Jon Snow may be back, but he’s not happy, even when people try to lift his spirits. Indeed, much of this week’s episode of “Game of Thrones” went a long way to lift the audience’s spirits with some pockets of humor here and there. But this is “Game of Thrones,” and smiles are fleeting, to put it lightly.
After stretching out suspense over Jon Snow’s fate over a year and two episodes, there’s no waiting around this week. “Oathbreaker” picks up in the same strange moment where “Home” left off: Jon gasping for air. Davos is stunned, Ghost is amazed, and everything feels weird and unnatural.
Jon Snow didn’t see anything in death. “There was nothing at all,” he tells Melisandre when she asks the resurrected Jon what he experienced in the great beyond. (It’s a bigger win for nihilism than the first seven episodes of “True Detective” season 1.) But Melisandre’s faith is back, and she seems convinced that Jon is the “Prince That Was Promised,” and that the Lord of Light didn’t really choose the fallen Stannis.
Yet Jon is more rattled and terrified than grateful for being dragged back into the world of the breathing. “I shouldn’t be here,” he utters, still drying to gather his senses. He’s still weighted with doubt, too, about his failure in leading the Wildlings to the Wall, but Davos bucks him up and soon Jon is back in his Lord Commander’s garb, walking among the stunned Wildlings and whatever loyalists he has left in the Watch. “They think you’re a god,” Tormund tells him. “The man who returned from the dead.”
Thankfully it’s not all super-serious. Tormund cuts him down to size — playfully, to be sure — with a crack about Jon’s not-so-divine manhood. And good old Edd is there to welcome Jon with a hug and a few jokes.
That lightness picks up a bit more on the ship carrying a queasy Sam, who’s getting a pep talk from Gilly, as they head to the Citadel. It’s more or less a scene to remind us these characters still exist, and the comedy doesn’t last much longer. We’re plunged into another revelatory flashback by way of Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven. Young Ned Stark and Howland Reed, along with some other chums fresh from Robert Baratheon’s victory over Rhaegar Targaryen, face off with Ser Arthur Dayne, who’s known for being the greatest swordsman in Westeros.
Ned wants his sister, Lyanna, back. But Ser Arthur lives up to his reputation, and whirls around with a ferocity and cunning rarely seen in “Game of Thrones.” He takes them all down one by one, leaving only Ned. It’s a thrilling fight sequence, even though we know Ned’s going to make it out alive. “How’d my father beat him?” an astonished and disappointed Bran asks as Dayne disarms him. But then we find out just how Howland Reed helped Ned: He stabbed Dayne in the back, thus bringing down the best swordsman in the realm. Bran doesn’t like how Reed stabbed Dayne in the back, but he doesn’t appreciate that war is more than just strategy and gentlemanly banter.
Then a cry comes from the tower — known as the Tower of Joy — and Ned runs to it. Bran wants to know more, but the Three-Eyed Raven shuts him down, brings him back to reality, and admonishes him that he can’t leave their cave until the young Stark knows everything. Oh, but it can’t be all at once. It’s almost as if the Three-Eyed Raven is a TV showrunner who’s stringing along his audience week to week.
Meanwhile, we return to Daenerys, who wasn’t around last week, as she’s herded into Vaes Dothrak, the capital city for the Dothraki, where she will live for the rest of her years with other widows of fallen khals — that is, if she isn’t held accountable for going out into the world after her husband, Khal Drogo, died. It just keeps getting harder and harder for the would-be queen of Westeros.
In Meereen, where Dany last ruled, Varys the Spider is at work trying to get to the bottom of who’s steering the Sons of the Harpy, the murderous masked men who have undermined Dany’s reign. He makes an offer to a woman who had been setting up the Unsullied and Second Sons, who comprise Dany’s army, to be killed by the Sons. She can split the city, which would save her son and spare her own hide, or she can face death for treason and leave her poor son to the mercy of others.
Back to the funny stuff: Tyrion attempts to coax Missandei and Grey Worm to chat a bit, to kill some time until Varys shows up, even play some games. “Innocent games, fun games … DRINKING games!” He’s spared further awkwardness with Varys’s ultimate arrival, and the master of secrets reveals that all the men in charge of the other cities in Slavers Bay are funding and equipping the Sons of the Harpy. A big fight might be unavoidable.
Back in King’s Landing, Qyburn is building up his own network of little birds, i.e., taking over Varys’s corps of child spies so they can feed him secrets, in turn. (Oh, by the way, there is no longer any secret about who the monstrous guy watching out for Cersei is: It’s Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane, brought back Frankenstein-style.) Cersei wants Qyburn’s spies everywhere: In Dorne, Highgarden, pretty much any place her enemies may lurk. She also wants a place on the High Council, even though her uncle, Kevan Lannister, refuses it, and the Queen of Thorns (Queen Margaery’s grandmother) mocks Cersei for her incest. Cersei and Jaime claim seats anyway, but the council storms out. In Grand Maester Pycelle’s case, he leaves with great caution after insulting Ser Gregor — who towers over him, ominously.
King Tommen, for his part, decides to confront the High Sparrow and demand rights for his mother. The old man has a way with words, though, and soon he has Tommen following along with his pious logic, entreating the boy to take a seat and have a heart to heart with him. “A true leader avails himself of the wisest council he can, and no council is wiser than the gods,” the High Sparrow tells him. The words are reminiscent of what Tommen’s grandfather, Tywin, once told him — and now the High Sparrow is singing a beautiful song to the boy king’s ears.
If only Arya Stark’s lessons were so gentle. She continues to be beaten by the waif, only this time it’s in the House of Black and White. These scenes are intercut with an interrogation that appears designed to help her purge herself of … well, herself. It’s the anti-”Rocky” training montage. She keeps referring to herself as “Arya Stark” and “she.” It’s a distancing method, and she begins to make chilling progress … and to see without the benefit of eyesight. “A girl has no name,” she says, which means that a girl is on the right track. This is put to an even greater test when the Faceless Man offers her a drink. At first she hesitates, fearing death, but a girl is no one only if a girl has no fear. She drinks, and her eyes return. She is indeed no one.
As one Stark “dies,” we learn that another lives: Poor Rickon and his Wildling friend, Osha, are brought before Ramsay Bolton. How do we know it’s Rickon? They have the head of his direwolf, Shaggydog. It looks like Ramsay will get to be cruel yet again to another rightful heir to Winterfell. And he has an ace in the hole for when Jon Snow and his army move south. If they move south, that is.
The episode ends where it began: at Castle Black, at the Wall. Jon is poised to carry out a sentence of hanging for the traitors who killed him. Yes, that means Ser Alyser Thorne and even young Olly, who dealt Jon the fatal blow. Looking up Olly’s pained death mask, Jon looks like he’d rather be dead than do this anymore. He drives this point home by shedding his Lord Commander’s cloak and handing it to Edd. “My watch is ended.” Technically, his watch ended when he died, so he’s not wrong. Let’s just hope he sticks around long enough to be there when Sansa and Brienne arrive.
