is so random (“here, look in these flames!”) and so paper thin, it’s a bit hard to track what’s actually driving him or how he’s feeling about anything. Especially since the priority for the writers with this character seems to be making him…witty? To us, it comes across as distressingly unpleasant. And it is possible to speak a sentence without using the c-word.
Sure, sometimes his unpleasantness makes sense. Thoros asked Sandor if he recognized the farmstead, or if he was afraid, and Sandor began calling him a c-nt, a f-cker, a c-cksucker and even made fun of his hair. It’s a defense mechanism, and that was pretty clear. Yet at the same time, he treats the Lannister soldier who was just being mildly helpful the exact same way. We realize that sometimes being a Lannister soldier is just no fun at all, but it’s more confusing to us why this is Sandor’s MO. Why are we supposed to be on this jerk’s side? He’s not funny, he’s dismissive of trauma, he’s horribly homophobic, and he doesn’t really bring anything unique to the table, unless you count him being the ‘main fire reader’ with Thoros dead and Mel shoved off.
Speaking of, what in seven hells are we supposed to do with that? Yeah, it’s vaguely poetic that a guy with trauma relating to fire could find something meaningful in it, not that he has any sympathy for anyone else who’s traumatized. But what led to this moment? What was actually set up here, other than, “Oh hey let’s use the guy with the burn for this”?
Honestly, while there is the fire reading and the brother threatening, the only real takeaway we have is that D&D think this a very funny character who is worthy of being shoved into many scenes. There’s certainly no coherent arc here, and the fire reading is not character growth—it’s character punctuated equilibrium. Nothing was earned for that moment, nothing led up to it, and yet it happened.
Then there’s the Brotherhood, now Without Purpose. When we called them the “Brotherhood with Vague Continuity,” it was because they were heading north for 2 seasons. That’s the continuity. Here though, we find out that they don’t really know why they’re going north; they just have a feeling it’s where stuff is going down. So basically, they’re Harry Potter on Felix Felicis.
Beric is this character they’ve built up since Season 3, who the Lord of Lights needs so much for his plan that he’s been risen from the dead 6 times. Beric always monologues about how the Lord isn’t done with him yet because he has some great purpose. Even this year, Sandor points out that he’s just a mundane dude, and Beric doubles down on the fact that yes, he is, but the Lord needs him.
So apparently, this great purpose was to accompany Jon Snow and his buddies to capture a wight to convince a political adversary to not solidify her position? Being so generous, Beric did have the moment of pointing to Shogun and telling Jon that if they could kill him, everyone dies. Was that his magical destiny? To have told Jon that piece of information that frankly could have been intuited given how all the wights collapsed after Skyr was killed? This is the Lord’s mysterious purpose?
Now, we know D&D are very good atheists who read The God Delusion, but we honestly don’t think Beric was supposed to be blowing smoke out of his ass this whole time. He was risen from the dead multiple times, and Sandor’s fire reading skills are not imagined. There is truly a Mount Arrowhead. So how on earth is this what we waited four years to see Beric do? Unless, of course, he’s not really dead at Eastwatch and more is to come. But wow, what a waste this year was for the BWB. Poor Thoros even died! Though in fairness, he was a c-nt with a topknot.
It might shock you, but we have nothing else to say about these guys. We don’t get it. We don’t get what anyone was going for. We’re not going to waste our time explaining to you what happened in the books, but suffice it to say it’s a lot more interesting than this. Also remember when we were told Lady Stoneheart was too silly for this show? Glad we got something much more dignified.
To be continued next week!
Since we’re a good 6,000 words in with no signs of slowing, we’ll pause here so that you can take the time needed to process the depth of D&D’s writing. If you’re prepared, you can go on to Part 2 where we cover our absolute favorite book theater, the Greyjoys (friend and foe), and Olenna’s surprisingly decent send-off. Trust us, we’re all astonishment too.
In the meanwhile, you can check out the rest of our writings on Season 7 in our retrospective tag. We’ll talk to you soon!
