This week’s episode of “Game of Thrones” seems to take place in an alternate universe where comeuppances and rewards happen to the right people, and scenes we’ve been hoping for actually take place. Its title is a wink from the writers, especially after last week’s viewing, which was a punishment. This week also marks the biggest departure yet from the books in a fascinating meeting between two key characters: Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke).
Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) — maybe the most reliably humble and generous person in the “GoT” universe — gets to shine at the Wall, where he and Gilly (Hannah Murrah) take center stage while Jon Snow (Kit Harington) is leaving to try to convince the remaining wildling population to come south before the Walking Dead — sorry, the White Walkers — get them. Alliser Thorne (Owen Teale) — a.k.a. the guy who lost in the Lord Commander election — thinks it’s a stupid idea and tells Jon so. “As always, thank you for your honesty,” Jon tells him. (Is that snark from the Stark bastard?)
Sam and Gilly are keeping a vigil at the dying Aemon Targaryen’s bedside, where he’s drifting back into memories of being a boy with his brother, Aegon. “You’re losing all your friends, Tarly,” Thorne cracks after the maester’s funeral, and sure enough, right away Gilly’s getting menaced by the threat of sexual violence from two Night’s Watch thugs (wasn’t not raping people kind of implied in the vows?). Sam stands up for her and gets beaten to a pulp for it — but he also gets Gilly, finally. Sure, it might be mostly gratitude sex (and he can barely move for all the bruises while it’s happening), but he’ll take it.
At Winterfell, a tearful Sansa (Sophie Turner) channels the spirit of last week’s theme — “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” — when, despite being locked in her room and assaulted nightly by her husband (Iwan Rheon), she enlists Theon (Alfie Allen)’s help to get her out. “Your name is Theon Greyjoy,” she tells him firmly as he insists she call him Reek. Buoyed, Theon agrees to take a candle up to the tower — remember the chambermaid who told her to signal if she was in trouble? — but when he gets up the many stairs, Ramsay is already, improbably dining there like the cartoonish villain he is. Less cartoonish is the skinned corpse of the chambermaid he displays for Sansa — this is one of those things you can’t unsee and, for this viewer anyway, wish “GoT” would just leave to the imagination, like the books — but prior to this awful revelation, we see that she’s got some fight left. When Ramsay tells her he’ll eventually become Ward of the North, she prods him about his dubious birthright: Isn’t his father’s wife pregnant? With what they think is a boy?
Stannis (Stephen Dillane), on the march to Winterfell, is up against stacked odds too: His men all have colds and his horses are freezing to death in the night. Ever-practical right-hand man Davos (Liam Cunningham) thinks they should cut their losses and head back to Castle Black, but Stannis makes a fair point: He did that at King’s Landing, and “if I retreat again, I became The King Who Ran.” That’s pretty much how nicknames in the Seven Kingdoms go, yeah. Still, he wants Melisandre (Carice van Houten) to reassure him that her vision about the victory at Winterfell in the snow is for real. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made,” she tells him, taking his hand off her rear end. This time it’s the tween Shireen she’s got her eye on, and for once he seems to put his foot down: “She’s my daughter,” he says. “Get out.”
In Dorne, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is getting nowhere with Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free), who isn’t interesting in being rescued. “You don’t know me,” she snaps, running out of the room, and just like that Jaime must be really registering that he’s the parent of a teenager. In a prison cell, Bronn (Jerome Flynn) is entertaining the locals with a ballad about having “tasted the Dornishman’s wife.” Across the way, the Sand Snakes — also imprisoned after their collective skirmish in the courtyard last episode — are taunting him from their cell, especially Tyrene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers), who asks him how his knife wound is recovering while taking her top off (because of course). By the time she’s baring it all, he’s woozy, and while it’s fun to think the Sand Snakes actually have some Medusa-like power going on that can fell men who just look at their nether regions, it’s actually poison in the wound — and guess who’s got the only antidote. Bronn makes with the compliments, and gets it in the nick of time.
In Meereen, Daenerys may be engaged to local nobleman Hizdahr zo Loraq (Joel Fry), but it’s just “for political reasons,” she tells foxy bedmate Daario (Michiel Huisman). He counters with an offer to marry him, which she says she can’t do, and then another piece of advice: On the day the Great Games begin — by which I assume he means the opening of the fighting pits — she ought to gather the heads of all the Great Families and slaughter them. “You’re either the butcher or the meat,” he says, which makes for debatable foreplay banter.
The kidnapped Tyrion and Jorah (Iain Glen) are purchased on the slaver auction block as a fighter duo, after some quick thinking by Tyrion. Waiting their turn in a fighting pit, they’re informed that most of them will die today, but the one who doesn’t will have a chance to fight in front of the queen.
When Dany actually has to see a fighting pit, though — she’s obliged to make the rounds of the lower ones, per tradition — she looks as weary as a lot of us feel at having to watch yet more heavily armed men dispatching each other gorily. Just when she’s getting up to leave, one hardy fighter finishes them all off dramatically and removes his helmet: It’s Jorah. “Get him out of my sight,” she hisses, but he insists she give him a second to see his gift. “It’s true,” says the gift, who’s been released from his chains by a random, friendly giant. “My name is Tyrion Lannister.” And just like that, two of the characters we’ve most looked forward to intersecting are staring at each other. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship! It probably won’t, knowing this show, but we can hope.
In King’s Landing, the extremist Sparrows, and their mission to mete out old-time religious justice, carry on disrupting the status quo. Lady Olenna (Diana Rigg) aims to scold her way into freeing Margaery (Natalie Dormer) and Loras (Finn Jones), but the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) is, maddeningly, immune to her withering gaze and her B.S. detector. “Spare me the homilies,” she snaps, “I can smell a fraud a mile away.” She cannot, though, find any means with which to bribe him into letting them go. Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) is her next logical stop, and he’s more promising, as she actually has something on him: “Together, we murdered a king,” she points out. Littlefinger has information she can use; “I have a gift for you, the same kind I gave Cersei: a handsome young man.”
Cersei (Lena Headey) is busy comforting another handsome young man: her son the king (Dean-Charles Chapman), who is all but bursting into tears at frustration over not being able to free his queen. “I’ll do everything I can to win her freedom,” Cersei lies. “You are all that matters; you and your sister.” The second part she looks like she believes, but when confronted with the sight of a disheveled, bitter Margaery in the Sparrows’ prison cells, she can’t help but visibly relish it. A chat with the High Sparrow on her way out finds him giving her the history of the building and the anti-vanity faithful who built it. Cersei couldn’t be more bored, but puts on her polite face — until the Sparrow turns to look at her. “What will we find when we strip away your finery?” he asks, bringing out Lancel (the Lannister-turned-Sparrow), who has sold her up the river. Yes, that’s right, we end on Cersei herself being thrown into a cell. Who knew karma was alive and well in Westeros?