Game of Thrones’s Season 7 third episode ultimately left me with mixed feelings. It somehow manages to condense the show's best and worst into one (very long) episode.
***Spoiler alert!***
What happens with the Sand Snakes?
First of all we finally get a very good conclusion to the worst plot line of them all - Dorne. I'm sure just about everyone knows how bad the series has handled Dorne. Their whole story never really made sense, the Sand Snakes were always just there and Ellaria, while charming in her own way, never quite had her lover Oberyn’s charisma. Their actions often left viewers scratching their heads. The best we can say about them is that they're finally gone. Cersei has Ellaria and I-forgot-what-her-name-was chained in a dungeon facing each other and after a short but passionate speech executes the last living Sand Snake in the same manner in which Myrcella was killed and then proceeds to leave the body in front of Ellaria to rot. It was a very well done scene, and I especially liked the moment when they try to pull from their chains in vain. Rest easy, the worst part of the show is over, if a bit too late.
And what about Jon and Daenerys?
Now Jon is something else. How he acts in this episode is just plain weird, if not downright autistic. He talks to Daenerys as if she's the first person he's ever met. On top of that the only thing he talks about is *The Army of the Dead*. Now we all know that's important, or at least will be - in the next season probably. He never really makes a meaningful attempt at convincing her of the impending doom, he literally just says “We will all die some day if we don't help each other”. He truly should never have come to Dragonstone and should have instead sent someone more experienced in diplomacy and politics - Sansa or Littlefinger. Speaking of Daenerys, I find her as full as ever. As much as people love glorifying her, she has in reality achieved very little on account of her own abilities. She acts like a queen but has no experience being one - remember, she was much hated in Slaver's Bay and her reign there was fraught with incessant unrest. The only thing keeping her alliance intact is her dragons, which, while powerful, are not invulnerable. Still, you don't have to be smart to be a good ruler, you just need to have smart advisers. Those she lacks too.
But where's Tyrion in all this?
To me, Tyrion stopped being Tyrion the moment he left Westeros. He used to be witty and charming and wise and cunning and now he is just a man with a horrible sense of humor and no skill at politics or warfare. The same Tyrion that successfully defended King's Landing failed to foresee either of Euron’s raids. He failed to foresee the fall of Highgarden, but worst of all, he sent a foreign army to capture Casterly Rock - a bloody battle for a castle thousands of kilometers away from the actual theatre of war and with no strategic value. Of the battle itself I have little to say, except that I hate the way the show omits the combat scenes and recaps them in later conversations. While this was tolerable back in the early days of the show when it had to run on a tight budget, it's now one of the most expensive TV series ever made, and especially considering the shorter length if this season I find no reasonable excuse to remove such scenes.
The Golden Roses' withering
It's the same case with the Tyrells and Highgarden. There isn't a battle , only one amazing scene with Olenna following it (how a few thousand Lannister men managed to seize Highgarden from the strongest remaining regions of the Seven Kingdoms is beyond me). The scene really is good, it shows just how much Jaime believes in Cersei, and it proves that no one is invincible in the game of thrones, even someone as experienced as the Queen of Thorns. As skilled as she framed to be, her actions still led to the annihilation of the entirety of House Tyrell, and though she gained a small measure of revenge by informing Jaime that she killed Joffrey at the Purple Wedding, we still get a feeling that she bitterly regrets what she's done, in spite of what she says.
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| Olenna aka Queen of Thorns (and sass) |
The lioness
I love what the show has done with Cersei these last couple of seasons. She started out as just another prideful and power-hungry character with no particular ability at the start of the series, she was humiliated by the Faith Militant last season, and now she has turned into a true lioness. Unlike before, she now knows both what she wants and how to get it. In a single episode, with only marginal losses to her own faction, she took out the Reach, Dorne and the Theon/Asha faction of the Iron Islands, leaving Daenerys with few allies and numerous opportunities to brood on Dragonstone. Oh, and she exacted revenge for the death of her daughter as a bonus. Well done, Cersei.
In conclusion
I'd like to point out one last thing. Apparently it's not just Tyrion that has no flair for strategy. Let's look at the facts. Not only did Daenerys blunder by sending her best troops into a battle that did not need to be fought, she is also hosting a massive army at Dragonstone. An army marches on its stomach, her army is big and Dragonstone is very small. We can safely assume Stannis took all the food supplies with him to the Wall, so… what exactly is her army eating? What about the dragons? With winter descending upon the realms food will be of very limited supply on the mainland, and military logistics is a nightmare even in the best of conditions, which war torn lands are not. To me, personally, Cersei needn't do anything - foolishness and hunger will defeat Daenerys’s host.
All in all, the episode takes several steps forward and just as many backward. It has the extremes of good and bad, but ultimately, it's the sum of it's parts - mediocre.
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