This Week in Westeros: "The Spoils of War" (Season 7, Episode 4)

WARNING: This Post is Dark and Full of SPOILERS

A.K.A. “My Big Fat Stark Reunion”

After last week’s brutal defeat of House Tyrell at the hands of the Lannister and Tarly armies, a caravan of gold and food is on its way to King’s Landing to repay the crown’s debt to the Iron Bank in full. But more on that later.

Up in the North, Arya finally arrives back at Winterfell. After evading some rather incompetent guards who refuse to believe she’s Arya Stark, she reunites with Sansa. I feel that out of all the reunions that have happened this season, this one is one of the most important because of the magnitude of character development that has happened between these two. When they were last together, Arya and Sansa hated each other. But now that they’ve both matured well beyond their years, they greet each other with a hug as they realize how much they appreciate each other. No longer are they the bratty princess and the rebellious tomboy who can’t stop bickering. Now they’re the Lady of Winterfell and the assassin, working together as they should be.

Speaking of the Stark kids, Bran’s now in a wheelchair, further cementing his position as the show’s version of Professor X. He continues to show off how he’s no longer Brandon Stark, as his powers have detached him from the remainders of his humanity, which is only driving more wedges into his friendships. He feels no emotion towards Meera leaving, despite her being his most loyal companion on his quest, and even Arya and Sansa are finding it hard to find any semblance of their brother left inside him. But hey, now Arya has that valyrian steel dagger that almost killed Bran back in Season 1, so that’s neat.

We’re also treated to a pretty nice fight scene between Brienne and Arya, where the waifish water-dancer can show off her skills she’s accumulated through the seasons. She’s not completely flawless, however, and I appreciate the show for showing how Brienne still has ways of getting the upper hand in the battle. Arya may be good, but let’s not make her a completely infallible protagonist just yet.

These X-Men prequels are getting out of control.

Over at Dragonstone, Jon shows Daenerys the Dragonglass cavern so she can marvel at it’s beauty, but also so he can show her the cave drawings from the Children of the Forest depicting their alliance with the First Men against the White Walkers. Not only does this reveal to Dany that the Walkers are real, but it also inspires her to work alongside Jon and the Northern armies to fight them, in a dimly lit scene that’s dripping with unknowingly incest-y romantic subtext.

And then Dany ruins the mood by demanding that Jon still bend the knee. Though maybe she’s just trying to get the same downstairs treatment that Ygritte got (*wink wink*).

Dany learns of the loss of Highgarden, and rightfully so, is miffed at Tyrion for being a lousy military strategist. Dany wants to stop planning and go in full guns a-blazing – and by guns, I mean dragons. But she turns to Jon for counsel, who advises her that if she goes in with a full force dragon assault, she’s showing the people of Westeros that she’s just another tyrant to fear.

And does she listen? Well, people wouldn’t be talking about the last fifteen minutes of this episode if she did.

So let me take you guys through my thought process during this emotional roller coaster of a battle. We begin with Jaime and Bronn overseeing the caravan heading to King’s Landing. We as the audience know that Daenerys is on her way, so I’m expecting Drogon to appear over the horizon. Instead, we’re greeted to an absolutely massive Dothraki horde ambushing the Lannisters. And then Dany shows up on Drogon’s back to break the army’s defenses. Not only are the Westerosi armies unprepared for the brutal combat skills of the Dothraki, but the nuclear might of a dragon’s breath reduces many of them to ashes in mere seconds.

As Lannister men are being slaughtered in droves, Bronn – being pursued by the Dothraki equivalent of the Terminator, apparently – mans the caravan’s secret weapon: Qyburn’s anti-dragon ballista…which just so happened to be with them the whole time, for some reason. Bronn’s staring down the ballista’s crosshairs at Drogon like he’s Brody at the end of Jaws. (“Smile, you son of a—”)

THWAK! An oversized arrow straight to Drogon’s wing. As the mighty beast plummets to the ground, my brain’s screaming, “Oh no! Drogon’s gonna die!” But the arrow isn’t as deadly as we thought, because the dragon corrects himself to incinerate the ballista, nearly taking Bronn with it.

FUS RO DAH!

But Dany still has to care for her baby. As she dismounts to take the arrow out of his wing, she leaves herself completely vulnerable for Jaime to ride up with a spear, intent on skewering the Mother of Dragons while her defense is down. Now my brain’s squealing, “Oh no! Daenerys is gonna die!” But right before Jaime can do anything, Drogon rears his head around with another plume of flame. “Oh no! Jaime’s gonna die!”

But no, Bronn dives in at the last minute to tackle himself and Jaime into the water. But they’re not in the clear yet, as the final shot of the episode is Jaime quickly sinking due to the weight of his armor, the threat of drowning now more imminent than that of dragonfire.

Holy shit. I’m exhausted.

I can’t think of the last time I saw a battle on this show that flip-flopped so much on who was coming out on top. One minute Dany has the upper hand, the next it’s Jaime, and the suspense was constantly rising. I’m out of breath, and I didn’t even participate in the battle. It was also a nice touch to briefly see the battle from Tyrion’s vantage point, where we can really see the hellish realties of war as Jaime’s men – soldiers of Tyrion’s family – are slaughtered like animals.

But despite the sheer awesomeness of the battle, in the end, there really aren’t a lot of stakes being risked. Sure, the destruction of the food being transported means bad things for the people of Westeros, but no named characters on either side of the conflict wind up as casualties. While it was unlikely from the get-go that Daenerys and/or Drogon would bite the dust, I’m honestly surprised that – given how many close calls both characters had – that neither Jaime nor Bronn died this episode. That’s assuming that next episode doesn’t begin with Jaime and/or Bronn’s drowned corpses being fished out, which I highly doubt will happen. In a show that will sometimes kill of characters just for shock and realism, it’s more of a surprise that this episode doesn’t feature an important character death. Even Dickon makes it out unscathed. Freaking Dickon!

The big battle at the end is the episode’s main selling point. Aside from that, I feel like not a whole lot else happens. Cersei meets with Mycroft Holmes from Sherlock about paying back her debt to the Iron Bank, but it’s more or less stuff we already know. Jon has an angry reunion with Theon, but I was expecting more violence than what actually happened. While he did help rescue Sansa from Ramsay – which Jon admits is the only he reason he doesn’t kill him – he still took over Winterfell and burned two innocent boys to death. But whatever, the suspense of the scene was pretty cool.

The other main focus on the episode is Winterfell, which also gives us some good scenes and character moments. Arya’s duel with Brienne was probably the second best part of the episode, and it’s nice that all of the Stark kids are back in one place to have their storylines coalesce into one. We get zilch on the storylines from Sam or the Hound, and no updates on the status of Euron and Yara, but I think the ending battle was cool enough to where I didn’t really mind the fact that this episode was shorter than most.

"Here I come to wreck the day!"

Final verdict: 8/10.

So if Bran is the Professor X of the “X-Starks”, then Arya is Mystique, Jon is Wolverine, and Sansa is Jean Grey (for obvious reasons).

(Wait, isn't Maisie Williams playing Wolfsbane in the New Mutants movie? I may need to rethink this bit...)