Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night and on Foxtel in Australia on Monday. Do not read unless you have watched season seven, episode four, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 2am and 9pm, and is repeated in Australia on Showcase on Monday at 7.30pm AEST.
In any other season of Game of Thrones, the reunion of the Stark siblings would have been by far the biggest talking point of the episode, if not the episodes surrounding it, too. Arya finally returns to Winterfell, amid a cavalcade of rude dismissals from the guards (I especially enjoyed and may recycle “So you know, best fuck off”). She also got to see and spar with Brienne of Tarth, and show off some of the handiwork she’s picked up from “no one”. The hour was full of fan-pleasing moments like this, both enormous and small, with even Bran’s casual unsettling of Littlefinger - “Chaos is a ladder”, he reminded him, flexing those mystic powers - proving to be immensely satisfying.
The Spoils of War was all about giving the viewers what they want (there’s an excellent Twitter thread laying out a case for the show being a soap rather than a drama here). There was humour when Davos teased Jon about the appeal of Daenerys - he’s noticed him staring at her “good heart” - and jokingly asked if he could switch sides himself. It would have been a strong episode even without the final act. But this is season seven, and it’s rattling along at the pace of a bullet train. I thought we might have to wait a little longer to see this, but no, it was time: dracarys!
The conversation between Bronn, “Rickon” and Jaime briefly foreshadowed the horrors that were to come by lingering on the young man’s first experience of war and particularly the smell of battle. Who knows what he’ll make of the stench of barbecued Lannisters. A lot was dependent on the Tyrell gold returning to Kings Landing - and so much had been going right for Cersei so far - that disruption was inevitable. But when it came, it was a treat for the senses. We heard doom on the horizon long before we saw it, piecing together who might have been responsible for those whoops and hollers until that vast line of Dothraki rode into view.
And then there was Daenerys, so tired of taking so-so advice from Tyrion that she saddled up and got on with the business of winning herself. Her riding in on Drogon like the villain from a long-lost 80s live-action Disney movie was brilliantly silly, but overall, the effects in this episode were astonishing. The blending of intense close-ups that showed the violence of combat - and, crucially, casualties on both sides - with the shots of Drogon breathing down hell on the Lannister army was immensely effective and trampled any previous notions that the dragons might have seemed a little too Natural History Museum. It’s got to be up there with the best battle scenes in Game of Thrones history, and we’re only at episode four.
All that was left was to wonder who made it out alive. Tyrion’s loyalty to his brother may be harder to shake than his loyalty to the Lannister name, it seems, as he watched on with growing horror when Jaime refused to flee the battle. “You fucking idiot” seems like a reasonable thing to say to a man with one hand charging at a dragon and his mother. Was it Bronn who emerged from the chaos to shove him out of the way of the flames? If they manage to swim to the surface, will that mean that Bronn, too, survives? The teaser for next week shows Daenerys insisting that the remaining Lannister men “bend the knee and join me, or refuse, and die”, and Tyrion is apparently turning to drink once again. Given its form so far, I’d be surprised if the pace much slows. But The Spoils of War was penultimate-episode-of-the-season stuff, and a total thrill. It’s going to be hard to top it.
