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Game of Thrones season 7 episode 3 plot predictions: Jon meets Daenerys, Greyworm dies and more

30/7/2017

Christopher Hooton

And so it is Game of Thrones season 7's third episode this week, which promises to be a meaty one.

'Stormborn' set up some juicy plot points that should come into fruition in 'The Queen's Justice'. Here are our predictions based on the trailer, episode synopsis and the fact we've been covering this show until our eyes bled Weirdwood sap.

1. Jon meets Daenerys at Dragonstone, it doesn't go swimmingly

What is going on with the Starks and what are their motives?

The meeting itself is actually a certainty, given the closing shot in the trailer of Jon entering the Targaryen throne room.

The King in the North was invited there but, unbeknownst to him (Tyrion was careful to be tactful with his raven), Daenerys expects him to bend the knee. Would he do it if it meant the promise of an alliance in fighting the White Walkers? Maybe, but he'll be hoping it doesn't come to that.

Expect Daenerys to be her usual monocratic self and regard Jon with suspicion, but Tyrion and Varys to try and soften diplomacy, especially the former given his positive history with Jon. In spite of their efforts, I don't have a great feeling about this meeting.

It's worth noting that, like it or not, Daenerys' moves against Cersei will affect Jon and he'll need to plan/side accordingly.

2. A battle for Casterly Rock takes place, Greyworm dies

The battle is definitely on, as the trailer sees Greyworm suiting up and sailing with the Unsullied on Targ boats before storming a set of gates, but what will the outcome of the battle be?

Team Daenerys just suffered a blow with Euron destroying most of the Greyjoy fleet, so maybe they're due a small win here?

I wouldn't be surprised if Jaime rushes back to the Lannisters' seat to defend the castle, or if Greyworm dies in battle given he had that closure-providing sex scene last week.

3. Cersei has a lot more time for Euron

She will be delighted by him crushing the Greyjoys and finding his "precious gift" for her in the process, Ellaria Sand - the woman who poisoned Cersei's daughter, Myrcella.

The episode synopsis says that "Cersei returns a gift". We know Euron wants her hand in marriage but I'd be surprised if she gave that so readily. Perhaps she will give him a commander position? Or land? After that Sept of Baelor blast there's certainly plenty of roles that need filling in King's Landing.

4. Ser Jorah and Sam get a week off

Sam's been busy of late, what with his Dragonglass discovery and greyscale operation, so I could see him taking a backseat this episode.

Same goes for Jorah, who will likely be seen convalescing following his surgery but not doing much else. That said, maybe he'll already be fighting fit - this season seems to be moving at such a hectic pace.

5. The Hound and co. make it to the Wall, trade visions with Bran

I'm not so sure about this one, but I could see it. The Brotherhood without Banners will presumably be racing to the Wall following The Hound's unexpected fire vision, and who better to confirm their White Walker suspicions than Bran, who we are to believe is still with the Night's Watch right now?

6. Arya returns to Winterfell, grows suspicious of Sansa

It feels convenient plot-wise that Arya arrive to Winterfell to find her brother out of office in Dragonstone, the big Stark reunion only being with Sansa initially.

Arya will need to be filled in on the White Walker threat and, although both she and Sansa are desperate to exact revenge on Cersei, they have very different personalities and I expect differing views on ruling. Hopefully Arya can talk some sense into her sister following her petulance in episodes 1 and 2.

7. Littlefinger creeps on Sansa

In spite of Jon's warning, I think Baelish will still try and manipulate Sansa, possibly even having some success while the King is away.

Culled from www.independent.co.uk

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Game of Thrones, season 7 episode 2, Stormborn recap: Daenerys's avengers assemble

29/7/2017

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Ed Power

Explosions! Great groaning battle-ships! A lunatic in guy-liner! And that was just the closing five minutes. It’s been a cautious start to Game of Thrones season seven. But, following further, patience-testing re-arranging of the chess pieces, episode two went out in a literal blaze of glory.

Euron Greyjoy – Captain Jack Sparrow, if Johnny Depp was slim, Scandinavian and twice as over the top – was staging a smash and grab raid on close family/ sworn enemies Theon and Yara. Galleons piled into one another, Sand Snakes perished (was it wrong to cheer?), the thrill factor blew through the roof.

Euron's appearance was one of those Game of Throne moments you’ll always remember seeing for the first time. One minute Yara "I’ll snog anything that moves" Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan) was cuddling with Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma), the next Euron had invited himself on board via a giant spiky battering ram straight from a Medieval retelling of Mad Max. Whatever else the sociopathic seadog (Pilou Asbæk) gets up to this year he can already claim the prize for best Game of Thrones entrance ever.

With the action came a devastating catharsis. Theon (Alfie Allen) regressed into former-person Reek and legged it overboard, leaving Yara and Ellaria to their unpleasant fate (presumably involving being presented to Cersei with big shiny bow on top). Our minds had been blown, emotions reduced to a smoking pyre.

This is the rest of what we learned.

Is Euron Game of Thrones’s silliest villain yet?

Joffrey was a loathsome wimp, Ramsay a psychopath with a bad haircut. But Euron is something far more familiar – a bonkers villain of the old school. There are no hidden depths to the new ruler of the Iron Islands, unless you count the layers of emo make-up he’s mysteriously acquired this season. He just wants to kill, maim and burn – if he can achieve all three at once, so much the merrier.

Yet, with his latest antics, he has more than earned his place in the show’s rogues’s gallery. Armed with a post-apocalyptic battering ram, he ransacked Theon and Yara’s fleet – as a bonus cutting down the (still annoying) Sand Snakes.

"Give your uncle a kiss," Euron proceeded to leer at Yara as he charged into action – an aside sure to go down as one of the season’s outstanding one-liners. It was all too much for Theon, still clearly working through his time as Ramsay’s crippled man-servant. Over the side the Prince of the Pyke jumped – a leap with echoes of his vault over the Winterfell battlements with Sansa. That had been the moment Reek was reborn as Theon once again. But who was he now? Also – is Yara Euron’s prisoner or has he merely slit her throat?

All is far from sunny in Dragonstone.

Daenerys’s return to the family seat and place of her birth, was not quite the jubilee she had anticipated. In a draughty castle, she gravely surveyed a raging storm.

Where were the approving crowds, the Targaryen loyalists ready to sweep her back to power?

That the Mother of Dragons (Emilia Clarke) was determined to bring the people onside rather than burn Westeros to the ground with her dragons was testament to her sense of right and wrong (a moral compass that hasn’t always pointed in the correct direction) But that isn’t to suggest she has gone soft and Varys (Conleth Hill), aka most Machiavellian soul in Westeros, bore the brunt of her suspicions.

He was a Robert supporter who’d turned on the Baratheons – what was to stop him similarly deserting Daenerys in the event of a more desirable candidate present themselves?

"You wish to know where my loyalties lie…with the people," said the former Master of Whisperers – who hadn’t sounded this single-minded since bunging Tyrion into that wine crate at the start of season five. This was enough to keep Daenerys onside – but was the show laying groundwork for violent disagreements to come?

After Ed Sheeran, it was time for a surprise cameo from the Lady in Red

Sensitive souls are still haunted by the ginger halfling’s shock appearance last week. Now came another divisive figure with a reputation for making children scream in terror. Exiled by Jon Snow, the Red Woman (Carice van Houten) had fetched up on Daenerys’s doorstep.

She was here at the behest of the Great God of Plot Devices. "I believe you have a role to play…as does the King in the North, Jon Snow," said Melisandre, a spectacularly unsubtle hint that the Mother of Dragons and the lord of Winterfell might find common cause.

"If he does rule the north, he'll make an excellent ally," chimed Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), with equal lack of artfulness. A Daenerys–Jon alliance has admittedly long been on the cards – but did Game of Thrones have to spell it out so clunkily? Let’s hope the series rediscovers its flair of understatement as the season continues.

Will Jon Snow bend the knee to the Mother of Dragons?

Daenerys is very much up for an alliance with Jon Snow – albeit on her terms. In Winterfell, Sansa – in her new position as Jon's neurotic frenemy – warned of a possible Targaryen trap. An alternative perspective was offered by Ser Davos.

Dragons breath fire – and fire destroys Walkers. The logic appealed to Snow – but is he risking all by agreeing to a face-to-face meeting with the Mother of Dragons?

One thing he definitely isn’t sitting on the fence about is Littlefinger’s baleful influence on Sansa (Sophie Turner). The King in the North understandably lost his cool after Lord Baelish (Aidan Gillen) confessed to pervy uncle feelings for Sansa.

Eeeugh. What big brother wouldn’t have lashed out as precisely as Jon had?

Is Game of Thrones trying to make us lose our dinner?

After last week’s bed-pan rhapsody, it was back to Oldtown for further gross-out visual humour. As Ser Jorah (Iain Glen) chomped on a leather strap, Sam (John Bradley-West) merrily hacked at his Greyscale infection – an excuse for Game of Thrones to delight our senses with the crunch of splintering skin and the wet pop of diseased flesh. The final hilarious flourish came with a cut to a chap chomping a pie. Cheers Game of Thrones – it’s going be years before we can even think about Cornish Pasty for lunch.

The episode felt like the Game of Thrones version of the Avengers

Enemies of Cersei… assemble! Under the same roof were gathered Daenerys, Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg), Ellaria Sand (pre-Euron Greyjoy run-in), Yara and Theon and Tyrion Lannister. Opinions differed as to the smartest way of conquering the Seven Kingdoms. Olenna and Ellaria were of the "torch first, ask questions later" school – but Daenerys and Tyrion had a more subtle plan. The Lannisters would be neutralised via a smash and grab raid by the Unsullied on the House's seat at Casterly Rock. Cunning! But the machinations were in truth an afterthought. The thrill was seeing all of these great players gathered around a table together, nattering as if they’d been best mates forever.

It’s been an understated season for Cersei (Lena Headey) thus far. Mostly the show has asked her to prance around in black robes and look quietly gaga. However, this week we had a glimpse of what she’s planning by way of encore after destroying the Sept of Balor last year. In the bowels of the Red Keep Qyburn (Anton Lesser) and the boys in r ’n d had worked up a prototype giant crossbow – perfect for shooting pesky dragons from the sky. Surrounded by enemies, with even Jaime doubting her, you wanted to applaud Cersei for always having a trick up her sleeve – "trick" in this case being the largest projectile weapon the Seven Kingdoms have yet witnessed. Is it wrong to root for her?

Will Arya stop trying to kill everyone now?

"Jon Snow came down from Castle Black with a Wildling army and won the Battle of the Bastards – he's King in the North now." Hot Pie’s newsflash was just the excuse Arya (Maisie Williams) needed to abandon Operation Kill Everyone (next on the list was Cersei Lannister) and instead set course for Winterfell.

The first of what will presumably be many tearful reunions followed as she reconnected with beloved Direwolf Nymeria. Alas, the primordial pooch wasn’t interested in a long-term get together. But she at least persuaded her fellow peckish predators to forbear from ripping Arya to pieces. By Game of Thrones standards, this constituted a properly heart-warming moment.

Culled from www.telegraph.co.uk

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Game of Thrones recap: season seven, episode one – Dragonstone

22/7/2017

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Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night and on Foxtel in Australia on Monday. Do not read unless you have watched season seven, episode one, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 9pm, and is repeated in Australia on Showcase on Monday at 7.30pm AEST.

‘When I was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch I executed men who betrayed me. But I will not punish men for their father’s sins and I will not take a family’s home from them.’

Hello and welcome back everyone. How you felt about tonight’s opening episode, which was largely concerned with power and how to wield it, will probably depend on your tolerance for large chunks of exposition. Overall, I was OK with the odd clunky scene: at this stage in the game, there are a lot of pieces to manoeuvre into place and, by episode’s end, things were nicely set up for the season.

In Winterfell, Jon and Sansa clashed over their very different notions of how to deal with the former treachery of the Karstarks and Umbers. Jon’s case – that you do not punish the sons and daughters for the sins of the father – was the more obviously relatable, and he was right too that the North needs to stand firm together in the face of a far greater enemy than the Lannisters. Yet Sansa, schooled by a harsher teacher, also had a point, difficult though it perhaps is to acknowledge: if you do not cut the root out then the branch will again flourish – and what happens when the buds of that branch arrive, as Arya Stark did with the Freys, to choke your life away?

It’s worth noting, however, that Cersei hasn’t quite managed to put the lessons she so assiduously taught Sansa into practice. Yes, she’s wiped out most of the Tyrells but Olenna, the most dangerous, is still standing. In the south the Sand Snakes lurk, no doubt practising their sub-Lorca incantations, while Sansa and Jon are building an army in the North, and Dany and co have landed on Dragonstone. Has Cersei won the battle but not the war? Or will a potential alliance with the distinctly untrustworthy Euron be enough to save the day?

As for Dany, who has so far governed with a mixture of Jon’s compassion and Cersei’s ruthlessness – a third way, if you will (sorry) – she landed on Dragonstone for an emotional homecoming, having also taken the time to kit out her invading army in some rather swish new clothes. Anyone who’s anyone in Westeros is wearing black this season.

‘Do you believe me now Clegane? Do you believe that we’re here for a reason?’

For all the power of its more epic moments, Game of Thrones is generally at its best when it takes time with its characters, allowing us to see them in new ways. Thus the evening’s best scene came between three of the characters we know least: Sandor Clegane, Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, as they sat in the ruined house of the now dead farmer who the Hound and Arya encountered back in season four.

Switching between dark humour – “It’s just my fucking luck I end up with a bunch of fire worshippers” – and touching moments (Sandor’s decision to bury the man and his daughter), the scene also gave us some interesting new information: Sandor, the man scarred by and terrified of fire, can read the patterns in it.

The moment when he described the Night King’s army marching from the North was a genuinely spooky one, and Rory McCann sold it well. Here’s hoping he and the Brotherhood without Banners meet up with Jon in the North soon.

‘In the Citadel we live different lives for different reasons. We are this life’s memory.’

If Sandor was busy discovering that sometimes the most unlikely things turn out to be true, poor Sam was undergoing one of those “my dream job v the reality” moments. Oh Sam, I understand: there you were dreaming of waltzing into the Citadel like a conquering hero, gaining access to all the books you might need, and instead you find yourself working in a particularly unpleasant care home with the odd autopsy thrown in. We’ve all been there.

After spending far too long shifting shit and stew in some terrible movie I’m tempted to call Bedpans and Soup-sick, Sam finally cracked and stole the keys to the forbidden library. To which I say, hurrah – it’s all very well to have Jim Broadbent’s Archmaester correctly stressing the importance of history, learning and memory, but what good is remembering the past if you don’t use it to avert danger in the future?

It’s a measure of how very creepy Arya has become that I genuinely expected her to kill all the soldiers, even after they’d kindly shared their meat and blackberry wine.
That said, I wasn’t entirely sure about that scene – and not just because it featured Ed Sheeran, who I have yet to forgive for inflicting Galway Girl on my household. While I liked the reminder that many soldiers are just ordinary men far from home, the dialogue was at its most heavy-handed.
The line about stealing a family home from Jon had a lovely echo in the scene with Sandor – it was The Hound’s theft of the farmer’s money, over Arya’s protestations, that led to their cruel deaths. A fact he acknowledged in digging the grave.
Did David Benioff and DB Weiss have some sort of bet with each other about how many times they could squeeze the word “cunt” into an hour?
Speaking of dialogue, this was a particularly quip-heavy episode, from Sandor’s comments on Thoros’s top knot to Sansa’s enjoyably sharp putdown of Littlefinger (“No need to have the last word Lord Baelish, I’ll assume it was something clever.”)
What do we think Euron’s promised gift is? There is an interesting possibility from the books (see here, for those who don’t mind spoilers), but it’s equally possible that he intends to bring her Dany’s head.
I can’t be the only one who was sad that Arya was heading to King’s Landing to kill Cersei, rather than Winterfell for a reunion.
Also please tell me I wasn’t the only person thinking “I wouldn’t run my fingers along that, Dany”, about Stannis’s table of former invasion plans and wild enchantress sex.
I love Brienne’s face of great disdain whenever Tormund is in the vicinity.
I’m glad Edd took Bran and Meera in to Castle Black, although also a little worried for the Night’s Watch given that Bran is basically a human tracking device for the Night King.
The brief cut to Davos’s face when Sansa and Jon were arguing said everything. Listen to Davos, people – he’s probably the only person on this entire show with any sense.
Was that Jorah’s creepy grey scale arm at the end scaring Sam?

A surprisingly unbloody start to the season saw only one real act of violence (two if you count Brienne’s knocking of Pod into the snow). That said it was a particularly good one, as Arya donned Walder Frey’s face to ensure that every single member of the Frey family was wiped out root and branch. I somehow think that she and Sansa might have rather a lot of common ground, when (if) they finally reunite.

Random Brit of the week
Sorry Ed Sheeran, but this can only go to the wonderful Jim Broadbent who turned up to dispense wisdom to Sam before frustratingly refusing to accept that The Wall could actually fall.

So what did you think? Will Jon and Sansa manage to compromise? Can Cersei possibly stay on the Iron Throne? And have you ever had a job as bad as Sam’s?
As ever, all speculation and no spoilers are welcome below ...

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Game of Thrones couple Jon Snow and Ygritte buy £1.75m home together in English countryside

21/7/2017

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Sophie Christian

Rose Leslie and Kit Harington, who met on set of Game of Thrones in 2012 Rex
The hit on- and off-screen couple Kit Harington and Rose Leslie, who met on set while filming the hit TV series Game of Thrones, are reportedly poised to move into a luxurious £1.75 million house in the English countryside.

The couple met in 2012 while playing Jon Snow and Ygritte in the fantasy series, eventually announcing they were dating after four years of speculation. Leslie was introduced to Game of Thrones in season two when she becomes Snow’s captive while the Night’s Watch travel north of the Wall, and their characters were scripted to fall in love.

The actors were previously rumoured to have been searching for a place in Manhattan, but have instead settled on a 15th century timber house in East Anglia - much more in keeping with the series that brought them together.

In an interview with Esquire, Harington revealed that he and Leslie were now living together. The star explained his decision to move in with Leslie is because he and his former roommate are going their separate ways. He said: “He’s going off with his girlfriend and I’m living with my girlfriend.”

The couple are private about their relationship and did not reveal they were dating until 2016.

Harington said on the Jonathan Ross Show that the two made it official when they began filming in Iceland. He said: “I fell in love in Iceland. I fell in love with my co-star.”

Before snapping up their house in East Anglia, Harington admitted on The Late Late Show with James Cordon in June that the duo already lived together. He said: “I’ve moved in with my other best friend, Rose, so I’m very, very happy and it’s going well.”

News of the stars moving into their seven-bed house has sparked excitement in the local community, with one neighbour saying: “There are quite a few celebs living round here including rock stars and well-known TV people – so no-one makes much of a fuss and locals are very respectful of their privacy.”

The announcement comes after Kit shared how he feels about their relationship at the Game of Thrones season seven premiere in Hollywood last week. He said: “I think that’s the really special thing about it is that we met on this show and here we are seven years down the line back here promoting season seven.”

He added: “I mean it’s mad. It’s such a special thing. I’m so privileged.”

Culled from www.independent.co.uk

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Game of Thrones is bad for you... And You

16/7/2017

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Matthew Walther

I used to watch Game of Thrones. Then I realized it was endangering my immortal soul.

Game of Thrones is unquestionably the most acclaimed and beloved show on television. But HBO's hit fantasy series, which returns for a seventh season this Sunday, is not a drama for adults. It's not even a soap opera. It is ultra-violent wizard porn — and boring ultra-violent wizard porn at that. Two decades ago, watching it would have gotten you shoved into a locker.

The extraordinary thing is not that Game of Thrones exists, or that it has a huge base of fans for whom each week's new episode is the object of febrile, quasi-eschatological anticipation, and who write book-length treatises about what will happen to their favorite dwarf princes and troll handlers next season, and who obsessively reread all 4,000 pages of the extant volumes of George R.R. Martin's source material. (There is a couple in Sweden who have read the novels so many times that they are kept on retainer by Martin to remind him of the sex of a certain character's horse, among other details of no-doubt world-historic significance. They met, by their own admission, while playing a Lord of the Rings-based roleplaying game on the internet. Imagine that!) But nerds have always overindulged — that's what being a nerd means.

What is astonishing is that the show's last season attracted some 23 million viewers, most of them adults, seemingly well-socialized, emotionally well-adjusted tax-paying contributors to our GDP.

Popular culture in the English-speaking world is in the grips of a downward nerd-driven death spiral. Outside of the art-house theaters of our major cities it is almost impossible to find more than one semi-decent film a month that is not an adaptation of some decades-old picture book franchise about men in rubber costumes punching each other. The average video game player is more than 30 years old. The only book that most Americans between the ages of 23 and 40 seem to have read whose title does not begin with some variation of "Harry Potter and the” is a fable about talking animals that they were assigned in middle school. Things are bad.

How did this happen? Obviously there is a problem of supply — people can only watch the films and television programs that get made. But supply doesn't exist without demand. There is a deeper sense in which the old problems that were the hallmark of realist fiction and drama — the old stand-bys of morals, manners, marriage, and money — are simply not interesting to people who are not emotionally mature enough to engage with them. And that group, I think, makes up a larger and larger percentage of the dollars-spending, media-consuming American public each year. We really are, emotionally speaking, a nation of teenagers — albeit horny ones with generous allowances.

But the real problem with Game of Thrones is not that it is, like most American popular culture these days, fundamentally adolescent. It is that it is obscene. It is not just bad art; it is art that is bad and bad for you.

I had this realization sometime last year. My wife had gone to bed, and I was sitting up having just finished the penultimate episode of the show's sixth season on my laptop. Then it occurred to me.

My goodness. I've just spent an hour watching to see if a guy who raped a teenage girl at bow-and-arrow point is going to be eaten alive by the animals he has spent the last few seasons subjecting to forms of cruelty that make Michael Vick look like a PETA ambassador or beaten to death in the freezing cold by his victim's half-brother. Thank goodness the guy who set his terminally ill daughter on fire in a pyromantic oblation to a heathen god at the behest of a witch who never seems to wear any clothes is not around to prevent justice from being carried out here — the woman whose size makes her the frequent butt of bestiality-related jokes killed him just in time! Lucky that she has a wealthy and well-connected benefactor in a one-armed knight whose hobbies from childhood on have included killing people and sleeping with his queen sister — including in a church right next to the corpse of one of their unacknowledged sons — to whom we were first introduced when he pushed the little brother of the above-mentioned rape victim out of a window to conceal his incest from her drunken prostitute-addicted domestic-abuser husband! Almighty God has made me in His own image and endowed me with faculties of reason and sense perception and given me free will so that I can tune in next week to see whether the unidextrous dueling champ's royal sister sets her daughter-in-law and the rest of her extended family on fire or just a bunch of priests. Hallelujah!

What does it say about our culture and the state of the souls of millions who participate in it that anyone could find any of this even mildly diverting, much less praise it as a triumph of man's creative energies and subject it to endless hours of analysis and speculation? Half a century ago, when our absurdly generous obscenity laws were still occasionally enforced, a program like this could not have been conceived, much less produced at great expense and broadcast.

One of the most persistent liberal myths is that art has no moral content, that reading or watching or listening to something can never be in itself evil. This is something that can only be true if, conversely, art does not have the power to affect or change us for the good. It is only possible to believe this if you think all art is essentially meaningless and people are insensate vehicles for random information consumption. You can only watch so many decapitations and eye-gouges and rapes and brother-on-sister grope fests before you either give up on the wretched proceedings in disgust or decide to pretend that "Lol, nothing matters" and it's not worth having feelings anyway. Not exactly, in the latter, case a resounding victory for the human spirit.

Game of Thrones reminds us that boredom and despair are, theologically speaking, synonyms.

Culled from www.theweek.com

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Game of Thrones season 7 episode 3 plot predictions: Jon meets Daenerys, Greyworm dies and more

Game of Thrones, season 7 episode 2, Stormborn recap: Daenerys's avengers assemble

Game of Thrones recap: season seven, episode one – Dragonstone

Game of Thrones couple Jon Snow and Ygritte buy £1.75m home together in English countryside

Game of Thrones is bad for you... And You

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