HOLD THE DOOR! We will actually come back to that later…I just had to get that out there right now! This latest episode of Game of Thrones, titled ‘The Door’, answers a ton of question and helps move the plot forward but in typical Game of Thrones fashion the price of plot advancement is DEATH! I sometimes wonder if George RR Martin is an avatar or some kind of mortal aspect of death? Perhaps that is a discussion for another day! Joking aside, ‘The Door’ has answered a big question like, ‘Where the hell did the White Walkers come from?’ and ‘What the hell happened to Hodor’? You probably won’t like the answer to either of those but alas…’he who increases knowledge increases sorrow’.
Okay, so first things first we have Sansa standing her ground against Littlefinger as he showed up to lend support of the Knights of the Vale. It was empowering to see Sansa throw it all back into Baelish’s face…’if you didn’t know you are an idiot and if you did then you are my enemy’. Good job, Sansa! You backed him up in the corner…but I would have probably asked for the Knights of the Vale to help. Just saying! It makes me wonder if that was part of Littlefinger’s plan all along…I’m not sure if his ‘vulnerability’ was entirely genuine considering the kind of manipulator he is. We know his end game but how will he end up in control of the Seven Kingdoms?
Next stop we saw Arya continue her training…what, you thought her getting her eye sight was the end of it? Apparently not! The young ‘No-One’ was tasked to kill an actress and during that scene with her questioning Ja’qen, you could see that Arya still has some distance to go. She questions and that’s not something somebody who is ‘serving’ is suppose to do. Either way, her task leads her to a bizarre meta-play in which the locals re-enact pretty much the first season of Game of Thrones with fake intestines and a dim-witted Ned Stark. You could see Arya was distressed by the crowd’s reaction, but it did not stop her from observing her target. Will she go through with it or perhaps there is another ‘test’ going on?
The whole Greyjoy dynamic is really moving full steam ahead – I guess that is a side effect when you are left out of an entire season(right, Brandon Stark? We’ll get back to you soon enough!) On this episode, ‘The Door’, The Iron Islands have their Kingsmoot to determine who will be able to claim the Salt Throne. We, as fans, clearly expect Yara Greyjoy to become Queen with Theon as a sidekick but lo and behold, Euron Greyjoy has made his claim! It was nice to see Theon give a little speach and hear some fire back in his belly but he was immediately shut down by his Uncle’s ravenous taunting. You know your nation is crazy when you can freely admit you killed the former King and then still get elected king. Also, I rather liked to hear his ‘plans’ involving the Mother of Dragons and the process in which he was inducted into Kingship. So I guess you have to drown and then will yourself back into existence to rule the Ironborne!
We then fly back over to Mereen where Tyrion continues to make questionable decisions. I hope these all turn out in his favor…I’m kind of sick of seeing Tyrion get his ass handed to him but then again, I feel like the writers might have a tinge of sadism for the fan-favorite character. Tyrion and Varis court the new Red Priestess, Kinvara, in order to spread a message of hope…though I think the best part of that entire scene was seeing Varis throw some sass…and Kinvara throwing it right back at him. You could see how disturbed Varis was at Kinvara’s knowledge of his pass. ‘Do you want to know what the voice said?’ Jeez! Goosebumps!
The biggest part of the entire episode of ‘The Door’ is how it earned that name. We got a chance to see Brandon Stark as he and the Three-Eyed Raven saw the creation of the very first White Walker. Was it a shrinky-dink left outside in the Sun? Was it a huge fan of Disney’s ‘Frozen’? No! Apparently, the Children of the Forest(Elves) created the White Walkers…in order to stop the onslaught of Men! What is it always with Elves creating an unstoppable army in order to stop humankind? I enjoyed that little turn of plot because I think we as viewers are often to believe in dragons, undead, and elves being the most dangerous thing but chances are, those things feel the same way about us. Somebody should go get that Elf-Prince guy from Hellboy 2! Yeah! Any-who, after that event Bran then went off into the timestream to witness the army of the dead and in the process, got himself marked by the Night’s King. The result? The undead begin to flood into the Three-Eyed Raven’s base which results in his death and Bran, Meera, and Hodor fleeing. In the chaos, we got a casuality loop which explained Hodor’s name and ended up in the self-sacrifice(maybe?) of Willis/Hodor. Honestly, I think this death hit me a bit harder then the rest of the deaths on Game of Thrones because Hodor was one of the few ‘innocent’ on the show…and there was a question as to whether or not he was in control of his actions. Either way, I was actually distraught from ‘The Door’ and that has happened me since that whole Red Viper/ Mountain fight!
