Happy New Year! What better way is there to ring in 2019 than to ring out the final Game of Thrones Season 7 retrospective piece by Julia and Kylie? That’s right, their fusion is back and ready to dive into the plotlines of the many miscellaneous characters whose arcs could not fit into the previous analyses. While last time we were treated Sam’s semester in college, Jorah’s love-fueled journey, and some random yet highly-detailed fire reading, this time “Julie” will break down and extract the meaning of the show’s Dornish theater, the Greyjoys, and Olenna’s final days. We’re sure showrunners Benioff and Weiss (D&D) have something essential and weighty packed into them.
That’s what you get for loving your family!
It is far past time that we concluded the Dornish chapter of this show. And this time we really mean it, since last year we had that fake-out in 6×01 where it seemed like they were never coming back too. We could be wrong; maybe next season we’ll see Elia Sand (Uller?) plotting her reign.
For those who don’t remember, at the very end of Season 6, Princess Faullaria Uller (Sand?) decided to team up with Deadpan and bring Olenna along with her. This was apparently such a great alliance for Deadpan that Varys, her emissary, was even willing to hide behind a curtain and get summoned with a bell. And for those who really don’t remember, or blocked things out, Faullaria and her “brood of bitches” murdered their own family members in the name of revenge for the deceased Oberyn Martell.
This year, we catch up with Princess Faullaria at that particular war-planning meeting where many mismatched plotlines converge. She agrees with Yara (and anyone possessing half a brain) that their best move is to use their overwhelming military presence to win the war. Right now. Go. Tyrion doesn’t want to win the war though, because it’s bad optics to have people die. Faullaria points out that it’s just kinda of the way of war, and Tyrion responds that of course she’d say such a thing…she murdered his niece!
Faullaria doubles down, saying Lannisters are guilty, until Deadpan tells them both to stuff it. Apparently Faullaria is to treat Tyrion with respect, and Tyrion is to lay out his master plan: a humanitarian siege of Cheryl’s Landing, carried out by the non-foreign troops of Dorne and Highgarden, with Yara and her fleet providing the transportation.
Faullaria is pleased enough with this, since it’s something action-y to do, we suppose. Also revenge!
Later, somewhere in the Narrow Sea on the way to Dorne, the Sand Fakes lie in hammocks together, discussing the upcoming siege and how dumb Tyene is for liking her mom. They’re trying to take dibs on who gets to kill whom, but shockingly they don’t come to an agreement, since they all hate each other. One of them also threatens to kill another, but it literally doesn’t matter who.
In a different room on the boat, Faullaria complains about the booze, since she only likes her Dornish Red. She then fishes for Yara’s sexuality, which turns out to be both-sexual. Kylie’s heart warms at this representation. Faullaria then tries to order Theon to refill her drink, and Yara tells her not to be an asshole. For some reason Faullaria takes this as a cue to start flirting more intensely with Yara, to the obvious discomfort of Theon. Part of this flirting includes her describing her moves up Yara’s leg as “a foreign invasion.” But wait! We thought the Dornish weren’t foreign, which is why they’re participating in this humanitarian siege! We’re so confused…
Mercifully for everyone, the foreign invasion is cut short by an invasion of Euron’s fleet, who no one saw coming. There’s a big, stylized battle on the boats, and Obara and Nym are both killed with their own weapons by Euron. Tyene and Faullaria are taken captive, despite them asking to be killed.
The next we see them, they are being led through the streets on leashes, to the cheering of the denizens of King’s Landing, who now very much like Euron Greyjoy. Or maybe just parades. Faullaria and Tyene are brought before Cheryl as a gift (not the gift, mind you), and Cheryl almost seems turned on by this. Neato.
Then, she decides to have Tyene and Faullaria chained up in the same dungeon across the room from one another. She comes in wearing the brightest lipstick known to man, and proceeds to monologue at them about various topics, which we have covered in depth in our Cherry Bomb retrospective. Relevant here is the fact that Oberyn looked super hot, Faullaria murdered Madison, and Cheryl thinks Tyene is a “perfect Dornish Beauty.” Then she kisses Tyene on the lips with whatever that poison is and leaves the room so that Faullaria will have to watch Tyene die in 5-35 minutes. Or if she gets sexually aroused, we suppose, like Bronn.
And that’s it! No more Dornish for Season 7.
So, we’re kind of known around these parts for liking Dorne. Therefore, the fact that we not only don’t want to talk about this, but have basically nothing to say, should be rather indicative of how this landed for us.
Taking this into consideration, the overarching story of the Dornish (read: Princess Faullaria) is that she was consumed by revenge to her doom. She killed Doran and had Trystane killed in the name of exacting revenge on the Lannisters, she murdered a young girl just for being a Lannister, and she threw what we guess is her whole kingdom’s support behind Deadpan just to have a shot at bringing down the Lannisters. Because if there’s one thing the Martells (and quasi-Martells) do, it’s create speedy alliances and get rid of family members for their own selfish interest.
And yeah, futility of revenge: they failed, and failed so badly, they all died to their own weapons, other than Faullaria who was forced to watch.
We kind of like stories that examine the futility of revenge. The issue, is that…this was in service of Cheryl’s revenge. We guess she’s at least the bad guy this season, but it’s framed as her “winning,” just like Olenna coming clean about Joffrey’s death was her “winning” the scene with Larry. Revenge, no matter how monstrous, is still the one valid motivation that is often successful on this show, and we honestly don’t see anyone particularly consumed by it in a negative way. Revenge is Arya’s whole thing, right? And the scripts say we were supposed to be at least somewhat on her side this year.
In some ways, this Dornish plot is a counterpoint that makes the case we’ve been trying to make: revenge = no good. Yet we have a really hard time with the treatment of the Dornish on this show, because them “getting theirs” seemed less about any action they took, and more about audience wish-fulfillment for offing hated characters. People found Nym’s whip annoying? Well let’s have her strangled by it. Obara gets impaled. Tyene gets poisoned.
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We know this is weird, but it feels like we were given audience revenge at the same time our antagonist was getting revenge. So…who exactly was shedding a tear for anyone in this case, or at least enough to learn a lesson about the caustic cycle of revenge?
We also need to talk about the “foreign” thing. And yes, this is something we’ve talked about ad nauseum. Our biggest issue this year was that the show could not decide who was foreign and who wasn’t. Deadpan is a “foreign whore,” despite being from the family with the longest-standing monarchical tradition in the country who were deposed well within living memory. Faullaria and the Dornish are not foreign when they need to participate in a siege over the Unsullied and Dothraki, but are foreign when they need to make racialized sex jokes. We could try and discuss that perhaps Faullaria feels more othered by the systems than someone like Tyrion would consider her to be? But that’s really, really stretching it given that A) this was never explored at all, B) the Dornish are about as othered as you can get on this show, and C) we doubt D&D gave that exchange two seconds of thought.
Our point is, this didn’t land, and the discomfort we have with the racialized aspect of this plotline is always present. Hell, Cheryl even called Tyene a “perfect Dornish beauty.” Do they not hear how this sounds?
There’s really nothing more we can say about the Dornish, unless we just want to cry into our copies of A Feast for Crows. It’s a really, really good theater in the books if you allow yourself to focus on the fraught family dynamics. Read it, and let’s ignore this pig slop.
Theon Gets His Arc Back
Nicknames of note:
Theon has been a bit of a head-scratcher for us. For those who may not remember, last year, Theon scrapped about five years worth of development to go support his sister’s claim to the Iron Islands and also to get screamed at by her. This was obviously much more meaningful than helping the person he had grown up with as a sister (Sansa) and with whom he shared a trauma.
The other meaning to be found there was that Yara told him (in an episode titled “The Broken Man”) to either stop having PTSD or to off himself because he’s not useful anymore. According to D&D at the time, it was the “tough love” Theon needed, and we even got to see a glimpse of the “old Theon.” Let’s check in on how that “cured” Theon is making out now.
The first we see of Theon and Yara is at the wonderful plotline convergence meeting where Yara forcefully (very good part) tells the room that they should attack King’s Landing with their overwhelming military advantage. As we’ve detailed before, this gets dismissed, and Yara seems chill with the new plan involving her ferrying Dornish troops to a humanitarian siege. Theon is also there and says nothing.
Next, Yara does indeed ferry said Dornish, and we really, really wish that no one said anything at all on this trip. But no, it’s the f-cking foreign invasion scene again (please don’t make us re-describe it). The one thing to note in terms of the Greyjoys here is that Yara is very defensive of Theon, and you can legitimately tell there’s affection between the siblings. This is especially apparent since it’s juxtaposed to the Sand Fakes threatening to murder each other and making fun of Tyene for liking her mom. But even without that charming context, it very much tracks that Yara and Theon look out for one another. Does that mean we’re chill with Theon dropping Sansa like a hot potato to warp to Yara’s side when their interaction was ostensibly the whole reason Sansa took the place of Jeyne Poole? No. But this is…nice? Better than the Fakes?
Too bad it only lasts about five seconds, because you’ll never guess who attacks: Euron! In the middle of the—you guessed it—overly stylized fighting, we see both Yara and Theon holding their own fairly well. However, they lose, and things take a major turn for Theon when Euron captures Yara and holds a blade to her throat. Euron purposely taunts “Little Theon” to try and save Yara, and Theon, clearly triggered by the surroundings, jumps overboard as Euron laughs.
Now, to be honest, we’re slightly confused by this. We’re not confused why Yara yelling at Theon didn’t actually work as a magic cure to PTSD, and frankly relieved that it didn’t. However, we aren’t tracking this portrayal of trauma. We 100% get that PTSD doesn’t make narrative sense in real life, and we don’t want to argue that it should. It’s just…this is PTSD D&D very purposely re-included this season for Theon to re-get-over-it (spoiler). And it’s also clear that Alfie Allen was directed to act in a triggered manner during the confrontation with Euron, but not beforehand in the midst of the fighting.
As a result, given the way it’s framed and the moment he breaks, it’s almost like we’re supposed to view Euron as Theon’s primary abuser. Or maybe it’s that any asshole reminds him of Ramsay—that mildly works, right? But more and more by rewatching this, we just see it as setting up Euron to be some kind of weird big-bad for Theon to take down as a proxy for Ramsay. That’s certainly how his arc gets set up for next year, as we’ll discuss shortly. To that…Ramsay never needed to be “his kill” in the first place, or anyone’s in particular. Because it’s possible to heal without violent revenge, amazingly. We don’t see why setting Euron up as this bad for Theon to topple is necessary, especially when it involves so many forced moments and teleporting fleets.
In fairness, Yara being threatened by Euron could have reminded Theon of Sansa in duress and served as a trigger. That’s fine, we guess. Again, the framing was more about Theon’s relationship to Euron, but fine. What’s really bothering us is that the portrayal still conflates PTSD with cowardice, and certainly continues the whole “oh this is inconvenient and unhelpful” aspect of it. That’s the very explicit framing. Yara even has a reaction shot of her looking put-out and disappointed by the whole thing.
Continuing on—and since this is technically our recap of both Theon and Yara—we should note that Yara gets captured, put on a leash, and paraded through Cheryl’s Landing, where she mildly rolls her eyes at Euron shit-talking her brother. Then she disappears for the rest of the season.
Theon, meanwhile, gets fished out of the sea by a boat of grumpy Greyjoy men who were loyal to Yara apparently? They get very mad at Theon for being alive and deduce that he must have run away or not really tried to save Yara, rather than any of the other thousand possibilities for why someone could end up in the ocean after a battle on ships. Also, these assholes are alive, so are they admitting to being cowards? Were they some kind of weird rear flank? Do they have names? Apparently, yes. The one who speaks with forceful dialogue (good part) is “Harrag.”
So Hagrid takes Theon and the grumpy Greyjoy men back to Dragonstone, where Theon is greeted by…Jonny Cardboard? The kinda-prisoner and also king of a different land?
Jonny is not happy to see Theon, but Theon kind of head-nods at him and asks if Sansa is okay. Jonny tells him that Sansa is the only reason he’s not going to kill him. We suppose this is reasonable on some level, even if we think the anger is a click above Kit Harington’s acting range. Theon tells him that he wants to talk to Deadpan so that she’ll help him rescue Yara.
Several episodes later, Theon has made no progress on this front and didn’t even try to interrupt Deadpan and Tyrion’s conversation about how she doesn’t like to date short dudes and should make a will. Instead, he patiently waits for the day of the wight moot, where he doesn’t participate in the pre-moot walk and talks. So much for him catching up with Brienne.
We don’t want to recap the pit scene ever again, and luckily Theon mostly just stands in the background, so we don’t have to. However, at one point towards the beginning, Euron just stands up and interrupts the meeting to yell at him that he has Yara and will kill her if he doesn’t submit to him on the spot. Everyone exchanges annoyed glances, and we suppose Theon didn’t really take that threat seriously, because he just looks confused and vaguely uncomfortable.
In fact, Tyrion even tries to move on by saying, “I think we ought to begin with larger concerns.” Ouch, Yara.
Later, everyone’s back at Dragonstone and getting ready to board the S.S. Boatsex. Theon decides this is a great time to talk to Jon about his character arc, since Jon has been so intimately involved with it. Like that one time Theon and Jon were both in the room to get a shave and a haircut. Or that other time when Theon pointed out that the smallest puppy was Jon’s.
Theon begins by talking about the internal conflict that was always raging inside him, and not at all resolved in any way when he risked his life to save Sansa, or when he warped back to support Yara’s election. Frankly, if we had been given his arc as scripted, we’d probably need to hash it out too. He also notes how impressive Jonny is because he never has any moral dilemmas, and never tells lies.
Jonny is more humble than anyone and kind of dismisses that praise, but tells Theon how he should have been more appreciative of the people who were holding him hostage, because they were good people. Ned would even slow clap for his daughters sometimes. Then Jonny, working hard on his 8th grade book report, decides to resolve the whole thing for Theon: he tells him he’s not a Stark or a Greyjoy, but a Strayboy who doesn’t need to choose! Theon is touched.
This also somehow leads to the revelation that he has to go save his sister, who he already wanted to save, because she was nice to him, just like the people who had been holding him hostage. And this is only possible with his new mixed Stark/Greyjoy identity? Yara didn’t have that, and she still decided to try and save Theon in Season 4, but whatever. Only Starks love their family, don’t ya know?
Theon decides that to save Yara, he has to convince Hagrid Harrag and all of his buddies to join him. They’re on the beach, getting rowboats ready to board their own ship so they can take up the traditional Ironborn values of raping and reaving. Theon finds this out and reminds them that Yara gave it up after Deadpan asked her to (but not before). Hagrid doesn’t seem to care since she’s out of sight, out of mind. Theon tries to pull rank and say he’s in charge and they’re going to go rescue Yara—you know, their queen. Hagrid still doesn’t care, man. Then they fight.
Theon seems to be getting his butt kicked, until… Ugh. Until Hagrid tries to kick Theon in the balls, but Theon was castrated and therefore doesn’t have them. So that naturally means he feels no pain at all when slammed in the groin area, and in fact seems to enjoy it. The pleasant sensation of Hagrid’s foot in his crotch empowers Theon to deliver the single greatest headbutt in the history of filmed headbutts. Then he proceeds to win the fight! Yay!!
He also symbolically washes himself in salt water afterwards, like any good Stark/Greyjoy hybrid would do. He then tells the rest of the men that they’re off to save Yara, and they all seem thrilled. We guess fights are the Ironborn equivalent of parades?
And there we go: that’s his arc. It seems oddly familiar to us, mostly because he decided that his actual loyalty should have been to the Starks in early Season 3, and explicitly said that to Ramsay at the time. Then we were also told that his rescuing Sansa in Season 5 was necessary to amend the “great original sin” of his life. And then, he had also very comfortably gone off to support Yara’s claim, and spoke for her eloquently (more so than she managed) at the Salt Moot, because you know…he figured he could be a Stark and a Greyjoy.
Oh also, he was magically cured of PTSD at the very end of Season 6, too.
Call us cynics, but we’re finding this to be a sloppy reboot just one season after everyone else’s sloppy reboot. Maybe Theon isn’t “cured,” and D&D know that too. We’re less skeptical that they realized it at the time, since there’s no denying that both Yara screaming at him in Volantis and Theon getting kicked in the crotch were both framed as these moments where Theon looks up and is suddenly empowered/back to form. And of course, getting kicked in the crotch is explicitly in the script as an “advantage from his castration,” which to us reads as some kind of reclamation of trauma.
Ew.
In fact, looking up D&D’s thoughts on the matter, (even though we do feel the show should be considered in isolation since that’s what audiences take in,) we were right! D&D totally thought they ‘fixed’ Theon in Season 6, but then writing for this season were like, “Oh huh, this seems to be an intense situation for someone given his very experiences.”
“We maybe fooled ourselves into thinking that Theon was out of the woods on his whole Reek experience, and as we were writing it, we realized that you don’t just get over what happened to him. That’s something that’s going to be part of him for the rest of his life. And this is a place that triggers the worst of that experience.” —Dan Weiss
And of course, let’s relish in how messed up it is that he couldn’t save one sister, and now can’t save the other. Boy, do they gush about the looks Alfie Allen is able to give the camera.
We really, really found this in bad taste—the whole arc, frankly. And insultingly boring, since it’s both a rehash, as well as just Jon vomiting his view of a character arc onto us. Why is Jon in any position to judge any of this? Because he can never tell a lie? And why was that framed as being more significant than Sansa already having forgiven him two season prior?
Also what the hell are they talking about that he’s a Stark and a Greyjoy? This didn’t influence anything! Theon wanted to save Yara as soon as he arrived back at Dragonstone following the battle at sea, and then still wanted to save Yara following his conversation with Jon. Was being told of his Strayboy roots the confidence boost he needed to talk to Hagrid again? And if so, why? It just seemed like this random conversation shoved in there, because Jon is a Stark proxy, and D&D wanted to show Theon being forgiven. Naturally Sansa’s forgiveness wasn’t good enough; she’s a girl.
What bothers us is that this moment really should have been impactful, since it’s not like we think Theon’s story in Season 1 and 2 was poorly done. In fact, we kinda liked it up until the torture porn. The issue is that this conclusion was already reached in Season 3, and everything else appears to be setting up some kind of crowning badass moment for him against Euron, which is simply not earned or necessary. Which is, coincidentally, the sum total of what we have to say about Theon’s arc this year.
Hooligan Without A Cause
What do you do when you have a villain who is *super evil*, but also wacky? Well, if you were D&D, you killed him off in faux-poetic justice via dogs who wait for dramatically satisfying moments. But now you have to one-up that with your next antagonist. So the only logical conclusion is to write a hooligan with a multiple personalities [sic] because that’s how “psychopaths” are.
All of this is very evident from the moment that Euron Greyjoy appears on screen this season, clad in a rockin’ leather jacket (complete with eyeliner), and doing what is very obviously a Jack Sparrow impersonation.
You see, Cheryl has invited Euron and his giant, enormous fleet (that he made overnight from all the trees on the Iron Islands) to make an alliance, because she is totally boned without more troops. Euron, instead of taking this opportunity to attack the completely defenseless Cheryl’s Landing and claim the Iron Throne as his own, decides to take a different opportunity and bitch about how his niece and nephew were so mean to steal some of his ships during his drowning coronation. He also feels apparently very secure that Cheryl won’t turn on him, because, while the throne room is full of her guards, Euron hasn’t even brought Priesty McBeardface as moral support.
Hooligan time! His new, unpredictable wish this season is to marry Cheryl, so that together they can kill Theon and Yara, and potentially Deadpan, who he now wants dead since she…sided with Yara? All this will make him feel “a lot better,” and he’s also decided that Cheryl is the most beautiful woman in the world—we guess he originally wanted to go after Deadpan before seeing Cheryl’s cute pixie cut.
Cheryl and Larry are not totally convinced, though. Larry points out how Euron is a shitty, kinslaying ally, and that they totally lost the Greyjoy rebellion too. Euron shrugs though; he had too many relatives anyway. When Cheryl notes that he’s a super annoying braggart, he fires back how she’s not humble either, since awesome people aren’t humble. For some reason unbeknownst to us, Cheryl then tells him that he’s too untrustworthy to ally with, which is why she invited his entire army? We guess she’s a hooligan too.
Euron, rather than now taking this opportunity after a slight to sack the—again—undefended city, says he must go off and impress Cheryl by bringing her a gift. Is it Tyrion again?
Evidently not, since the next we see of Euron, he’s attacking the Pornish/Yara conglomerate, and enjoying himself a lot. He purposely singles out Obara and Nym to kill with their own weapons (at least, we don’t think he did this to anyone else), before holding Yara hostage and taunting Theon, as we described. Honestly, we’ve never seen a man this happy in all our lives. Oh, and he ordered his men to take Faullaria and Tyene alive.
His ebullience continues at what seems like the next day, when he marches in a parade down Cheryl’s Landing, with Yara, Faullaria, and Tyene all on leashes. #WomenOnTop. He personally holds Yara’s leash, and as she looks done with it, he jokes around about how stupid Theon looked running away, and how he’s a “twat.” The people clap excitedly.
Once in the throne room, Euron presents Faullaria and Tyene as if he’s a magician at an 8-year-old’s birthday party who pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Cheryl seems genuinely happy/turned on by this, but is oh-so devious that she tells him they’ll certainly be married…after the war is won. Euron is 100% content with this. He even asks Larry for some sex advice! Because hooligans don’t care about incest.
Some amount of time later that’s less than two weeks, Euron takes his armada and attacks Casterly Rock, on the other side of the continent. Our biggest confusion is how his armada hadn’t crossed paths with the Unsullied fleet already, but whatever. He was laser-focused on Yara’s people, we guess.
At Casterly Rock, he manages to prevent the Unsullied from escaping in their ships, so that they have to walk back across the continent. We suppose this means Cheryl is still in control of Casterly Rock? But we’re absolutely guessing.
Finally, it’s time for the wight moot, and for Euron to circumnavigate the continent once again. Now mild spoilers, but he has a ~secret meeting~ with Cheryl just before this moot, where they decide that he will fake-get scared of the army of the dead, fake-leave Cheryl’s alliance, and then really sneak off to Essos to ferry a recently secured sellsword group of Cheryl’s. That’s the most reasonable thing we’ve ever heard.
(Also what did this add to Cheryl’s benefit? Why does it matter if they think Euron left, other than potentially giving Deadpan and Jonny a reason to walk away from the table completely? Dead horse, we get it.)
At the wight moot, Euron decides to hooligan it up by interrupting at the start to taunt Theon about how he has Yara. He says that he will kill her unless Theon surrenders to him on the spot. Everyone exchanges annoyed looks and Cheryl tells him to sit down and be quiet. Then comes the time for his amazing feint! He does it convincingly, and hits on Deadpan in the process. Time to go to Essos!
And thus are the adventures of Euron Greyjoy in Season 7.
If we had to analyze this, which we suppose we do, it’s pretty obvious that Euron’s biggest motivator is getting revenge on Yara and Theon for…not standing around and letting him kill them after he was elected King. After all, the first we see of Euron this year is him complaining about how rude they were, so obviously this is something affecting him on a deep level. In fact, he even tells Cheryl how killing them will “make him feel better.”
We guess in terms of dynastic concerns and potential challenges, it’s not that dumb. And to that end, he’s on his way. He has Yara, he wants to taunt Theon (and make empty threats about it)…fine.
Then there’s the other aspect, which is that Euron wants a queen, and his sights are now set on Cheryl rather than Deadpan. We have to assume this is because Deadpan allied with Theon and Yara and that hurt his feelings, or made him think he wouldn’t be successful in pursuing her. In fact, he’s so committed to finding a queen that he’s willing to go to lengths to impress Cheryl, when she is the one who needs him far more. He controls the Iron Islands; it’s fine!
It’s very hard for us to reconcile these two competing drives, especially since he spends the lion’s share of the season warping around and catching troops as demanded by the plot. Perhaps it takes our extremely excessive and encyclopedic knowledge of Westerosi geography to truly appreciate how improbable all his movements are, but needless to say, it sticks out. And it’s stupid. The idea that Deadpan is just on Dragonstone and can’t see fleets coming and going from Cheryl’s Landing is stupid. That’s why Dragonstone is an important military position and no one would leave it abandoned.
Then we have to consider what Pilou Asbæk has said about the character he’s playing. For one, he says that Euron is “more of a hooligan” and that Ramsay was “100% evil,” whereas Euron is not. He’s fun-loving and thus “more conflicted.” Asbæk also has spoken on multiple occasions that Euron is a “different guy every scene.” He clarified this year with the following:
“Dan, David, all the scenes you guys have written, I love every single line of it. But can we recreate him? I want to make him rock and roll. I want to be a superstar…. All of the psychopaths I’ve met in my lifetime have multiple personalities. Not like they’re schizophrenic, but they can adapt to the people they are surrounded with. He’s a chameleon.”
Now, we normally have to take anything an actor says with a heavy salt-lick on this show, like how Nat Dormer was convinced Tommen was 17, and how Isaac Hempstead Wright compared Bran to an CCTV department. Actors do what they have to do with the role to give a portrayal that makes sense to them.
However, Asbæk credits himself with turning Euron into a “rockstar,” and he actually has been talking about how he’s a different character and a fun-loving hooligan for two years. So it’s not to blame him, but we’re blaming him. Also, it means his approach to this role is to be a rockstar with a different personality in each scene. That is his goal with these scripts.
We don’t know what to do with this information. Because it seems to be a feature, not a bug, in the eyes of D&D that his actions make absolutely no sense and there’s no overarching character to even analyze. Like…okay, he likes Cheryl this year. He sure doesn’t like his niece and nephew and still wants to murder them. And he’s really good at repeatedly moving his armada around the southern coast of Dorne.
We can’t take this guy seriously. If we’re supposed to view him as somehow more nuanced than Ramsay, then that did not land at all. At least Ramsay had daddy issues and a semblance of an arc surrounding that, no matter how bad we found that execution. Euron is just some idiot who likes to complain that he had an opponent in an election one time. Maybe they think this is really cutting and clever Trump criticism, but all we see is some weird Jack Sparrow impersonator, and it’s not very effective at getting any point across at all, let alone a contemporary political one. Not to mention, D&D gush about how Euron is a character who can actually walk the walk, so…
Frankly, we don’t think D&D put any thought into this character other than what would seem “badass,” and what could build stakes for Theon, or maybe even top Ramsay. On both counts, they failed. However, they did succeed in making us want the Euron of the books, and that in and of itself is a smashing success.
Lean In, Deadpan
We wanted to close by talking about Olenna, because this is the close of the Tyrell saga on the show as well, which has been at least one of the more interesting components. Unless, of course we get some kind of Margaery Stoneheart in Season 8. (What would her driving motivation be? To make more catty remarks to Cheryl from beyond the grave?)
The thing is, we’ve never really liked Olenna as a character on this show. We mean, Julia loves Olenna Redwyne from the books, and has written fanfic about her teenage psyche, but on the show, she’s just been this anachronistic, pithy comment machine whose pluckiness has gotten really, really old. She also acts like a kindergartner sometimes, but we’re supposed to think she is this great political player because she wouldn’t let Carol sit with her that one time.
So imagine our shock when upon rewatching this stupid plotline for the 14th time, we rather enjoyed Olenna’s contributions. She’s in officially two scenes, and they are just fantastic.
The first is that infamous meeting of the Powerful-Women-of-Weisseroff-Gathered-to-Listen-to-Tyrion. Olenna seems aware of this confused messaging, and her first contribution to the conversation is to point out how Tyrion’s plan is basically to allow their armies (meaning the Tyrells, Martells, and Greyjoys) do all of Deadpan’s fighting for her, while she seemingly sits back. This is true. Even when Tyrion says the Unsullied are going to Casterly Rock, there’s no plan for the Dothraki, and certainly no plan for Deadpan to use her weapons of mass destruction. Because it’s uncivilized to win a war outright, or whatever.
Olenna then points out the limits of the strategy of Deadpan seeking out the approval of the people to grant her legitimacy (through a humanitarian siege, no less). After all, Marg was super popular, and the smallfolk still didn’t appear to give a shit when she got blown up. They even came and cheered for what they thought would be a slut-shame walk over her perjury.
After the meeting, Deadpan asks to speak to Olenna alone, since she knows that’s her one ally who doesn’t really care about Deadpan at all but just wants revenge. Frankly, the Dornish are operating the same exact way, but Olenna seemed clearly put off by Tyrion’s awful plan, whereas Faullaria came around. Deadpan offers Olenna some stupid platitudes about how she will grant peace in their time. Olenna, however, is an old lady whose entire family was just brutally murdered. She didn’t care about peace at the end of last year, and she certainly doesn’t this year.
But she does give Deadpan some advice about what she’s been observing during this meeting: basically, that Deadpan is letting Tyrion make all of her decisions, and he seems taken with his own cleverness. She tells her that she, Olenna, got as far in life as she did by not listening to “clever men.” Probably like how she overrode her son’s decision to marry Margaery to someone violent by plotting and executing his murder in a very surreptitious way. Olenna concludes by telling Deadpan to “be a dragon,” which in context means that she should trust her own instincts and be a true decision-maker. Lean in, Deadpan.
If we can sidebar for just a second, we’re actually kicking ourselves for not seeing this sooner. Up until this point, we wrote the conversation off as some stupid false empowerment (which…can you blame us?). “Okay, go be grapes, Olenna Redwyne.” This was especially not helped when later in this plotline, Olenna talks about the sigil of House Tyrell as if it’s the actual reason for the sack of Highgarden being so simple. But taking this scene into consideration on its own, she really is telling her to not be controlled by Tyrion, which is…exactly what happens. In fact, this point serves to muddy everything that happens on Dragonstone, since Tyrion’s “mission” this year is to curb Deadpan’s impulses, and it’s framed as something good and moral for him to do.
So, are we supposed to think Olenna is full of shit? That she’s the devil on Deadpan’s shoulder? Or does this just mean that Deadpan can “be a dragon” and trust in her instincts when those instincts allow her to bail out a different man?
We don’t get exactly what D&D were going for in the context of the whole season, but given how everything unfolds, we are 100% on-board with what Olenna is saying here. Tyrion is too taken with himself, Deadpan can do better than parroting his words (like when she says she’s not there to be “queen of the ashes), and frankly a ruler should recognize the fact that the buck stops with her. Also yes, the smallfolk are mercurial and unreliable, Deadpan should look to Marg as a cautionary tale, and peace is a sisyphean effort.
Good points, Olenna.
Later, Larry shows up to her cottage castle containing her giant army and easily sacks it while Olenna sits in her room. He then marches in so he can kill her in a humane/dignified manner. Most of this scene is actually about Larry. He talks about how he learned from the Whispering Wood (not really applicable here, bud), and how this genius military move was so important to his character growth. Olenna shrugs and says Tywin should have taken Highgarden years ago. We’re sure Robert would have been cool with that. (Okay, maybe he would have been.)
Olenna, probably for the aforementioned reason that she’s an old lady and her whole family is dead, is quite stoic about this about-to-be-killed thing. She reminisces on how she’s done some shitty things, but at least she’s not as vile as the monstrous Cheryl. We still say this is a bit of a pot and kettle situation, but we suddenly like Olenna this year, and Cheryl did blow up a societal institution and waterboard a nun for kicks. Larry offers Olenna some poisoned wine that he promises won’t hurt at all, and she gulps it down like it’s her favorite soda.
Knowing she’s dead any second, she decides to then exposit on how speaking of poisoned wine, she did that to Joffrey, lol. She says she wants Cheryl to know, and…fine. Take your revenge on your way out, Olenna—whatever.
The thing is, had she been adapted faithfully from the start and these were her final two scenes, we probably would have been fairly pleased. We think it’s gross that D&D framed this particular scene as being about how cool it is that Larry finally got to kill someone, but how Olenna “won” the scene all the same thanks to this Joffrey knowledge. Still, her motivations and attitude are actually making sense and tracking from previous seasons, and they make us feel for her.
This character in general has been a very reliable source of rage for us on this show since she appeared in Season 3. When we think of Olenna, we think of the scene where she threatens to beat the septa following Marg around, or when she stops her carriage so that she can comment on the poo smell from the city. Or when she calls Loras a “sword swallower” while officially negotiating with Tywin. Sometimes, in the right mood, we also think about the scene where she talks about stealing her sister’s betrothed by banging him the night before he had been slated to “propose”.
It’s stupid, and it’s clear they’ve never known what they were doing with her. They certainly never understood what Martin was trying to do with this character either, but frankly, join the club Olenna. This is the show with revenge-at-all-costs Ellaria Sand.
Still, Olenna’s scenes this year were fine, much to our shock. We might even miss her next year, because what she was saying is what we proceeded to yell at our screens the rest of Season 7. Anyway, lean in, Deadpan…lean in!
How ’bout that Season 7
We’re sure this will come as a shock to everyone, but after going through 4 retrospectives in 8 parts that covered 11 different plot lines (12 if you’re willing to separate out Jon and Tyrion a bit), we’re not all that impressed with the season as a whole. Sure, ending with a focus on Olenna was kind of like having an after-dinner-mint following a very nauseating meal, and we truly were happy that we were able to feel something in the ballpark of positive for a change. It’s just, considering the rest of the season…what a mess. The ~main tension~ was quite clearly a nonsensical military conflict featuring teleporting armies and confused holdings, just to get to a point where there could be a truce meeting because the fake-out of Cheryl helping was oh-so clever? Or because shoving the characters we’ve been following together is supposed to be meaningful?
Then on the wings, there’s Arya threatening to cut off her sister’s face and wear it (which we’re supposed to at least somewhat sympathize with), Sam coming across every plot-necessary bombshell in randomly-grabbed books, and Theon rehashing an already muddled and problematic arc. Suffice it to say, the other tales we just recapped did not exactly save it for us.
Season 6’s theme seemed to be wheelspinning. The characters almost all repeated everything they did in Season 5, and then three characters magically ascended to positions of power that were either unearned or made no sense for them to inhabit on a societal level. Season 7 is…we honestly don’t know. Knocking chess pieces off the board like a drunk cat because it’s hard to write so many characters? It’s driving towards some kind of ~big finale~ whose meaning is derived entirely from “we’ve known these characters for a while and they know each other!”, which is likely why Season 7 had so many Season 1 callbacks, as well as walk-and-talks where the scripts tried frantically to recall what shared history any of them had. But it just didn’t do anything in the long run, and that’s because the contrivances required to get anyone anywhere this season were so obvious:
- Deadpan’s army needed to be reduced in size for a more even conflict with Cheryl, so it was
- Cheryl and Larry needed to break up, but not before Larry could make those stunning military victories, so they just randomly did
- Larry needed stunning military victories, so they happened
- Sandor needed to begin fire reading, so he did
- Sam needed to come back to Winterfell and team back up with Jon, so he did
- Euron needed to capture Yara and raise stakes for Theon, so he did
The most earned moment was Bran getting back to Winterfell, because at least we tracked that journey and it didn’t involve Arya’s continent-crossing teleportation of last season.
We’re not surprised. This season was the best example of “creatively it made sense because we wanted it to happen” to date. We’re just glad we only have one more season of those creative sparks left to go.
