Image taken from IMDb.
dir. by Matt Shakman
written by Dave Hill
To the disappointment of some fans, Game of Thrones can't be epic action every week. After last week's poignant reunions and exciting battle, this week we're back to table-setting in an episode which is predominantly exposition and setup for storylines which are going to pay off later. As always, the show does this very well, and this season's exposition benefits both from a breakneck flow of information and the nuances of character relationships from over six seasons of development.
But even considering that, "Eastwatch" is much more exciting than similar episodes from earlier in the series, and part of that is because there's simply more novelty to the storylines set up here. With Cersei facing imminent defeat and Jon desperate for help against the White Walkers, the show has finally regained a sense of political intrigue, and even the slower scenes retain a sense of momentum and importance. Best of all, even though the show leans heavily on major revelations this week, it clips through them so quickly in pursuit of its novel plot threads that they don't get in the way of good storytelling.
As fascinating as it is to hear both of these men's reasoning for defiance, equally fascinating is Dany continuing to demonstrate her own unique contradiction: she promises a better future for Westeros, where they have a ruler who is both competent and benevolent for once, but at the same time she is obsessed with dominating the Seven Kingdoms to the point of sometimes appearing just as cruel as her predecessors. A later scene begins with Varys visibly troubled by it, and Tyrion's doubts are always visible on his face even when he's trying to justify Dany's behaviour.
That's part of what makes the episode's big twist so exciting. Getting a White Walker all the way down to King's Landing could go wrong in any number of ways, but it also throws a wrench into the show's usual motions and gives some novelty to this season's narrative momentum. Davos smuggles Tyrion into the city, where Jamie is tricked into meeting with him. Jamie and Cersei know they cannot defeat Danerys's forces, so Jamie decides to hear Tyrion out, and Cersei decides to allow the rival queen to meet with her and show proof. For seemingly the first time since the show started, the rival factions of Westeros have found a tentative peace. I wonder how long it will last.
Despite the peaceful nature of their meetings, the simmering tension between the Lannisters is more apparent here than ever. Jamie acts coldly towards Tyrion, bringing up his promise to kill the dwarf if they ever met again, but as clear as his resentment is, he doesn't actually go through with the deed. Cersei's malice is even clearer. She knows everything which happens at King's Landing, and although she initially forgives Jamie for going behind her back and meeting her most hated brother, her words carry malice, and her resentment towards Tyrion is quite evident. In an early scene, she says she'd rather fight than surrender, but she too realizes she can't win with might alone, so she's willing to accept an audience with Danerys. Although Jon and Dany's plans are made very clear, Cersei's remain hidden to us, and waiting to see what she's up to might be one of the biggest thrills going into next week.
It's there, however, that we find the episode's first revelation: Cersei is pregnant again, and Jamie is the father! This changes the context of Cersei's actions going forward, and colours her meeting with Danerys in a slightly different light. It's not just her and Jamie she's protecting anymore, and just as with Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, protecting her child is what she cares about above all else. This is the trait which does the most to humanize Cersei, and after weeks of every other character on the show expressing contempt for her, it's refreshing to see this show again demonstrating that even its most detestable characters have a good side.
The other major revelation is treated as a mere footnote in a scene about something else entirely. At the Citadel, Sam suggests the Archmaester use his influence to convince the lords of Westeros of the White Walkers' existence, but the Maesters remain skeptical of that fact, which drives Sam to finally give up on his studies, steal some books from the library, and decides to finally leave with Gilly and Little Sam to return to the North. Between these events, Sam's patience is finally broken by Gilly reading some facts about Rhaegar Targaryen, but while he doesn't understand why those facts matter, they're a really big deal for the viewer: as it turns out, Rhaegar actually annulled his marriage with Elia Martell and remarried Lyanna Stark in private. In other words, Jon Snow is not a bastard - rather, he is the true-born son of the last reigning Targaryen, and therefore arguably the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
That adds another interesting dimension to a later scene, where Jon Snow meets Gendry, the bastard son of Robert Baratheon. After smuggling Tyrion into King's Landing, Ser Davos also made a stop to smuggle Gendry out, resulting in an amusing scene at the beach where Davos bribes guards to ignore him and Gendry, and then fails to do so for Tyrion, leading to Gendry demonstrating his strength by smashing the guards with a hammer. When Jon and Gendry finally do meet, it's a much more pleasant meeting of bastards than the one last season, and it nicely mirrors the friendship between their respective fathers. Except that, unbeknownst to everyone, Jon is not a bastard. This scene arises almost immediately after their meeting, immediately rendering the prior scene ironic given the new information.
In the North, Sansa has gained the favour of the various lords, one of whom supposes that maybe she should be ruling the kingdom instead of Jon. Sansa insists that Jon is still king, but Arya accuses her of secretly wanting the throne for herself, which she doesn't deny. Sansa's arc still lacks for detail, but this new factor could amount to some interesting character scenes later on. Much more exciting is an extended sequence where Arya watches Littlefinger being suspicious, receiving information from a few sources and then hiding a scroll in his room. You think that Arya will be noticed at any moment, but she isn't. She finds the scroll, reads it too quickly for us to catch up, and then leaves. And then, the twist: Littlefinger, who we had thought gone, steps out from behind a pillar, apparently having known Arya was there the entire time. We never actually learn what he was doing, but the mystery only makes the sequence more thrilling.
The episode ends in the North, with Jon and Jorah, who had met earlier, visiting Eastwatch and prepared to go past the wall. There, they not only find Tormund and his crew of Wildlings, but also the men of the Brotherhood, whom have been captured. They too want to go North, and while their compulsion to do so because of a vision from the Lord of Light feels overly convenient as always, this allows us to have familiar faces like Beric, Thoros, and especially The Hound joining Jon and Jorah on their way north. As the episode closes, we see them crossing the gate, and as minor an act as it is, the novelty of their goals and the familiarity of the crew makes their next steps just as tantalizing as anything else the show has promised so far.
And that? That's how you do table-setting right. "Eastwatch" doesn't have many tense confrontations or any action, but it sets so many plotlines into motion, many of which are genuinely fresh for this show, that it makes all the setup genuinely thrilling, and peppering that fast-paced plotting with a few significant revelations and some subtle character work makes it all the more watchable despite its low-key nature. Brandon Nowalk of the A.V. Club has described the current state of Game of Thrones as a "blockbuster," and given not only its budget and profits but also its faster pacing and increasing tendency towards crowd-pleasing, that seems apt. But you know what? The show does that stuff really well, and if there are ways in which it's not as sophisticated as it once was, it's still impressive that it's no less exciting.
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Todd Throndson
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