When an episode like “Battle of the Bastards” comes along on Game of Thrones, sometimes the easy way is to throw up ones hands, let the spectacle of it all wash over you, and turn off your brain. All of the biggest action sequences in the series have had some element of that–think that 360 degree shot in “The Watchers on the Wall” in Season 4, or the waterfall of wights in last year’s “Hardhome.” Since the budget for effects had expanded in these last few seasons, Benioff and Weiss have been on a mission to top what can be accomplished in a TV fantasy series, and set a round of benchmarks for others to reach for in the years to come. To that end, “Battle of the Bastards” was a rousing success.
Sansa: “You are going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well.”
As part of the build up to the “apex episode” that has traditionally been the penultimate installment of the season, director Miguel Sapochnik spoke of the role of luck in war, and that his focus in the battle to retake Winterfell would be to show how luck is such a key factor. And in one sense, that was the through-line that played out on the battlefield that lay before the Stark ancestral home, once Jon Snow had been dehorsed, and he found himself on his feet in the mud in the midst of a cavalry charge. At any moment, he could have been run over. An arrow could have fallen a few degrees to the left or right and pierced his armor. A soldier could have come at him in his blind spot without him having that last second to turn. Another body could have landed on him and crushed him. It has been established that Jon is a hell of a swordsman. But just because Harington was damn near balletic on the field during the first half of the battle wasn’t enough. He also had to be lucky.
But what struck me, along with the arrows that rained down and yet never seemed to hit our hero, was how some characters made their own luck tonight. Not Jon Snow, for the record. In fact, one could say, Jon Snow did everything wrong. Sansa told him that Rickon was as good as dead, to let their brother go, to keep a cool head, to not fall into Ramsay’s game playing and his traps. And Jon–honorable fool that he was raised to be–lost his head and ignored all of Sansa’s advice. His men, too, ignored all their own best words. Tormund might not have understood Davos what was talking about, with this “hanging back and being patient.” But clearly Davos understanding them didn’t do a damn bit of good either, since he got antsy and rushed the rear guard in, leading to some of the most terrifying moments visually, as Ramsay sprung the back half of his trap with the “double envelopment pincer move” squeezing the rebel forces between a wall of the dead and an ever-closing-in wall of shields.
Ramsay: Do you like games, Little Man?
It was also notable that in a cavalry battle, Ramsay never picked up a sword. This remained true to the end, even when his back was against the walls of Winterfell, and he was cockily attempting to agree to the hand to hand combat he refused on the day before. Ramsay clearly does not have the sword training that Jon does. He is not a ballerina of death, whirling and slicing and murdering in the mud. But he’s a man who has always made his own luck that brought him from the bottom up. His mind games are how he makes his enemies walk into their own mistakes, with all the cockiness of one who think they know the difference between metaphorical demons and real ones. And it almost worked too. Until the knights of the Vale show up, Ramsay was winning. He was inside their heads, from the moment he releases Rickon as a plaything to tease Jon with. (Art Parkinson may have not spoken a word since Season 3, but his acting skills are still strong enough that Rickon’s death scene was a heart wrencher.) And even once he’s lost–and the great equalizer that is Wun Wun* disabuses him of any notion of holing up for a siege in Winterfell–he seems to think he’ll always find a way to one up on good, because, (to quote the great Rick Moranis in Spaceballs), “Good is dumb.”
(*RIP Wun Wun, our last CGI giant. Sleep well and dream of large women.)
But while Jon was being good yet dumb, and failing to make the luck he needed, Sansa’s dogged determination, her refusal to take his stated “these are the facts of the ground” for an answer, and her instinct that Jon simply did not take Ramsay’s threat seriously enough, was making enough luck for all of them. Everyone will say that tonight, in their hour of need, Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale rode in over the ridge, like Gandalf and the riders of Rohan at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. But as the Vale flags charged down the hill, smashing the shield wall from behind, and freeing Jon Snow’s trapped forces in their moment of need, the camera panned past Littlefinger, smirking, and left him to the side. The true leader of that army was Sansa. She had brought the luck they needed. Littlefinger did not save Sansa and Jon. Sansa saved Jon and their home. And in doing so, she earned the right to be the one to see Ramsay’s death through. Ramsay may have thought Jon stopped punching him because good is dumb, and would let him live. In reality, Jon stopped because he saw the look on Sansa’s face, and that this one was hers.
Sansa: No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone.
This theme of “making one’s own luck” was echoed in the other battle we saw tonight, the one the show kept under wraps until the hour began–that of the final fight in Meereen against the Masters. And once again, it was hard to miss that it was the women who had the trump card up their sleeves, and the men posed and postured and assumed they were going to win. To be fair, it was Tyrion’s idea to get the Masters to stop bombing them long enough to pull out their ace cards (once he stopped trying to shoehorn in an entire season’s worth of plot exposition to explain to Dany how things got to the state they were in.) He stopped the bombing long enough to let everyone catch their breath, and fooled the preening Masters with vague wording about “terms of surrender” that they automatically assumed were going to be Dany’s, when it was really their own. But from Drogon’s entrance onward, through the dragon fire bombing of the lead navel vessel, with a short pitstop of Khalasar riding in and smashing through some harpies, these were all Dany’s choices that she had made over the course of the season than now lead to her luck in battle today.
Speaking of choices made over the course of the season, Yara’s choice to beat her uncle to the punch and proposition Dany herself was another moment of luck making for all the women involved. It is unfortunately obvious now, with Dany’s new fleet magically just about the same size as her original fleet that was burning in the Meereen’s harbor at the beginning of the season, that the choice to skip the Ironborn last year originally was most likely to cut them completely. Adding in the partial eighth season probably was instrumental in putting them back in–and tonight that decision paid off in a way the Dornish storyline never did, when Yara and Dany locked eyes on each other, and were unable to keep from smiling.
Dany: Our fathers were evil men, all of us here. They left the world worse than they found it. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to leave the world better than we found it.
Like Brienne and Tormund, this is a show only derived moment of chemistry that the book plot will never see. But the crackle between them, of a pair of women who had made their own luck to get to this moment and meet, who will form an alliance and help each other to take their thrones, is the kind of thing that spawns a million fanfictions. No, a woman has never ruled the Iron Island….no more than one has ever ruled the Seven Kingdoms. But between the two of them and their dogged determination, their refusal to take “these are the facts of the ground” for an answer, and their instincts about each other–that they both believe in making a better, fairer world who will rule wisely and better than the men who came before them–just might be able to make all the luck they will need when it comes to taking back Westeros.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/06/20/game-of-thrones-battle-of-the-bastards-thematic-analysis/
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