Thoughts on Thrones: It's getting hot in here

Herald online

12 May, 2015 12:30 AM10 mins to read

A scene from Game Of Thrones season five episode five, 'Kill the Boy'. Photo / HBO

Six Game of Thrones fanatics - Russell Baillie, Karl Puschmann, Sophie Ryan, Cameron McMillan, Chris Schulz and Robert Smith - share their thoughts on season five's fifth episode, Kill the Boy. (Warning: Spoilers)

Grey skies delight

The North is like a fat old elephant. It remembers but it's slow, cumbersome and grey. Truly, it looks proper miserable there. Drab, overcast and perpetually threatening to bucket down with rain. A lot like Auckland in June.

Despite the constantly bleak Winterfell, the capital of the North is Sansa Stark's home. As such it is where her heart is. Unfortunately for her, it's also where her betrothed is.

As part of some crazily convoluted plan, Sansa's guardian and fiendish plotter Littlefinger convinced her to return to her occupied home and agree to wed despicable bastard and fully fledged sicko Ramsay Bolton, heir to the throne.

It's the second time the wee dear has ended up engaged to a psycho ruler-to-be, so the faith she has put in Littlefinger is astounding.

A scene from Game Of Thrones season five episode five, 'Kill the Boy'. Photo / HBO

But, to be fair to Ramsay, while he may be a deranged sadist, he does still enjoy a bit of good-natured banter with the staff.

Over dinner with Sansa's future in laws, Ramsay took great delight in wheeling out his broken gimp Reek and parading him in front of her. The pair know each other from Reek's past life as the great sell-out Theon who Sansa believes murdered her two brothers.

As a gleeful Ramsay noted, dinner quickly got a little tense. Still, he forced Reek to apologise for the murders, so he's clearly not all bad. It was just bants! LOL.

Sansa also learned that she "still has friends" in Winterfell. Mostly these friends were old, lowly staffers who seemed content to whisper "the north has not forgotten" before buggering off back to their chores in a totally unhelpful fashion.

One old crone, however, did offer some proper help telling Sansa that if she was ever in trouble she should light a candle in the window of Winterfell's tallest tower.

Bloody hell, lady. Really? That's your fool proof plan? That's what her "friends" came up with?

If Sansa's in danger she has to dash across the yard, run up hundreds of steps to the top of the tallest tower and then, when she's all puffed out and frantic, fiddle about trying to light a candle.

Rubbish. What if it's daytime? You ain't gonna see the candle flickering. What if a gust of wind blows it out before her "friends" see it? What if Ramsay ties her up before she has a chance to run over to the tower? There is so much that can go wrong with that plan that I hesitate to even call it one.

Sansa may have a lot of friends in Winterfell, but this plan proves that really, she's all on her own.

- Karl Puschmann (Still foolishly believes that one day he will actually sit down and read the books)

Rocks in their heads

There are plenty of things to be scared of in Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms, like fire-breathing dragons, Winter and the White-Walkers.

Last night we got a look at another thing to be scared of: greyscale.

Tyrion and Jorah Mormont made it to the fabled Valyria in a little sailboat last night.
Tyrion asked for more wine, Jorah stared off into the distance, his brow permanently furrowed in a handsome and thoughtful way.

They made it to the abandoned Valyria, which resembled Angkor Wat in Cambodia a bit, and, cue the beginning of some bonding, recited an old poem about the fall of the city to The Doom.

Greyscale might have been part of that Doom, as men that looked like possessed stone statues dropped down onto their sailboat, looking to get their claws into the two lovable rogues.

It looked for a moment like Tyrion might have been a goner, but before we knew it Jorah had speared a couple of Stone Men and saved Tyrion from the murky depths.

Jorah said neither men had been touched by the Stone Men and contracted the dreaded greyscale, but we later learned that Mormont was lying, as a small patch of his skin started to scale up.

We've seen that Princess Shireen, Stannis' daughter, has been scarred by greyscale on the left of her face, but was ultimately healed of the sickness.

Stannis didn't say what saved his daughter, only that maesters and healers came to try to cure her.

If Shireen could be saved then there could be hope for Jorah, if they make it to Meereen before the sickness takes hold and turns him feral.

- Sophie Ryan (hasn't read the books, but thinks she and Sansa would be BFFs)

But what's coming next?

We're midway through the series so it's a good time to look back on the very first season five trailer for any hints of what's still to come. Kind of spoilerish. But we've all seen the trailer.

Hey look Jon Snow makes it to Hardhome to rescue the Wildlings. That's great.

Wait - why is he attacking them? You know nothing about being a good welcoming party, Jon Snow.

Also, it seems Jaime and Bronn's plan to sneak into Sunspear doesn't look to be successful. Unless that's Bronn holding a Dornish weapon.

But is that Jaime eyeing this young Dornish lass? Possibly everything turns out well.

And finally it looks like Jorah and Tyrion will pull off a few ultra marathons and reach Meereen. But Jorah will go straight to the reopened fighting pits. Not sure if he's going to form a tag-team with Tyrion though.

Even worse news for Daenerys who also looks stuck in the fighting pits. Who's going to save her?

- Cameron McMillan (a Thrones trainspotter who can always be relied upon for up-to-date statistics and random factoids. He spent the time between seasons reading all the books)

Betting your life on black

When it comes to the revolving fortunes of characters on Game of Thrones, none seem to have swung so sharply, and so swiftly, than Hizdahr Zo Loraq.

First, he's watching his buddy getting flame grilled by a desperately hungry fire-breathing dragon, believing that it's his turn next. Instead, he's slung into a dungeon to await his fate.

Hours later, Daenerys Targaryen shows up - and asks him to marry her. Loraq was so stunned he didn't have the willpower to do Homer Simpson-style cartwheels on the floor. But you just know he did this later on:

"In order to forge a lasting bond with the Myranese people, I will marry the leader of an ancient family," Thrones' most eligible queen tells Loraq. "Thankfully a suitor is already on his knees."

Okay, lets pause here to ask some questions. I understand this is 2015 and girls can propose however and whenever they want to, but does poor old Loraq get a say in all of this? Is this a negotiation? Does he get a dragon? Or at the very least, can he request that Drogon and his buddies no longer turn his besties into piles of ash?

Sounds like the start of a thriving marriage to me.

- Chris Schulz (only watches Game of Thrones for scenes involving the amazing Gwendoline Christie, aka Brienne of Tarth, aka the greatest woman on Earth)

An ode to Stannis

There's still a place for proper grammar at the end of the world.

With each episode, Game of Thrones is moving further away from the source novels - none of the major events in the latest episode take place in the books. Some, like the attack of the stone men and the infection of a major character, do occur, just in different ways, but the show is taking huge strides into the unknown.

The TV show can also give new depth to a character who never really sparked into life in the novels, and this week's episode once again proved this for Stannis. On paper, Stannis is nobody's favourite king, a dour, humourless, uptight and unforgiving man. And while he's just as dour, humourless, uptight and unforgiving on screen, actor Stephen Dillane also gives him a spark of humanity.

He's still a murderous religious zealot, but the character is at his best when he can't help pointing out the difference between 'fewer' and 'less' during a particularly intense meeting of the Night's Watch, and it's there when he gives his approval to Sam's book-learning. Dillane's Stannis is so ultra-pragmatic, he is the first person outside the mighty Maester Aemon to ever really encourage Sam's path in life, and see the potential benefits.

Stannis and his crew, including the similarly straight-talking Ser Davos, are off south to put those ridiculously nasty Boltons to the sword, so Stannis is off to do what he does best - getting the job done. He might be the most dry and rigid character in the whole series, but at least you always know where you stand with Stannis.

- Robert Smith (has read every book, watched every episode, owns several T-shirts, and genuinely thinks Maester Aemon is the best character in the whole series)

Stone Men! Dragons! Prescriptive grammar!

There were certainly some suprises in this satisfyingly twisty, entertainingly grim episode which also marked the half-way point of this season with the feeling that momentum is picking up nicely. Even if the show's compass is still spinning all over the place.

Taking an ill-advised shortcut through the ruins of Valyria, Ser Jorah Mormont and Tyrion Lannister's sailing dinghy was attacked by those great leaping leper-zombies, the Stone Men. It now looks like Mormont, a man who probably hoped he would get his own statue one day, may become one himself. Not that he's told his hostage/ travelling companion after they both survived the encounter and are now facing a long walk.

Shortly before the attack, the pair saw MIA dragon, Drogon, flying overhead. Its siblings were still chained up back in Meereen but sure came in handy when it came to Daenerys convincing the city's leading families about her authority after last week's attack which left her trusted advisor Ser Barristan Selmy dead. The dragons dined on a single flambé-ed elder. Though in a curious switcheroo, she then decided she'd marry one of the Meereen mafia to help settle things down in the troubled city.

As far as arranged marriages go, it's certainly different to the usual GoT non-negotiable nuptials like the one Sansa Stark is facing with Ramsay Bolton up north in her ancestral home of Winterfell - the prospect of which is just getting more unpalatable by the episode. Though psycho Ramsay's stag night is promising to be a real eye-opener. Given the setting, it might even feature a real stag.

Meanwhile, before leaving Castle Black to march on Winterfell, Iron Throne claimant Stannis Baratheon looked on as Jon Snow told an unimpressed Night's Watch he aimed to make peace with the Wildings and bring them south of the Wall.
"Let them die" said one heckler. "Less enemies for us."

"Fewer" sighed Stannis, taking no pleasure in pendantry with the peasantry.

- Russell Baillie (latter day convert to the show, hasn't read the books)

* What did you think of the episode? Post your comments below.