GoT S7E1 Recap — Beginning of the End

Samit Sheth
Jul 22, 2017 · 16 min read
The North Remembers

We’re back! This past Sunday marked the return of Game of Thrones, the greatest time of year. The game plan is for the future recaps to come out significantly earlier than this one, but hopefully this whets your appetite for Sunday’s episode two, “Stormborn.”

Disclaimer: I try and write the majority of these before taking in any other recaps/reviews, though some things in here I either heard from friends or saw on twitter. I’ll call those out when they come up. I will make some predictions though, so beware! Also, I’ll keep the “Next On…” stuff in the last section for those of you who avoid the previews/trailers. One thing I’ve noticed is images may not load properly on mobile, so if possible I recommend reading these on desktop. If you like it and/or have thoughts, feel free to recommend it at the bottom and share your own comments!

Spoilers for everything through S7E1, “Dragonstone”, ahead, so if you haven’t seen it yet, hurry up and watch!


Preliminary Thoughts

  • So many thoughts coming into the year! I fell off on writing recaps towards the end of last year, which sucks, because S6E9 and S6E10 were arguable the two best episodes yet. Some lingering questions coming into the premiere:
  1. Will Gendry ever row his way back into the show?
  2. Will we get the Nymeria/Arya reunion we’ve been longing for?
  3. How will Jaime feel about his twin lover doing exactly what he murdered The Mad King for wanting to do, ‘“burn[ing] them all” with wildfire?
  4. Will Bran get south of the Wall? Will that break the Wall’s protective magic the same way it broke the Three-Eyed-Raven’s cave magic?
  5. Are beloved characters going to come back as Wights in the Night King’s undead army? Summer? Wun Wun? HODOR?!
  6. Will Arya check off the rest of her list? (Names still on it: Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, The Red Woman, Ilyn Payne, Cersei, the Mountain)
  7. What exactly is the Mountain doing to Septa Unella?
  8. Sansa’s not pregnant right? Right? RIGHT?!
  9. WHY DIDN’T RICKON ZIG ZAG?!?!

Riverlands — Arya, Ed Sheeran, Lannister Soldiers, Every Frey

“But, you didn’t slaughter every one of the Starks. No, no, that was your mistake. You should have ripped them all out, root and stem. Leave one wolf alive, and the sheep are never safe.” -Arya as Walder Frey

Vengeance is hers.
  • Remember this scene, where King Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark bitterly argue about the potential assassination of Daenerys Targaryen? At the time, Dany’s a young girl from a rival family who seems to be no real threat. Most of us were with Ned on this one. I think Arya just proved why Robert may have had more foresight than Ned ever did. A young, non-threatening girl at the time of the Red Wedding, Arya just grew up and destroyed an entire house. And six years later, Dany’s coming for King’s Landing.
  • When the scene opened, I wondered if this was a flashback to the Red Wedding. However, David Bradley’s eery performance of Arya as Walder Frey made it quickly clear what was actually happening, and it was marvelous.
  • There’s a moment, when he calls for a toast to the room of Frey “heroes” for slaughtering the Starks at the Red Wedding. The room starts to cheer and he says “Yes… yes… cheer!” The subtleties in his tone and on his face are incredible, and Benioff and Weiss explain after the show it was his performance that locked this in as the cold open for the season. Great decision.
  • The Red Wedding has been avenged, and Arya underscores this by making sure everyone knows that “the North remembers. Winter came for House Frey.” The three main perpetrators of the Red Wedding, Roose Bolton, Tywin Lannister, and Walder Frey… have all been murdered in identical fashion to the Starks (and direwolf!) that were murdered there:
Shot by crossbow, throat slit, stabbed in the gut. You can argue that Robb was shot by the crossbow and Talisa was stabbed in the gut. Either way, the showrunners have given us some poetic retribution.
  • Later, Arya runs into a Lannister army Ed Sheeran concert. These Lannister soldiers are outrageously kind to her, really unlike anything I can remember seeing in GoT. It’s a little strange to see Sheeran, and when you’re fully immersed into the world of GoT you don’t want to see things that take you out of the moment. Still, knowing that this was a gift to Sheeran-obsessed Maisie Williams, I didn’t mind it.
  • They leave the scene with Arya and the Lannister soldiers open-ended. This seems like a litmus test for Arya’s soul. Does Arya retain her humanity, see these rival soldiers as individuals who were kind to her and let them go in peace? Or has she turned into a ruthless killing machine, set to destroy all enemies? I’m leaning towards, and hoping for, the former.

Castle Black & North of the Wall — Meera Reed, Bran Stark, Dolorous Edd, The Night King, Army of the Dead

“You were at the Fist of the First Men. You were at Hardhome. You’ve seen the army of the dead. You’ve seen the Night King. He’s coming for us. For all of us.” -Bran Stark

Oh boy
  • Bran has this vision ^, of the Night King and a (pun intended) giant Wight army. Is this a vision of the future? Or is this happening right now?
  • I like how Bran doesn’t address Edd’s question of why he should trust who they say they are, but Edd’s like, “eff it, let ’em in!” anyway.

Winterfell — Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Littlefinger, Lyanna Mormont, Alys Karstark, Ned Umber, Ser Davos, Brienne, Podrick Payne, Tormund, Wyman Manderly, Yohn Royce

“But I will not punish a son for his father’s sins, and I will not take a family home away from a family it has belonged to for centuries. That is my decision, and my decision is final.” -Jon Snow

  • Jon says he won’t punish a son for his father’s sins. He spent his entire childhood being punished (mostly by Catelyn) for Ned’s supposed sins. Also, what does this mean for how he’ll feel about Dany, given her father’s sins?
  • Sansa is breaking a cardinal rule of team-building here. Criticize in private, praise in public. But, this was 50% Jon’s fault for springing this decision on all of them in public. This is why people have small council meetings. Figure out a strategy, then go communicate it. I nominate Ser Davos for Communications Director and Lyanna Mormont for Press Secretary.
  • Jon makes a few things clear here:
  1. He really took that “Kill the Boy” speech from Maester Aemon to heart. This Jon has strongly held convictions and isn’t afraid to lead. Nevertheless, input from some of the better minds there (including Sansa, girl has wisdom & experience now) is an asset.
  2. Dragonglass is valuable as a weapon. We need as much of it as possible. (No worries Jon, you’re gonna get some good intel on this shortly.)
  3. The entire North must band together and fight. No time to punish the Umbers and Karstarks for their betrayal. No luxury of letting the women and children sit this fight out. The fate of the world is in their hands. This is why I ultimately side with Jon over Sansa on their dispute, and the rest of the North seems to as well.
Sansa, Brienne, and Ser Davos’ reactions to Lyanna Mormont is the best.
  • If the future is female, Westeros is getting there faster than we are. Dany, Cersei, Arya, Brienne, Sansa, Lyanna, Olenna, Ellaria. What started out as a feudal patriarchal world has now given us far more female rulers than male.
  • “Looks like we’re the Night’s Watch now.” -Tormund. HAHA.
  • “You have to be smarter than father. You need to be smarter than Robb. I love them, I miss them, but they made stupid mistakes and they both lost their heads for it.” — Maybe the smartest thing Sansa has ever said. 1000% true.
  • Jon tells Sansa she sounds like she admires Cersei, and she admits she has learned a lot from her. Side note, Sansa went blonde last year and didn’t want to dye it back, so they gave her a wig. The stylist, intentionally, styled Sansa’s wig identically to Cersei’s before Septa Unella chopped her hair off. (h/t ->Tony).
“Sansa’s hair is constantly reflecting the people she’s learning from, or mimicking, or inspired by at the time. When she’s Cersei’s prisoner, and she’s kind of absorbing all her manipulative techniques, it’s reflected in her hairstyle, and when she’s finding the spirit of Margaery in herself, she wears her hair like Margaery.” — Sophie Turner
  • “No need to seize the last word, Lord Baelish. I’ll assume it was something clever.” — Sansa’s en fuego.
  • The Sansa/Cersei similarities worry me a bit. Are the rifts between Jon and Sansa going to grow deeper? Can reuniting with Bran (and possibly Arya?!) help to strengthen their overall relationship? I’m leaning towards there being more conflict between Jon and Sansa, particularly after Jon’s true lineage is revealed.

King’s Landing — Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Ser Gregor Clegane, Qyburn, Euron Greyjoy

“Ever since I was little, I wanted to grow up and marry the most beautiful woman in the world. So here I am. With 1,000 ships, and two good hands.” — Euron Greyjoy

Euron’s ship: “Silence”… is bad@$$
  • Dope map. Question though…he’s still painting it. WHY ARE Y’ALL STEPPING ALL OVER IT? CAN YOU MAKE SURE IT’S DRY PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
  • “I’m the Queen of the seven kingdoms.” “Three, at best.”* ← Accurate. (EDIT: Just found there are actually nine kingdoms now. There were seven when Aegon conquered, but since then two more kingdoms have been established.) A breakdown:
  1. The North — Belongs to the Starks. In open rebellion, with their own King.
  2. The Vale — Belongs to the Arryns. Has declared for house Stark, for all to see, as Littlefinger tells us.
  3. *The Stormlands — Belongs to… the Baratheons? Anyone here? We’ll give this to her: 1/3.
  4. The Reach — Belongs to the Tyrells. In open rebellion, supporting Daenerys.
  5. The Riverlands — Belongs to the Freys after they took it from the Tullys. Arya just wiped out their house.
  6. *The Westerlands — Belongs to the Lannisters. Kingdom 2/3.
  7. *The Iron Islands — Well, Euron is the King. And he’s on #TeamCersei. So boom, 3/3.
  8. Dorne — Belongs to… the Sands now? Ellaria seems to be in charge, and she’s declared for Dany as well.
  9. *The Crownlands — The area that includes King’s Landing and it’s immediate neighbors.
  • Interesting! The seven kingdoms are actually nine.
  • So of these nine, they have three, maybe four at best?
  • SPOILERY BOOK THEORY ALERT: SKIP PAST THIS SECTION IF YOU DON’T WANT ANY KIND OF BOOK SPOILERS. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN SO THIS IS JUST A PREDICTION, BUT IT’S BASED ON BOOK KNOWLEDGE.

~~~~~~~~~~~~SPOILERY THEORY~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • The key part there is about her death. “When your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”
  • Valonqar is High Valyrian for “little brother.” For her entire life, Cersei believes this to be Tyrion. However, it is specifically noted that she came out of the womb before Jaime, so he is technically a little brother as well. And if this prophecy is to come true, and Jaime is her killer, this week’s show gave us two strong hints, one overt and one subtle:
  1. Overt hint: Euron Greyjoy responds to Cersei’s accusation of having killed a sibling by saying “You should try it some time. It feels wonderful.” He’s saying this to both Cersei and Jaime.
  2. Subtle hint: H/t to twitter for this one, but damn. Look where they are standing. Cersei’s right next to the Neck… and Jaime is right next to the Fingers. If it ends up going down this way, this shot will have been genius.

~~~~~~~~~~END SPOILERY THEORY ~~~~~~~~~~

  • Check out what Cersei did to the Throne Room decor:
Before and After: 7-pointed Star changed to the Lannister Lion
  • And finally, Euron offers a gift to Cersei to try and convince her to accept his marriage proposal. The ominous tone around gift makes me feel like this is going to be Euron delivering one of her enemies. So who could this be? A list of Cersei’s enemies in order of least to most valuable to Cersei:

6. Littlefinger — Does Cersei know about Littlefinger and Olenna’s involvement in Joffrey’s murder? She talks to Jaime about Tyrion killing their first-born in this episode, so maybe she is still ignorant. However, Littlefinger still openly declared for the Starks in the Battle of the Bastards, and now represents an enemy.

5. Olenna Tyrell — A rival. Cersei obviously knows that Olenna hates her after what she did to Margaery, Loras, and Mace. Does Cersei know that Olenna planned Joffrey’s murder?

4. Ellaria Sand — Her lover fought for Tyrion’s freedom and she herself murdered Myrcella.

3. Daenerys Targaryen — Has given refuge to Tyrion, but really, this would be a huge coup as Daenerys is far and away the greatest threat to Cersei on the throne.

2. Sansa Stark — She clearly believes that Sansa is somewhat responsible for Joffrey’s murder. In addition to that, she’s now leading the people of the North in open rebellion against the throne. She’s wanted “Sansa’s head on a spike” for 3 years now.

1. Tyrion Lannister — The ultimate get. Her arch-rival. The person she still believes is responsible for her mother’s death, her father’s death, and her first-born son’s death. And who is now the Hand of the rival queen.

  • Prediction: I don’t think 1–3 are possible. Sansa is too far up North (and well-protected), and I can’t see Dany or Tyrion being captured by Euron effing Greyjoy. The rest of the list though, is definitely plausible.

Oldtown — Samwell Tarly, Gilly, Archmaester Ebrose, Crap

“When Robert’s Rebellion was raging, people thought the end was near. The end of the Targaryen dynasty, how will we survive? When Aegon Targaryen turned his eye westward and flew his dragons to Blackwater Rush — the end is near! How will we survive? And thousands of years before that, during the Long Night we can forgive them for thinking it truly was the end but it wasn’t! None of it was. The wall has stood through it all. And every winter that ever came, has passed.” — Archmaester Ebrose

Oldtown in the opening credits. Astrolabe and all.
  • You didn’t think I was going to subject you to a gif of the poop montage, did you?! *Gags*
  • Jim Broadbent, the actor who plays Archmaester Ebrose, also played Professor Slughorn in Harry Potter. In Harry Potter, he has to deal with Tom Riddle asking him about information from the restricted area of the library. In GoT, he has to do… THE EXACT SAME THING with Sam.
  • Sam turns to and lingers on a page before the dragonglass page:
^That’s Littlefinger’s Valyrian steel dagger
  • That’s the same “catspaw” blade used in this scene, when Bran was attacked. I believe Littlefinger took this blade back from Ned in Season 1. It’s incredibly rare and valuable, made from Valyrian steel. Expect it to come back this season (h/t -> Twitter).
  • Jorah made it to Oldtown! He ain’t looking too good…but could Sam be on the verge of discovering a cure for Jorah? The evidence:
About 9 rows up from the bottom, you can see it says “dragonglass as a cure for ?? in his great work on illnesses and diseases ?? little harm incurs from the ingestion ??”.
  1. Add ^ that to the fact that we know the Children of the Forest used dragonglass to save Uncle Benjen from [fully] dying, and…
  2. …that the only person we know who has survived Greyscale was Shireen Baratheon! Who grew up on Dragonstone, surrounded by dragonglass.
  • ^All of this came from this buzzfeed article (h/t -> Jon Y.).
  • Sam discovers that there is a mountain of dragonglass at Dragonstone! Stannis literally told him that two years ago. But whatever, we’re here now, and this looks like the impetus that will bring Jon and Dany together at last. As an aside, it’d be nice to have a battle commander like Stannis in this war against the dead!

Riverlands — The Hound, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr

“We ask the Father to judge us with mercy. We ask the Mother… to… f*ck it I don’t remember the rest. I’m sorry you’re dead. You deserved better, both of you.” — The Hound

The Hound is hilarious
  • The Hound forgetting the prayers of the new Gods (the Seven) is interesting. We know the Old Gods, the many-faced-God, and the Lord of Light still heavily influence most of our power players. With Cersei wiping out the High Sparrow and all of the Faith Militant, will the new Gods even play a role in the wars to come?
  • The Hound, Beric, and Thoros of Myr end up back at the same cottage that The Hound and Arya ran into on their way to the Vale in season 4.
  • At that time, The Hound mugged the father and took all of their silver. Seeing them dead now, after seemingly starving and then committing suicide, the Hound (correctly) feels responsible.
  • But the guilt he feels and the need to bury them and attempt a prayer shows his growth in the past few years and the influence Brother Ray had on him.
  • “It’s my f*cking luck I end up with a band of fire worshippers.” — The Hound. I, for one, am thoroughly excited for the adventures of the Hound, Beric, and Thoros of Myr.
  • The Hound looks in the flames and seems to see the Night King and his army of the Dead at Eastwatch by the Bay (where Tormund earlier agreed to go). Will these guys head there as well and meet them?! I say yes.

Dragonstone — Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Missandei, Grey Worm

“Shall we begin?” — Daenerys Targaryen

Mother of Dragonstone
  • Finally. 61 hours later, Dany makes it to Westeros!
  • An episode with Tyrion where he doesn’t say anything is strange.
  • The shots of Dragonstone look amazing. The entire five minute dialogue-free scene was emotional and impactful… from Dany touching the soil, to seeing her sigil at the top of the castle, to ripping down the old Stannis Baratheon flaming heart stag sigil, to the throne Aegon sat on before the Iron Throne, to finally, the last shot:
Shall we begin? A small part of me wanted her to say “What’s Next?” If you get that joke, I’m a fan of yours.

^That shot leads to a second and final spoilery book theory:

~~~~~~~~~~~~SPOILERY THEORY~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • The Targaryen sigil is a three-headed dragon. Throughout the books they talk about how the “dragon has three heads.” When Aegon initially took the Seven Kingdoms, he did so with his two sisters and their three dragons. I wrote a little last year on the importance of the number three for Targaryens.
  • In the books, similar to Cersei’s prophecy from Maggy the Frog, Dany’s vision in the house of the Undying is much longer and more detailed. You actually get some heavy foreshadowing of the Red Wedding (even though that doesn’t take place until the following book) and some other events.
“Three heads has the dragon”
  • Many book readers have taken this to mean that there must be three dragon riders. But who would they be? Dany is obviously one, as she’s already done it. Many think the second and third could be Tyrion and Jon. We now know Jon has Targaryen blood. We don’t know that Tyrion does, but there are rumors that he was truly the son of the Mad King Aerys’ (and Dany’s half-brother), as he may have raped Tywin’s wife Joanna Lannister during their time in King’s Landing. And we saw that Tyrion got along quite well with the dragons last year.
  • Similar to the earlier shot of Cersei on the map, look at that closing shot once again:
  • Three open windows. Dany in the center, Tyrion on the right, and an open window on the left. Could it be?!
  • 1/2 a h/t to a tweet that said: “2/3 of the 3-headed dragon in the closing shot?”

~~~~~~~~~~END SPOILERY THEORY~~~~~~~~~~


Lingering Thoughts / Questions / “Next On”…

  • Multiple ominous references to the Wall, how it has stood “through it all”, and how it will protect them from the Night King. All this seems to be foreshadowing my prediction for the closing shot of Season 7… the Wall crumbling down.
  • Is it possible we see Bran get to Winterfell, and Arya find her way home… and have the remaining Starks together again?! I wish, but I’m going with no.
  • Is that Nymeria in the Episode 2 trailer?!
  • How is the Catspaw Valyrian steel dagger going to come back into play? Will we eventually see it destroy a White Walker? I say yes.
  • What will the purpose of greyscale be to the larger plot? Seems unlikely that we’ve been told so much about it just to see Jorah slowly be taken over and die from it. Maybe it will spread throughout Westeros. Or, will it play into the war against the White Walkers?
  • What are the major obstacles for Dany at this point? She has a massive fleet, multiple skilled armies, three dragons, the backings of a few major houses, and a fantastic small council. Something has to go wrong for her at some point? Maybe Euron is able to take out her fleet somehow, and all of #TeamDany is stranded on Dragonstone?
  • When will the show tell us more about the prophecy of Azor Ahai?

Archmaester of the Citadel,

Sam

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