Thoughts about Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 2

After a week spent setting the scenes and reminding the viewers where everyone stands for the new season, we're back to the typical GoT format of laying out some well-thought-out and promising plans for all our favorite characters, only to make us watch them explode spectacularly in a giant fireball. But there were also four other storylines this week that weren't quite so catastrophic, so let's unpack everything that went down (organized by storyline this time, not chronologically).

The latest massive disappointment involves this week's A Story, which picks up right where last week's episode left off, with the supergroup of Daenerys, Tyrion, the younger generation of Greyjoys, the Sand Snakes, and the one surviving Tyrell who matters. (For ease of color-coding, I'm going to group all these characters under Dany's red banner, unless they break off into their own specific missions.) After a header where Daenerys basically demands "honest loyalty" from Varys, Melisandre shows up looking for new bandmates. Everyone's favorite Red Priestess writes a glowing letter of recommendation for the current King in the North Jon Snow, and recommends that they let him into the group, despite the fact that he had her exiled from the North on account of her stance on human sacrifice.

In the next scene in this storyline (Scene 6 overall), once the entire band has shown up to practice, Tyrion breaks out the setlist for their next show: Theon and Yara will use their ships to bring Ellaria's army from Dorne to Westeros, which will help Olenna besiege King's Landing, while the Unsullied mount an attack on the Lannister home base of Casterly Rock. It all seems to make a lot of strategic sense, and there's even some sparks that fly between the women from Sunspear and Pyke... until Scene 11, when crazy uncle Euron bursts in and takes the first step in fulfilling the promise he made to Cersei in the last episode. The mad pirate makes quick work of Yara's fleet, killing two of the sand snakes, capturing the other two, along with his niece Yara, and reducing Theon to the blubbering whimpering shell of a man, who abandons ship and blows yet another chance to take action and save one of the important women in his life.

So not but five scenes after we hear about it, Tyrion's plan for a two-pronged assault falls apart, as it's hard to besiege a port city with just half the ground troops you were expecting to have and no naval superiority. Come to think of it, why did nobody mention Euron's Iron Fleet in any of their previous strategy meetings? Did they just not entertain the possibility of him teaming up with Cersei? If all the heroes can band together, why not the villains as well? Although if Euron continues on with his ships to Dragonstone, Daenerys might have to pivot to a defensive stance before mounting any kind of offensive in any direction. Unless the Unsullied already marched off towards Casterly Rock - it's hard to tell because some of the timing was a little confusing in this episode. For example, the raven that Dany sends to Jon in Scene 1 arrives in Winterfell in the very next scene, whereas the one Sam sent in Scene 8 of the previous episode doesn't arrive until Scene 9 of Episode 2. Maybe the Oldtown email servers are not as fast as the ones they have at Dragonstone...

Speaking of Winterfell, Jon and Sansa's stories look likely to split after the new King in the North agrees to take Davos to meet with Daenerys in order to try and get his hands on some of her sweet, sweet dragonglass, a.k.a. obsidian, i.e. the anti-White Walker element. But I wouldn't be surprised if the vibe between Jon and Dany gets a little steamy, just based on how many people are trying to set them up, and based on the fact that no one knows that Jon is actually Daenerys's nephew. Remember that only Bran knows the truth of Jon's real parentage - Rhaegar Targaryen (Daenerys's brother) and Lyanna Stark (Ned's sister) - although even if something does happen, I feel like we've heard that "the Targaryens have wed brother and sister for a hundred years" enough times that maybe no one will care... which will not make it any less weird. Speaking of Bran, why no one at Castle Black thought to send a raven telling Jon that his brother arrived at The Wall is completely beyond me. The Night's Watch must really need a better broadband connection...

Sticking with the theme of the Stark children, we pick Arya's storyline back up without any indication whether or not she killed Ed Sheeran and his band of wholesome Lannister soldiers on her way to kill Cersei at King's Landing. The youngest Stark girl reunites with her old traveling companion Hot Pie, who recaps Season 6, Episode 9: Battle of the Bastards, causing her to change course and head back up north to meet Jon at Winterfell. While he'll probably be on his way to Dragonstone at that time, I imagine Arya would still be happy to see her sister, provided Littlefinger hasn't made some creepy power play regarding Sansa. Who knows, maybe Arya will arrive just in time to save her from said power play? Whatever she does, she'll have to do it without her wolf Nymeria, who has become Queen of the Wolves since her last appearance in Season 1, Episode 2: The Kingsroad, and has no time for her former owner.

Arya's change of plans can only be good news for Cersei and Jaime, (both colored magenta, until their interests stop being aligned). In their first scene, Jaime makes a play to lure Randyll Tarly away from Team Tyrell (more on the Tarly clan later). Then Qyburn, the new Hand of the Queen, tells Cersei it's no worries about Daenerys's mythical flying beasts, since he's developed the ultimate in anti-dragon weaponry: a big fuck-off crossbow. Dun-Dun-DUNNNNN!!!! Seriously? We've seen you use your mad science to reanimate a corpse, and the best you can come up with is a CROSSBOW? But based on the "this just might be stupid enough to work" principle, I'm almost certain that thing is gonna be responsible for taking out at least one dragon. Probably Drogon.

This week's E story features the continuation of Sam's rebellious behavior in maester school. Last week he stole some books from the secret members-only section of the library, and this week he's performing experimental invasive surgery without permission... or anesthetic. At least carving off Jorah's infected greyscale skin wasn't nearly as gross as emptying about a million chamber pots full of maester shit. Based on how this story was presented ("You have ONE DAY before we exile you!" "That surgery is FORBIDDEN!"), I'm pretty confident that Sam will be successful and Jorah will have the same results as Shireen Baratheon (before she got burned alive). Otherwise that would've been an awful lot of setup just to eke out some more screen time for a couple of minor characters.

Missing from this episode were Bran Stark and Sandor Clegane. The latter I can understand, as I still consider "The Hound" a rookie in terms of carrying his own storyline (he's only really had five scenes as the protagonist), so you don't necessarily want to feature him in every episode. But as I've already mentioned, the fact that Bran and his head full of magical flashback-knowledge has now been at Castle Black for almost two full episodes and no one else knows about it is kind of mind-boggling. The only explanation I can see is that these stories are presented non-linearly, and maybe Bran and Meera's arrival at The Wall actually happens much later in the show-timeline than it does in the episode-timeline. I just wish we didn't have to wait a whole week in real time to see how much time will have passed when the show picks up again.