The gang manages to kill the polar bear, only to eventually find themselves surrounded by thousands of Wights (how did they not assume that this is precisely what was going to happen?), saved only by some precious (and plot-necessary) thin ice that keeps the undead from advancing on the small rock island they’re marooned on. Beric cauterizes Thoros’s wounds with his flaming sword (ouch), but Thoros isn’t long for this world anymore. This is bad news for everyone, beacuse Thoros had all the booze, but especially Beric-Thoros is the one who keeps bringing him to back to life, after all. It’s a zombie polar bear, and it sinks its teeth into poor Thoros’s chest. Might this be the very thing they need, a wight somehow separated from the pack? No, no it is not. The gang sees something rather large, but alone, in the snowy, blustery distance. First, it was a zombie polar bear attack (!!!) which was sort of a thing of beauty, set-up wise. So anyway, the merry band of murderers, drunks, lunatics, bastards and Friend Zones (sorry, Jorah) that went beyond the wall to carry out Tyrion’s plan were, of course, almost immediately besieged by disaster. One minute Jon’s brooding in Winterfell, the next he’s brooding in Dragonstone, you blink, there’s Jon brooding in Eastwatch, you sneeze and Jon’s in peak brood, face-to-face with the Night King, you scratch your elbow and now Dany’s face-to-face with the Night King! Has no one in Westeros ever listened to Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge”? Slow down, folks, you move too fast! Not only are the major conflicts we’ve been waiting for since Bran was first pushed out of a window by a horny Jaime Lannister happening minute after minute, folks are zipping around the realm as if they’ve got access to their own Westerosi Air Force One. Suddenly everything seems to be happening at once and at terrific speed. All that godforsaken time we spent with Dany, traversing so far south and so very far from the Westeros power center that every fresh political disaster in Meereen was met with an agonized groan seems like a golden era of plotting in comparison to our current breakneck drag race to the finish. Since when do wights go for solo strolls? If you’re not expecting to catch one alone (and you shouldn’t), how do you plan on separating one from the many? Even if you do manage to snag an ice zombie, why do you think this will be the thing to make Cersei, for the first time in her life, think of the greater good over the immediate interests of her ever-dwindling family? And finally, once Jon foolishly signs on, how do you countenance the fact that you’re risking the King of the North’s life, and the favor all those who follow him, for a plan this threadbare? Predictably this all ends in disaster.įirst, a note about the speed with which things are happening holy hell am I really wishing Game of Thrones would just slow down for a little bit? All those seasons of stately placed, sadistic plot machinations, where the promise of confrontation between two major players would be teased in a premiere, deepened in the next half dozen episodes, and perhaps, perhaps satiated in the penultimate episode or the finale, are a thing of the past. Let’s quickly unpack the plan’s strategic lunacy. The idea was so spectacularly ludicrous that it was dumber than his idea to send his niece Myrcella to Dorne for safekeeping (she was used as bait and eventually murdered), or trusting Littlefinger as a confidant while he was the Hand of the King to Joffrey (Littlefinger eventually framed Tyrion for murder), or joining the battlefield during Stannis’ assault on King’s Landing (he was knocked unconscious and nearly killed by one of Joffrey’s assassins), or making a deal with slavers in Meereen while Dany was away (the slavers predictably turned on him and launched a armada assault)-no, this plan to go beyond the wall to fetch a member of the living dead was Tyrion’s masterpiece of stupidity. Tyrion Lannister has had his share of bad ideas throughout the run of Game of Thrones, and kidnapping a White Walker from beyond the wall to prove to Cersei who her true enemies are might be the absolute worst.
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