Well, so long Mance Rayder, once King Beyond The Wall and now sizzling shish kebab with an arrow in his heart. He had every chance to save himself, and he chose — what? Not pride, that’s for sure.
Whatever it was, he’s dead now.
So much is not the case, however, in the books on which Game of Thrones is based.
There, Mance is saved from the fire through some trickery of Melisandre’s — call it magic, if you want — and sent by Jon on a covert mission that I won’t reveal for fear of spoiling future events.
Suffice to say that should those events transpire in the show, Mance definitely won’t be there to orchestrate them.
Fans first received the message that no one is safe — even those who are still alive in the books! — back in season 1, when Joffrey killed the singer Marillion.
He had a role to play in later seasons, but they made it work without him, for better or for worse. The final minutes of Game of Thrones’ season 5 premiere demonstrate succinctly that that lesson is more true now than ever, and this season promises to take more such liberties than ever.
With Rayder’s death, Game of Thrones lost a great actor in Ciaran Hinds — though, no doubt they’ll pick up the pieces of his unfinished storyline and paste them onto someone else’s.
Over the previous four seasons we’ve learned that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss know what they’re doing, even when they’re changing things, and so far it’s always come together in the end.
The season 5 premiere of Game of Thrones takes its name — “The Wars to Come” — from what Rayder says to Stannis in the hours before his death: “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.”
Varys says the words to Tyrion as well: “I believe men of talent have a part to play in the war to come.”
And, indeed, this episode does plant the seeds for plenty of those: the war between Cersei and Margaery Tyrell, the war for Winterfell and the north, Dany’s guerrilla war in Meereen, and the ongoing war for the Iron Throne.
The opening flashback — a first for the show — does an effective job setting up Cersei’s storyline. Were you wondering why she’s so paranoid? Why she so thoroughly despises Margaery Tyrell? Why she’s so protective of her precious children? Maggy the Frog’s prophecy, which predicted Robert’s infidelity and Cersei’s children’s deaths, informed Cersei’s actions for most of her life, and now that viewers have witnessed it, we can maybe understand the horrid queen a little bit better.
Fun fact from the books: the prophecy goes on a bit longer in the source material, also describing Cersei’s death at the hands of the “Valonqar.” The translation from High Valyrian? “Little brother.” There are myriad reasons why Weiss and Benioff, who wrote the episode, might have left this bit out of the show, but I won’t speculate on them. The scene works great either way.
Speaking of Tyrion, the now even more alcoholic dwarf has arrived on the eastern continent, accompanied by Varys to Illyrio’s manse. You might remember that, all the way back in season 1, Arya overheard a conversation between Varys and Illyrio in the tunnels under King’s Landing. So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that this is where Varys and Tyrion have fled to.
Tyrion may be intent on drinking himself to death — a coward’s suicide, as he sees it — but Varys has other plans, and by the end of the episode you get the sense that he’s convinced Tyrion to head for Meereen to join up with Dany. He may drink himself to death on the way there, but at least he won’t be wallowing in self-pity forever.
In Meereen, Dany faces an important choice, one that will likely define her storyline for the rest of the season: whether to reopen the city’s fighting pits. If she does, former slaves will tear one another to shreds in what the Dragon Queen calls “human cockfighting.” On the flip side, her new subjects would be happy. Everyone loves Dany’s ability to stick to her guns, but in this case it’s not clear what the right choice is.
With the nobility’s resistance movement, the Sons of the Harpy, murdering her soldiers in the streets, Dany needs all the goodwill she can get. And it’s sure not helping that her relationship with her dragons is still on the rocks. But as usual she seems dead set on having her way— despite a very naked Daario urging her to reconsider.
Between Mance and Dany, this seems to be a theme this episode: rulers making the wrong decisions for the right reasons. For Mance, that meant death. We’ll have to wait and see what it means for Dany.
Cersei has plenty to contend with in King’s Landing, between her new rift with Jaime, her escalating battle with Margaery and the sudden reappearance of her cousin Lancel — who formerly helped her kill King Robert and is now apparently a religious nut.
Meanwhile, Jon finds himself surrounded by dangerous figures — Stannis, Melisandre and even Alliser Thorne and his lackey Janos Slynt. And Littlefinger is taking Sansa somewhere far, far away, within arm’s reach of— and yet so far from —a very sulky Brienne.
These plots are only going to get thicker, and we’ve still yet to be introduced to Dorne — we know it’s coming, we just don’t know when — and whatever Arya’s doing.
Hopefully she doesn’t take as long to get to her destination as Gendry has (#stillrowing).
Source: mashable.com