GoT S7E2

Needless to say, SPOILER ALERT.


I’ve had a night to reflect on this episode, and despite a surprising and intense sea battle, this was definitely underwhelming.  Some of the dialogue was  beyond mediocre – the “foreign invasion” line being a particular low point – but this episode also sadly featured too heavily on characters that were underdeveloped and I couldn’t care too much about.  There was no emotional impact in seeing some of the Sand Snakes getting killed.  And Euron Greyoy is just a pantomime villain – a Jack Sparrow type with too much eyeliner and a lot of bloodlust.  And as for the unnecessarily long and gratuitous sex scene between Grey Worm and Missandei – the less said the better.  Probably the best part of the episode was Theon’s choice to jump into the water at the end – that felt like the right choice that the still-traumatized Reek would make.  I expect some needlessly prolonged torture in upcoming episodes for those who survived the battle – I assume Ellaria will be Euron’s gift to Cersei, but I also assume that Yara was kept alive.  Joy.  It was also somewhat inevitable that Tyrion’s big plans at the start of the episode had already turned to sh*t by the end.  What else: after memorably killing all the Freys, Arya’s screen time has been a total waste of time and just an excuse to include a celebrity cameo and catch up on a couple of minor characters (Hot Pie and her direwolf Nymeria – she’ll probably meet Gendry in next week’s episode).  Cersei is clearly the “Donald Trump” of Westeros – the memes I’ve seen of her wearing a red baseball cap saying “Make Westeros Great Again” are  so right.  And why oh why would Jon Snow lay his hands on Littlefinger and threaten him – this was exactly what Ned Stark did and look what happened to him.  And finally, it is interesting to see what is going on with Sam and Jorah – the screen time dedicated to this had better have a good payoff.  With so few episodes left, the tempo of Game of Thrones has clearly ratcheted up – a big sea battle and it’s only Episode 2! – but still so many loose threads to tie up and nowhere near an end in sight.