Review: Game of Thrones — Beyond the Wall
+10 Plot Armour.
When it was announced that HBO and Benioff and Weiss were working on two final seasons with shortened episode orders I thought, “Streamlined storytelling? For Game of Thrones? I can get on board with that!” And season 7 feels to have benefited from cutting some of the episode fat.
However, “Beyond the Wall” feels like an episode where I wish they had their usual run of 10, because the amount of rushing done here to get everything done over the course of just 60 minutes was so fast I felt like I was a spinning pupper waiting for its dinner.
I’ll say this for those that don’t want to read further: this was an average episode of Game of Thrones. For all it’s flash, I had nothing but questions for the entire episode. Sure, I was having heart palpitations for some of the fights, but the result felt obvious and filled to the brim with narrative get-out-of-jail-free cards.
I understand the shock and horror of bits of the episode and all the action, but I’ll take Dany torching the Lannister forces over a “final stand” fight that almost promises death from the beginning and delivers only one in the form of Thoros. And, even then, that fight had its moments of tension and insurmountable odds, but before that we were wasting time watching the Snowy Seven walk for, like, 5kms and have a chit chat along the way. Yet, despite the fun moments between Tormund and the Hound, none of it felt necessary or imperative to say, other than the showrunners having us immediately scream after Tormund says he wants to marry Brienne, “oh, great, he’s fucking dead.”
The same can be said for Arya and Sansa’s dreary scenes this week too. Winterfell has been a game of cat-and-mouse for a few weeks now, and while that game can be fun the rate at which Arya has turned on her sister seems to have escalated so fast that I almost expected her to knife Sansa on the spot.
It doesn’t help that Littlefinger seems to have them wrapped around his finger (sorry). We’ve spent the last three and a half seasons watching Arya turn into a no-shit queen only to have her completely falling for Littlefinger’s tactics. Ironic, given that she has TWO massive speeches about detecting liars and deceit with Sansa throughout the episode.
So, naturally, it makes sense that Brienne is the one to talk sense into Sansa — and maybe Arya — but FOR SOME REASON Brienne is sent away after Sansa receives a letter from King’s Landing asking them to rock the fuck up for something. Now, I may not have been paying much attention during this, but sending Brienne away — with Pod, presumably — doesn’t make a tonne of sense especially after Sansa brags about not going. Why does Brienne need to go? You sound so disinterested, Sansa, so why send her or anyone?
The more I think about it, I would be happy to have the 10 episodes for this arc to breathe a little bit more. Arya’s immediate distrust of Sansa makes little sense after everything Littlefinger seems to have not done; he’s literally put a cheeky note under his bed to throw Arya off his tracks or, at least, cause conflict between the sisters. Give me one or two more episodes where we can explore and actually develop Arya and Sansa’s relationship before Arya turns on her and I think this arc is in a much better place.
Speaking of conflict, it feels just as present over in Dragonstone. Tyrion and Dany both discuss the state of the game, before Tyrion makes some cheeky remarks about Jon and Dany already love one another — a look from Dany almost confirms that she does love him somehow — it’s a nice back and forth the two have until Dany just starts accusing Tyrion of siding with his old family again.
Looking at that, though, it makes Dany’s decision to head over the Wall more powerful as Tyrion tries to get through to her before she sets off to help Jon. It’s a small, nice moment given the gravity of what was to happen next.
The Snowy Seven’s expedition always felt doomed to fail once Tyrion suggested it to Jon. Jon, naturally, thought it made sense and took it upon himself to go. So the 10 or so minutes we get with the Snowy Seven and the incredible looking scenery of life beyond the Wall are all well and good and their interactions harmless, but don’t serve to do much other than Jon officially getting Longclaw from Jorah after he abandons his rights to it, and Tormund and the Hound’s discussion about Brienne.
After all of that, the gang stumble upon a white walker scouting party and set out to trap them. It’s a success! With the party getting their hands on a lone walker, after Jon obliterates the remaining walkers with one sweep of his Valyrian-steel sword. The remaining walker screeches out into the quiet valley which spurs the storm of the Night King to converge onto the group.
So, naturally, instead of just packing up their shit and taking their catch with them, Jon sends Gendry back to the Wall to warn Dany. Meanwhile, the rest of them decide to leg it into a massive frozen over lake for no reason — why not just follow Gendry to the Wall? He makes it there in about 15 minutes — barely.
The resulting standoff between the Snowy Seven and the Night King’s army is a tense one, but falls flat given our investment into the Night King is more about him being a straight up villain who we’ve barely seen all series. The quiet of it all feels like the best part as we start to consider whether they’re going to make it out alive or, at least, what causalities we’ll see.
It makes sense for The Hound to be the one to set off the first wave of walker attacks over a nicely repaired sheet of ice, and the ensuing fight between everyone is great to watch, but has absolutely zero stakes when it becomes clearer and clearer that everyone bar the other 14 other blokes will survive.
Why? Well, because Gendry managed to make it to the wall, talk to a maester about what’s happened, the maester sent a raven to Dany who read the message, gathered up her fiery jets, and flew all the way to the Wall to save ALL OF THEM. Take a breath, everyone.
It’s badass seeing the trio of dragons lay waste to the army of the dead in front of the Night King, but less so when it almost eliminates the stakes entirely. Not to mention the fact that one of the dragons (Rhaegal) just disappears after Viserion is brought down by the next gold medal winner at the 2020 Olympic games; his name is The Night King and he represents The Army of the Dead.
It’s definitely depressing seeing one of the dragons go down to an ice spear when one was pierced by a normal spear, but I’ll put that down to some white walker magic upsetting Viserion’s tummy. Still, it’s not at all surprising that Viserion is now a fucking ice dragon — this was something that I’d heard theorised and made so much sense because Dany’s power felt too incredible after the Loot Train battle in “Spoils of War”.
Further to the stupidity of some of this, Jon’s “heroic” decision to just fight a bunch of dead people while everyone loaded up Drogon with the goods is even less surprising given what we’ve seen from him over the years. So seeing him fall to the walkers had no emotional weight whatsoever, because I feel like I’ve seen it before. Plus, I knew that Jon was not dead. Who would? His plot armour is impenetrable at this point.
Dany takes off and the Night King almost zaps Drogon in the process, but, hold on, we almost lose Jorah to him falling off the dragon… nope, that doesn’t happen either. He’s back on board and ready to go.
We cut back to the lake and the army of the dead continuing their march forward and Jon miraculously rising up from a FROZEN LAKE to prepare for his final fight. Yet, it doesn’t feel final at all — is Rhaegal going to swoop down and he’ll ride that dragon the fuck out of there?
Nope. Because that’s BENJEN STARK’S MUSIC. Wait, what the fuck has Benjen been doing this whole time? Has he been waiting in the wings for Jon to be alone? This might be the show’s biggest deus ex machina. Benjen comes from nowhere with a sweet fire mace and a horse to tell Jon to get out of there because there isn’t enough room FOR BOTH OF THEM ON THE HORSE. WHY? THE HORSE LOOKS FINE TO ME. Either way, there is no way to nicely solve Jon’s issue whether Rhaegal shows up or not. This is just bad.
The episode begins its close on Dany and Jon making eyes at one another as he recovers from his frostbite. This interaction feels a tad awkward and I’d put that down to the lack of chemistry between Clarke and Harrington, but, thinking back on it, having Jon swear fealty to Dany and for Dany to commit her cause to fight the army of the dead is still nicely done. It’s a big moment for both of them to course correct after both being staunchly against the idea the moment they met.
Perhaps I’m being really harsh – I re-read this before I published it and I feel like I might be – but if Game of Thrones is given the luxury and challenge of having a shorter run of episodes then it might be best to at least try and be creative with your storytelling. The show doesn’t have to adhere to these strict timelines and distances, but if it aids the plot too much and also eliminates emotional stakes then we’ve got a problem.
