Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 2 is out, and so much huge stuff happens, let’s get
right into it.
We begin beyond the Wall with Bran and Bloodraven, known in the books as “the three-eyed crow”,
and in the show, as the “three eyed-raven”.
Remember, Bloodraven is a sort of a mystical mysterious tree-wizard dude, connected to
the old gods, and the children of the forest.
He trains Bran to use the powers of a greenseer, which involves warging into animals, and having
visions of the present and past . This scene is one of those visions, it’s of Winterfell
years ago, with a young Ned Stark, Benjen Stark, Lyanna Stark, Rodrick Cassel, Old Nan,
and Hodor, or should we say Willas, who talks.
Hodor talks!
Which raises the question of “what happened?”
Book readers have been theorising for years that Hodor might have had his mind broken
by seeing something cold and terrible in the Winterfell crypts, or maybe, that during one
of Bran’s visions, he might mess with young Hodor’s mind by trying to talk to him or
warg into him from the present.
Either way, it’s really cool that they’re bringing this up in the show – maybe we’ll
finally find out why Hodor hodors.
It’s also awesome to see the young Stark siblings, especially Lyanna.
She’s the one who gets caught up with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, which leads to Robert’s
Rebellion, the death of Lyanna and, the theories claim, the birth of Jon Snow, which will probably
finally be revealed next episode – check out the R+L=J video if you wanna know more.
So yeah, heaps happening up here, but Meera’s pretty down.
To be fair, her brother died, she’s stuck in a cave in a frozen wasteland, and all she’s
got for company is Hodor, a creepy elf-child, and a couple of fuckin tree-wizards getting
high on greendreams . It is interesting that this child of the forest says that Bran “isn’t
going to stay here forever”.
Lotta folks thought he would, that he’d slowly become one with the tree, like Bloodraven,
cause really, where’s he gonna go?
He still can’t walk outside of the Matrix of his visions.
Is Hodor gonna carry him all the way back south, in winter, to the Wall?
Is that where Bran will fight the war for the dawn against the white walkers, whatever
that means exactly?
And can Bloodraven really be trusted?
The plot’s progressing quickly, so we’ll probably find out soon.
At the Wall, Alliser and his men confront Davos and the loyal black brothers, but Wun
Wun bursts in with the wildlings and Tormund and Edd, who take Castle Black from the Watch.
Props to this guy for thinking he could kill a fourteen foot giant with a crossbow bolt
– better luck next time.
But yeah, like Alliser says, it really is an historic thing to see wildlings in control
at Castle Black – in the thousands of years of the Watch, this has, as far as we know,
never happened before.
Then down in King’s Landing, some common bloke is talking smack about Cersei, so Robert
Strong turns up and splatters his brain on the wall.
The Mountain has always been scary, because he’s so huge and violent, but now that he’s
an unspeaking, unfeeling, undead monster, the Mountain is more terrifying than ever.
But anyway King Tommen bars Cersei from going to Myrcella’s funeral.
At the Sept we learn Tommen did this to try to protect her, he feels guilty, feels like
he failed her – so later he goes and asks for forgiveness, and asks for Cersei to teach
him how to be strong, which can’t possibly go well – you can almost see some Joffrey
in Tommen’s eyes sometimes.
Back at the Sept, Jaime threatens the High Sparrow, and the Sparrow threatens right back,
saying “together, we can overthrow an empire”.
Which sounds like a very political goal for these religious fanatics to have, right?
Do they really just want to punish sinners for their sins, or do they want to establish
a whole new order in capital?
There are conspiracy theories about the High Sparrow, trying to explain who he is and what
he wants, but honestly none of it’s all that convincing.
Hopefully we’ll find out more about the sparrows in the episodes to come.
Over in Meereen, Tyrion, Varys, Missandei and Grey Worm have a strategic chat.
Varys says that the slavers have taken back Yunkai and Astapor, which could lead to a
siege of Meereen, like in the books.
Then Tyrion visits the dragons down in the basement, and he doesn’t get roasted like
one character does in the books, in fact Tyrion and the dragons seem to… get along.
Tyrion has this touching moment talking about his childhood dreams of dragons, like a kid
talking about dinosaurs, and the dragons seem to listen, and understand.
Which reminds us how little we know about dragons.
How intelligent are they?
How loyal are they?
And just how destructive can they be?
Now that Tyrion has unchained them, we’ll probably soon find out.
Also, this connection Tyrion seems to have with the dragons might support the theory
that Tyrion is the son not of Tywin Lannister but of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen.
This is a controversial theory, but it could almost make sense.
Having Targaryen blood may allow Tyrion to one day ride a dragon, like Daenerys does
– and Tyrion does have experience designing unconventional saddles , which could come
in handy, so – who knows?
Then we’re in Braavos, with Arya, and “the waif” beats her up again, asking her what
her name is, cause the Faceless Men want Arya to let go of her identity, and become “no
one”.
The waif leaves, and Jaqen H’ghar appears – or, more likely, “the waif” wearing
Jaqen’s face.
Remember last season someone who seemed to be Jaqen drank poison and died, then the waif
wore Jaqen’s face, showing that any Faceless Man can be Jaqen, because the Faceless Men
are “no one”, they have no personal identity, but anyway Arya’s told that her time as
a beggar is done, and she’s to take on a new identity – probably Mercy, the girl
who works in a theatre troupe.
At Winterfell, Walda gives birth to a son.
Since Ramsay is a bastard, this baby boy is ahead of Ramsay in the line of succession,
so Ramsay stabs his father, and murders his step-mother, and his newborn baby half-brother,
with dogs – as though Ramsay could possibly be hated any more than he already is.
It is a little surprising that Roose goes down so easily – cause in the books, at
least, Roose is pretty good at manipulating and controlling his monstrous bastard, but
here, he seems to get totally caught off guard.
Regardless, Ramsay’s in charge at Winterfell now.
We see he has the support of the Karstarks, and also mentions the Manderleys, and the
Umbers.
The Umbers are based at Last Hearth, and that’s where Osha takes Rickon all those seasons
ago, so maybe the Umbers will give the Boltons Rickon as a hostage.
We also hear Ramsay’s plan to attack Castle Black to catch Sansa and kill Jon.
He thinks it’s gonna be easy, but what he doesn’t know is that wildlings and a giant
now guard Castle Black.
Somewhere near Winterfell, Sansa, Theon, Brienne and Pod chill in the snow.
Brienne tells Sansa about when she saw Arya, which is the first Sansa’s heard of her
sister since, like…
Season 1.
Brienne doesn’t mention that Arya was with the Hound, which would be interesting for
Sansa since she’s tangled with Sandor before.
Sansa says she should have gone with Brienne when she had the chance, last season, which
she really, really should have, and then Sansa talks with Theon about the guilt he feels
for his crimes – he’s still very much a broken man here.
While Brienne takes Sansa to the Wall, Theon decides to head home – to the Iron Islands.
At the Iron Islands, we finally see Yara’s father Balon Greyjoy, the winner of the War
of the Five Kings basically because everyone else forgot about him.
Like Yara says, Balon really should quit while he’s ahead, but the fool seems set on invading
the north again.
Then Balon bumps into his long lost brother Euron Greyjoy, the Crow’s Eye, a notorious
pirate, schemer, and madman, who declares he wants to rule, and throws Balon off a bridge
to his death below.
In the books, this may have gone differently – it’s hinted that Euron may have hired
a Faceless Man like Jaqen or the waif to kill Balon , which is connected to all sorts of
other crazy theories about dragon eggs and Valyria – we’ll talk about this in an
upcoming video.
But anyway, King Balon is finally dead, which means the Iron Islands needs a new king.
Yara is Balon’s chosen heir, which could make her the first ever female ruler of the
ironborn.
But Yara’s other uncle Aeron tells her that they’re gonna hold a Kingsmoot, a sort of
an election, to choose the next king.
Euron will be a candidate, he’s the crazy big-talking outsider , while Yara is a relatively
sensible candidate who hopes to be the first ever woman in power , and in the books there
are other candidates, including one with a truly inspiring but possibly unrealistic utopic
vision.
Anyway, back at the Wall, Melisandre’s still a wreck.
She’s lost her faith, and is deeply depressed.
She’s wearing furs to keep herself warm, which is a big deal cause previously the cold
never bothered her , her faith and inner fire kept her warm.
So she’s really in a bad place, but Davos comes and gives her a pep talk, and Mel agrees
to try to resurrect Jon, who looks sexier as a corpse than most men do living.
Readers have been waiting for this moment for almost five years, and they’ve often
imagined the resurrection as something big and dramatic and magical, involving blood
sacrifice or a burning pyre or weirwoods or white walkers, so it’s surprising that all
it took in the end was a spongebath and a haircut.
It’ll almost certainly be very different in the books, but this way kinda makes sense
too – it’s very similar to how Thoros of Myr first resurrects Beric Dondarrion – Thoros
didn’t have much faith, but he says some prayers anyway, and Beric rises from the dead.
But the thing about Beric is that when he’s resurrected, he loses parts of himself, bits
of his identity and memories.
George Martin, the author of the books, says when his characters are resurrected they’re
“worse for wear”, “In some ways” “not even the same characters anymore”, they’ve
“changed or transformed, and they’ve lost something”.
It’s also implied that this gets worse the longer the body’s left dead before resurrection.
So at least in the books, we should expect Jon to be a changed man.
But the show might wanna keep things simple and make Jon than same Snow we know and love,
either way, Jon Snow is back – this could be a fulfilment of the prophecy of Azor Ahai,
he could be the champion of the Lord of Light, prophesied to fight against the walkers and
the wights, he’s freed from his Watch vows now, so if R+L=J is true, he could be crowned
as the rightful King – and at the very least we can expect Jon to ride south against the
Boltons, perhaps to embrace his identity not just as a Watchman, or a Snow, but as a Stark.
We’re just two episodes into Season 6 and so much huge stuff has already happened.
Bran’s getting visions of the past, wildlings have taken the Wall, Jaime and Sparrows are
clashing and Robert Strong is on the loose, the dragons are free in Meereen, Arya is taking
a new role in Braavos, Ramsay takes control at Winterfell, Brienne and Sansa head north
while Theon heads home to the Iron Islands, where Euron arrives and the stage is set for
an election, and at Castle Black, Jon is back, and the setup is in place for his true parentage
to be revealed.
We’re really starting to pass the books now, which means anything could happen.
If you wanna know about Jon’s true parentage, check out the R+L=J video, if you wanna know
about the Tyrion Targaryen theory, check that video out, and if you want to hear the word
Hodor for two and a half minutes, watch the Hodor video.
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