Game of Thrones Recap: I Am Sansa Stark

Game of Thrones

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

Flavor 5 Episode vi

Editor's Rating 3 stars

Game of Thrones

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

Flavor 5 Episode 6

Editor'south Rating iii stars

Photograph: HBO

The Stark sisters bookended last night's Game of Thrones and were given the most compelling moments of the hour (more than or less — more on that in a bit). Each daughter crosses a threshold, their scenes linked through key motifs: gentle ministrations on a naked body, mind games, rooms full of candles. 1 is losing her proper noun but gaining her power, while the other gains a name but loses something fifty-fifty more than precious.

We open up on Arya, slowly washing a corpse in the Business firm of Blackness and White. The first few moments are all close-ups of her hands and small-scale stretches of flesh; her movements are delicate and deliberate. Water is wrung into a bowl from freshly washed hair. The shots here reminded me of Vermeer's quiet, contemplative paintings of women in small rooms, attention to their piece of work. (I don't know much about fine art history, only I do know the GoT designers modeled Braavos afterward the Dutch Gilt Age.) It's similar a rather icky tea anniversary.

Arya may be learning to exist quiet and still, like a Faceless Man — just equally she one time learned to flow similar a water dancer — but she hasn't fully shed her characteristic Arya-ness. She tries to detect out what's behind Door No. ane — the one the bodies leave from — and is rebuffed by the smug, stake acolyte with Lancel'south old haircut. Frustrated, Arya tries to engage the daughter (called "the Waif" in testify credits) in the Game of Faces, but the Waif tells her she already tried and failed. When she asks where the girl is from and how she got here, the Waif seems to soften, telling her that she was once the daughter of a Westerosi lord, "just similar you," whose stepmother tried to poisonous substance her. She looks abroad, remembering the pain, but smiles a little, conspiratorially, as she tells Arya how she went to the Faceless Men for assistance "and my father was widowed once again." Arya cracks a little grin in return.

Arya, ya got FACED!

Apparently the House of Black and White is like summer army camp, where you get hazed via a really rough version of Two Truths and a Lie. Just like the last time, Arya didn't fifty-fifty know she was playing the Game of Faces. But she'southward starting to selection upward the rules by the time Non-Jaqen visits her at nighttime, with a rod. She recites her history for him, planting little lies (her father was beheaded, he didn't dice in battle; she stabbed the stable male child in the belly, not the back). She invites a beating each time she'due south caught in a lie, but she's learning. Not-Jaqen apparently knows her better than she does herself, though, because he beats her when she says she hated the Hound and fifty-fifty more viciously when she swears she wants to "exist no i" — words she fully believes to exist the truth.

Fairy tales do their business in threes, and with the third biography in the Firm of Black and White, Arya begins to empathise how the Faceless Men wield stories: with a mixture of truths and lies. When a human being brings his sick daughter to the temple — "She suffers every mean solar day of her life," he tells Arya — Arya begins to weave the girl a tale: She was very sick, once, too; she was dying, and her begetter loved her, and so he brought her to the Business firm to be healed by the waters from the fountain. (The story recalls the one Stannis told Shireen, which makes me wonder how much of that ane was a prevarication, and whether a similar fate lies ahead for Shireen … Given how heavily this season has been foreshadowing future events, I tin can simply say, uch, I'm not set.)

So Arya gives the girl a drink, and with information technology, the gift of the Many-Faced God. With that hard but compassionate prevarication, Arya gains access to the gorgeous and gory Hall of Faces, aka the Leatherface Lounge, where the Faceless Men keep all the corpse faces they've been storing up, Princess Mombi manner. Not-Jaqen declares that Arya is not ready to give upward "her loves and hates," and all that makes her who she is, but she is ready to go "someone else."

Her sis's scenes open up in a similar key: a slow, deliberate bath; wet hair streaming into a bowl; an combative young adult female reciting histories to tease her. Sansa lets Myranda into her bedroom to ready her bath and listens equally the girl taunts her with a litany of Ramsay'due south former lovers, each of whom bored him in due class, with some meeting violent ends for the crime. But Sansa is no longer a girl to be cowed so hands. She calls Myranda out on being in love with Ramsay, and then says, "I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell. This is my home. And yous tin can't affright me." Equally a character crescendo, it's a quiet one, only it's as stirring as Daenerys riding out of Astapor and as moving equally Stannis'southward naming of Shireen. Sansa'southward voice seems to drop a whole octave, as if she'due south possessed. But it's a cocky-possession. This is the cocky that Sansa has been edifice to, step by step, for nearly a season now, and the fact that she claims that power once she's shed the armor of her witchy black apparel, her bright hair washed of its camouflaging blackness, makes it feel all the more righteous and true.

And then, and so. Dressed once once more — in layers upon layers of white wool and fur — Sansa's led into the godswood by Reek. The wedding ritual itself has a fairy-like quality, all lanterns and dark, quiet snow, so unlike the pompous weddings nosotros've seen in King's Landing. The ceremony has the pleasing structure of a dance, with Roose, Ramsay, and Reek (using his Theon name) each taking a turn to speak. When her time comes, Sansa'southward resolve falters a scrap, and she finally answers, "I take this human" in a small-scale voice.

When Ramsay leads Sansa into a bedchamber — filled, like the Hall of Faces, with candles — and asks if she'due south a virgin, y'all know where things are going. When he tells her, almost gently, to accept off her clothes, the pocketknife twists a footling further. When he commands Reek to stay and picket, information technology but gets to be too much. Yes, Ramsay rapes Sansa on their hymeneals night, and it's vile. Information technology'southward repulsive on a grapheme level, naturally: Ramsay is a villain, and a barbarous and inelegant one at that.

But it also feels mean on a narrative level. It'south cruel to strip Sansa of the agency she'due south been accruing and then painstakingly, merely to exercise so by literally stripping her is so cheap, such an obvious choice, I felt offended as a fan. And if this ways Sansa loses all her momentum, which has brought such a fresh energy to the show's plot — I'll be mad as a fan, not just as a feminist. I suppose this is what rape is: a blunt way of taking a adult female'due south selfhood. But if it's going to exist used as a plot point, I desire it wielded more than intelligently, with more than care, and especially from a show that has proved it can practice graphic violence and then hauntingly. To testify Sansa being raped equally the kicker to an episode — and then to cut to Theon, as if it'due south his view, his reaction, his internalizing of the moment that matters — just felt like more of the same sometime aforementioned old nosotros've been getting since Ros died, since Tansy was hunted, since Cersei was raped.

I don't want to play this stupid game anymore, Sansa's sis said.

In last nighttime's other major story lines, at that place was enough of plot motility but strangely, not a ton of narrative excitement. In Dorne, everyone seems to have come up down with a serious example of Dany-itis and is only making terrible decisions all over the place. Jaime and Bronn's big program is to stroll correct up to Myrcella and Trystane in broad daylight, as the two teens are canoodling in the Martells' h2o gardens. (The scene echoed Sansa and Loras'due south pre-nuptial turn in the gardens of Rex'south Landing — and probably foreshadowed like odds of marital success.) Jaime's all like, Get in the car Myrcella, and Myrcella's like, NO, DADDY, I LOVE HIM, and THEN the Sand Snakes all tumble out of a clown car and attempt to kidnap Myrcella themselves but so, whoops, everyone gets captured by Prince Doran's babysitter.

Jorah and Tyrion are SOL, having lost their boat — and Jorah, his health — to the Stone Men of Valyria. Tyrion is lament, as he is wont to practice these days, but they share a moment when Tyrion tells Jorah of his father's death past mutineering Nights' Watchmen. (Jeor Mormont, or "the Sometime Bear," was the Lord Commander who was killed by his own men at Craster's Keep.) Jorah opens upward a bit more. When Tyrion asks him why he thinks a daughter who's never spent a single mean solar day of her adult life in Westeros, whose family was legit crazy, deserves the Iron Throne, Jorah answers, "Have you ever heard babe dragons singing?" (I think I had that on a Lisa Frank TrapperKeeper back in the day.) So before Jorah and Tyrion actually get to do anything, whoops, they're captured by a bunch of slavers. At least we got to run across Tyrion use some of his famous fast thinking to become his not-then-dwarf cock saved and steer anybody toward Meereen, by promising the slavers that the mighty warrior Jorah will win big for them in the fighting pits, which Dany so conveniently re-opened.

Finally, over in Male monarch'due south Landing, even the return of Head Head-Poof Olenna Tyrell couldn't rouse a flat subplot, which felt curiously abrupt. Loras is the subject of an inquest by the High Sparrow, and as presently equally his sister Margaery is called to the stand up, you can see from a mile off that she'll end up perjuring herself. And sure enough, the High Sparrow calls a surprise witness: Olyvar, the prostitute who tells everyone that Loras has a birthmark shaped like Dorne, up in a place that most squires don't get to see. (A birthmark we conveniently learned nearly in the beginning episode of the season, when Margaery walked in on the ii of them.)

Littlefinger, meanwhile, returns to Male monarch'due south Landing and not just does he tell Cersei that Sansa is alive and engaged to Ramsay Bolton, he promises her that the Knights of the Vale (whom he rules at present that Lysa Arryn is dead) will fight for the Lannisters to have Winterfell — so long equally he is named Warden of the North in Roose Bolton's identify. He even seems to hope Cersei Sansa'southward caput on a fasten.

Is he serious? Who knows whom Littlefinger'south conning at this point. I sympathize that the whole "point" of Littlefinger is that you can't trust him as far as you can throw him out a Moon Door (though if a character has a "bespeak" maybe he'south not a character worth your fourth dimension), and I don't doubt I'm in the sick-puppy minority for enjoying watching the way Sansa and Littlefinger's relationship has developed. But if he'southward non for Sansa — if he truly is morally unmoored and emotionally detached — then he'south not only as villainous as Ramsay, he's as uninteresting. When everything is a shock, aught is a stupor.

Till next week, then. (Insert obligatory erect-merchant joke here.)

Game of Thrones Recap: I Am Sansa Stark