Game of Thrones episode review: "Stormborn"

Image taken from IMDb

dir. by Mark Mylod
writ. by Bryan Cogman
Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that this season of Game of Thrones has consisted largely of buildup. Next season will be the show's grand finale, and the showrunners have a lot to establish if those final episodes are to be big enough to satisfy. As it outpaces George R. R. Martin's novels, it increasingly abandons their intricacy in favour of more conventionally pleasing elements, with character reunions, answered questions, and big battles being the most common of these. It's good at what it does, but it's also become less essential and less singular.

While "Stormblood" follows the usual formula of reunions, answers, and battles, its table-setting has much more narrative momentum than that of the premiere, it continues the show's championing of little character moments and begins to provide some tension in this season's narrative. It's still a bit minor, yes, but a show as focused on broader narrative as this needs these episodes from time to time, and this one is handled pretty well.

The episode picks up approximately where we left off, with Danerys strategizing at Dragonstone. Here, she's accompanied not only by Tyrion, but also by Olenna Tyrell, Ellaria Sand, and Lord Varys.
Her first course of action is to confront Varys on his kingmaking and extract an explanation for why he supported her brother, Viserys. Giving these answers is a pretty easy, low-effort way to please your audience, but it's a question worth answering, and the scene mines some solid tension between the independent Varys and the authoritarian Dany. One views himself as a servant of the realm, the other wishes herself to be synonymous with it. I doubt that Varys will happily follow orders, but the threat of dragon fire certainly raises the stakes.

Following this, Dany meets Melisandre, who quite conveniently informs her about the "Long Night," and advises her to team up with Jon Snow. It's not hard to see these scenes as lightly calculated, taking two of the show's most powerful and popular characters and contriving a way for them to meet, but how Jon reacts to Danerys's demand of submission does have a lot of potential. Also potentially interesting are her war plans, concocted with advice from Tyrion, which involve Olenna and Ellaria using their armies to besiege the capital and cut off King's Landing from its food supply while her foreign army attacks the Lannisters at their home in Casterly Rock.

For the most part, however, the scenes at Dragonstone only serve to set up future scenes. It's nice to see what's going on with those characters who were left out of the previous episode, but aside from a few quips and the tension between Dany and her new allies (many of whom have no love for her), there's not a whole lot of excitement in these scenes. To an extent, the same is true of the scenes in Winterfell, where Jon receives Sam's letter about Dragonstone as well as Dany's summons, but Jon's decisions are a little thornier, as he's torn between staying home with his people and visiting Dragonstone to secure the dragonglass and more troops against the White Walkers.

Like last week, Sansa is the main advocate of playing things safe, whereas Jon's the one who wants to take risks and make alliances. Jon, long isolated at the Wall, hasn't seen what Sansa has seen, and his naivete might undo him like it did his father and brother, but he also knows that he can't spare any soldiers in the fight to come. He makes hard, dangerous choices because he doesn't believe he has a choice, and in the end, he puts Sansa in charge in his absence, officially putting women at the head of all three factions, even if one is a mere regent. Technically speaking, not a whole lot happens in the Winterfell chapters, but the weight of Jon's choices makes them feel a little more consequential than they otherwise would be.

Without the court intrigue, there's not a lot of story to tell at King's Landing, but even this storyline is a little more exciting this week. We learn that Cersei has a really powerful ballista to use against the dragons, and we see Randyll Tarly decline Jamie's request to abandon the Tyrells in favour of the Crown even in spite of being offered a position of power. There's still not a whole lot going on here, and the Lannisters are increasingly becoming stock antagonists, but if nothing else, the battles to come should be interesting. Also weaker are the scenes at the Citadel, which are much less humorous than last time, and feature Sam going behind the Archmaester's back to perform a dangerous procedure on Jorah. This storyline stops in the middle of the procedure, meaning that it's another bit of setup in an episode already full of it.

Thankfully, Arya's storyline continues to be a major improvement over last season. Here, she meets Hot Pie again, who informs her that Jon prevailed against Ramsay Bolton. With this information, she relaxes a little, and eventually changes course from King's Landing to Winterfell, deciding to at least delay killing Cersei in favour of reuniting with what family she has left. We also get a very affecting scene where she reunites with Nymeria and asks the direwolf to join her on the path north, only for the wolf to turn back on her. Nymeria is now the apparent leader of a pack of wolves, and implicit in the scene is that, like Arya, she has found a path for herself, and it doesn't coincide with Arya's. In between the reams of exposition which Game of Thrones consists of nowadays, it's nice to see that it can still conjure up real emotion.

Finally, we rejoin Theon and the Sand Snakes (ugh) aboard the Greyjoy fleet, and bear witness to some weak one-liners and tiresome lesbian eroticism when suddenly the season's first great battle breaks out. Euron Greyjoy's fleet has emerged from the murky night, and he storms Theon's ship, kills the Sand Snakes (yay!), and captures Yara. When he provokes Theon to fight him, the emasculated prince instead jumps ship. Because of the show's massive ensemble, the death of the Sand Snakes barely registers, but the battle has some fantastic imagery, from Euron's black sails emerging from the darkness to a corpse hanging from the prow of his ship to blazing flames illuminating the night. Game of Thrones isn't known for its action choreography, but its battles can pack in some very memorable images, and "Stormborn" starts off season 7 on a high note while also providing the plot's first major complications.

Despite its shorter episode count, season 7 is still taking its time with establishing episodes, even with the deployment of a few major plot shortcuts. With that said, "Stormborn" is a major step up in narrative momentum, and with every plotline now clearly in motion, the remaining episodes ought to have a lot more of interest. In the meantime, this second episode has enough subtext, emotional moments, and exciting battles to pass the time until the real meat of the story begins, and proves once again that even if what the show's doing has become less impressive, it's still damn good at it.

7/10

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Todd Throndson

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