‘Game of Thrones’ Recap: Gotta Have Faith

Warning: This recap for the “Blood of My Blood” episode of Game of Thrones contains spoilers.

If you’d like to get somebody’s attention, there are a number of sure-fire, subtle ways to do so. Direct eye-contact is the big one, as people tend to have a sixth sense for when they’re being gazed upon. You could also mirror the person’s body language, which will give the sense that you’re both on the same page and therefore ready for interaction. Or you could arrive on the back of a flying dragon. Any of these things will get you far when you’re trying to lead a discussion or encourage an army of hydrophobic savages to take a boat ride across an ocean to help you take over the known world. Simple tips and tricks!

This week on Game of Thrones, Daenerys literally rallied her troops by disappearing on a horse and then reappearing on a dragon. But despite this notable, effects-heavy scene, “Blood of My Blood” was less about bombast and more about checking in with the various characters’ mental states. Call it a classic “sixth episode out of ten,” but this one was a little more low-key than last week’s and presumably the quiet before an impending storm (of swords j/k). Let’s talk about what happened!

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We began in the snowy hinterlands where a lazy teen kept hitting the proverbial snooze button so that he could warg a little longer.

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As it turned out, Bran was downloading tons of info passed down to him from the Three-Eyed Raven. The clip montage was basically a very quick version of the “previously on” segment that starts every episode. We’re talking White Walkers, exploding wildfire, Robb Stark getting shivved, just a bunch of things we’d seen before. But with some new tidbits in the mix!

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Like here’s what it looked like when Jaime Lannister murdered the Mad King. Basically the king was very mad and then Jaime murdered him. A pretty straightforward incident, really.

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But IRL, Meera and Bran were about to be murdered by wights, and Bran snapped out of his trance just in time to tell Meera they were f–ked. That’s when a mysterious rider showed up with a flaming mace (?) and beat the ever-loving s–t out of those bony jerks! But who was this guy? Was he the long-pined-for book character known as Coldhands? You bet.

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Season 6 has had a lot of riveting and important turns of events, so if you are like me, you were probably wondering why Samwell’s been getting these long, extended scenes about how his family sucks. As it turned out, there was a point: To get Gilly looking a little less like a bag lady.

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As we’d been told from the beginning, Sam comes from MONEY, and his house was bigger than Versailles. But also weirdly enough, his family home was somehow located in Jane Austen times? From the styling to the fact that Sam’s sister openly lamented her impending engagement with the single-minded obsessiveness of a Pride and Prejudice character, it was clear these people had been untouched by strife or war or ice zombies or anything like what Sam and Gilly had been through. Which made it all the more galling when Sam’s dad started laying into them at dinner.

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It’s truly not a Game of Thrones family dinner without racism and fat-shaming, and Mr. Tarly doled those items out generously. The main reason he didn’t like his own son was because of Sam’s weight and literacy (eating and reading, eating and reading), and when he found out that Gilly had been a Wildling, he borderline whisked her away to the servants’ quarters ASAP. To her credit, Gilly didn’t give two s–ts about these people and she stood up for Sam right away, including by informing them of the time Sam single-handedly murdered a White Walker. But, again, word of their existence hadn’t reached this area yet, so her boasts fell on incredulous ears. And in the case of Sam’s brother, they were DREAMY ears.

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Hey look, it’s the hunk from UnReal who was also in the Harry Potter movies for a minute. He had like two lines in this episode, so my hope and dream is that he shows up in a future episode? Who knows. All I know is, this dinner party did not go well, and Sam borderline decided to leave Gilly there and flee. But at the last second he returned and whisked her away. But not before stealing the priceless family heirloom — a Valyrian steel sword!

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So, uh, this weapon is pretty important. It kills White Walkers! And THAT’s why this plotline was a thing. We’ve been told there’s only a handful of these dragonfire-forged weapons in all the realm, so this was one side-quest worth making.

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Meanwhile Arya still needed to murder that one actress, but just when she had the chance to poison the actress’s backstage stash of booze, they accidentally bonded over revenge. In a nice bit of irony, the actress (who was playing Cersei) asked Arya for notes on her performance, and Arya advised her to be less sad about Joffrey’s murder and more angry. Spoken like a true, full-time revenge enthusiast! But the actress had seen something of a kindred spirit in Arya, whom she immediately pegged as someone putting on a fake persona, and apparently this momentary maternal affection was all Arya needed to abort her mission.

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On the plus side, Arya’s inability to carry out her task proved that she’s not an empty shell of a person; she was a fully trained assassin but without the cold, calculating apathy she needed to be in the House of Black and White. But unfortunately this meant that The Waif was now given the greenlight to MURDER Arya for real this time. Jaqen seemed bummed about it, but that’s Jaqen for you.

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Good thing Arya’s sword Needle was still hidden under those rocks at the harbor! She was going to have to sleep with it under her mattress from now on.

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Oh man, this stuff. So, Tommen was still totally all heart-eyes for the High Sparrow, and this was made even worse when he was finally allowed to see Margaery and she was sounding even more religious than he was. Yep, we now had an official youth group brewing! I think it was clear that Tommen was just a naive boy who’d been swept up into a religion that felt logical to him, but Margaery is too smart for this stuff. It has to be a scam, right? She’s only pretending for momentary expediency? While it’s within reason that she identified the Sparrows as being more powerful than the current monarchy and might therefore align with them as a power move, let’s hope her conversion is a momentary one.

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Did anyone else laugh out loud when Jaime rode a horse upstairs like it was supposed to be badass? Nothing is more intimidating than ascending clippity-clops!

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So, it was time for the Lannisters and the Tyrells to join forces and show up to prevent Margaery from doing her walk of shame. But as it turned out, she had sufficiently atoned by roping Tommen into the High Sparrow’s youth group. Which, that’s evidence right there that Margaery GETS RESULTS. On the other hand, it was a bummer to see this tableau of zealotry applauded by the city’s unwashed masses. This lady knows what I’m talking about:

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This was also the first time in a while that Game of Thrones convinced me that the Sparrows wielded more power than the Lannisters. Thousands of religious fanatics PLUS the willing participation of the king? That’s a bit of an upper hand in my opinion.

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Remember this guy? Well, Walder Frey is back, and he’s still yammering at everyone like an angry old man trying to use an expired gift certificate at Baskin Robbins. I guess he really wanted his men to capture Riverrun (Catelynn’s family home) but they failed and now he had to bring out the big guns: That one dude from Outlander!

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I think he was Catelynn’s cousin? Brother? Let me ask Bing, nevermind Bing is broken. Anyway, he’d been held hostage at Walder Frey’s joint ever since the Red Wedding, and now he was going to be used as a pawn in whatever Walder Frey was trying to do. Good luck, guys.

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But guess who else was headed to The Riverlands? Jaime! After Cersei rejected his idea of simply hiring Bronn to murder the High Sparrow (which, aw! Where WAS Bronn, anyway?), they decided he should ride to The Riverlands to, I guess, rally the troops or whatever? I can barely remember. Anyway, then they made out for a while.

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Just a hot brother-sister makeout sesh! It had been a while, so I’m glad we got another one finally. Did your TV melt?

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So then we finally got to learn who that mysterious man was who rescued Bran and Meera… It was Benjen Stark! Ned’s missing brother. Last time we’d seen him, he was leading an expedition north of the wall and he straight-up disappeared. But now he was frostbite in the shape of a man, and his blackened, stiff hands sure looked COLD.

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I am not a book reader, I am illiterate, so I can’t really tell you about the years-long debate about the Coldhands character and whether that character is actually Benjen Stark or not, but here’s the thing: This is Benjen Stark and his hands are cold as hell. Deal with it.

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At this point it was like the episode remembered that Daenerys was still out there, and I guess it just needed a crazy moment to end on. So for reasons I’m still not even clear on, she rode her horse away from her pack of Dothraki and then minutes later returned…

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She shouted at everybody about how awesome she was, and could the Dothraki please give up their long-standing fear of boats and help her conquer the 7 Kingdoms already? This made me laugh because the past several seasons of this show have proved that the 7 Kingdoms are trash on the verge of a zombie apocalypse, so it’s unclear why she still wants this life. But the fact was, she rode down out of the sky on a damn dragon and these thousands of followers were now going to follow her even HARDER. Well done, mama.

“Blood of My Blood” was not about wheel-spinning OR maximum pay-off. It was just a very entertaining hour that set-up some important conflicts and pushed characters across the chess board. Classic sixth episode stuff. But if past seasons are any indication, the last four episodes tend to be jam-packed with crazy, so it’s okay to get excited. What a season so far. What could possibly be in store? This is more exciting than a youth group field trip to a DC Talk concert! Let’s get wild.

Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Revisit last week’s character power rankings: