The North is finally rallying around Jon, led by the excellent Lady Mormont. “The blood of Ned Stark runs through his veins,” Lady Mormont said. Yeah… about that…You’ll recall that according to legend, Rhaegar abducted Lyanna, who had been promised to Robert Baratheon, kicking off the wars and rivalries that essentially created the story of “Game of Thrones.” Doubt has been thrown on the details by various characters — was it an abduction? Or two lovers running away together? — but the net result is that Jon is not who we’ve been led to believe. Ned lied about his provenance in order to protect him, presumably from the future King Robert.This theory has been hard to avoid online, so part of the joy of having it confirmed comes from finally being able to accept it and move on. But within the story, questions include what will this powerful blood cocktail mean for Jon, going forward? The Starks and Targaryens have a number of special skills — warging, dragon-whispering — that could come in useful against a zombie army. I think Jon could also have a potential claim on the throne, if Rhaegar and Lyanna were married. (Legitimacy is always Jon’s issue.)Of course the biggest question: How will he find out? And will it happen before or after he pairs off with his own aunt? (This might not happen, of course. But Dany did throw over Daario in favor of a strategic marriage to come later.)Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGE
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I'm amazed at the production of this show this season. I could watch this for hours and hours - and beats any movie out there. And what a...
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Speaking of the Dragon Queen, her departure from the pyramid comes with more support than she had even a few weeks ago — after years of isolated plotting and machinations by the various groups in this story, the alliances are coming together at a dizzying rate.Last week the Greyjoy siblings made their pact with the Dragon Queen, pledging ships and an end to their pirating. This week, it seems House Tyrell and maybe even the Dorne gals came aboard, unified in their Lannister loathing. “Cersei stole the future from me,” Lady Olenna told Ellaria Sand, who offered vengeance and justice in return. Enter Varys, who seemed to broker a deal and who apparently discovered a wormhole that allows him to jaunt all over the Known World at his leisure.
The fleet is perhaps destined to meet up with Euron Greyjoy at some point and for one week, at least, it seemed like a force to be reckoned with. But Dany isn’t so sure — it was a less bellicose Dragon Queen we saw this week.“Are you afraid? Good,” Tyrion, the new hand of the queen said. “You’re in the great game now, and the great game is terrifying. The only men not afraid are mad men like your father.”And, he might have added, mad queens like my sister. Winter may finally be here, but if we learned anything on Sunday, it’s that Dany’s not the only one in this tale who knows how to play with fire.Over 10 weeks in the sixth season of “Game of Thrones,” it has become a cliché to note that the powerful women have come to the fore. But there was one character whose trajectory seemed to be the exception to the feminist revolution remaking this story.That would be Cersei, who since the Season 4 assassination of her son King Joffrey has been on a long slide marked by loss (her father and daughter), humiliation (her walk of shame) and most crucially, an apparent dulling of her once formidable sense of how to work the angles of power. Outflanked by first Margaery and then the High Sparrow, two master manipulators with crocodile smiles, Cersei, with her forthright, shameless spite, seemed antiquated by comparison. All that remained, it seemed, was for one last miscalculation to undo her at her trial, perhaps fatally — for the wildfire explosion to claim its architect as a victim, or at least provoke a hubbub that allowed someone like her former fiancé Loras, at some string-puller’s behest, to slide a blade between her ribs.But Cersei had other ideas, wiping out any such notions, along with her primary nemeses, with a well-executed Wildfire Plot that suggested shameless spite is still very much in fashion in King’s Landing. Any remaining doubters can ask Margaery, or the High Septon, or the luckless Septa Unella, or even King Tommen, for whom it all was finally just too much to bear, the poor thing.Or ask Jaime, who arrived in King’s Landing just in time to see Cersei claim the Iron Throne in her sinister leather power frock, looking like a cross between Maleficent and Thin White Duke-era David Bowie. Did he look happy that his beloved sister had finally achieved her dream of absolute power? He did not. Instead the Kingslayer, who has seemed torn this season between his twisted devotion to her and nobler impulses, seemed to be wondering if he might one day be called upon to be a Queenslayer. After all, Cersei just did a version of what Jaime reportedly killed the Mad King Aerys in order to prevent. (It was his wildfire she used.) At the very least, he seems liable to lend an ear to a certain persuasive brother currently heading his way from the east.[ Interview: Niklolaj Coster-Waldau on Cersie’s Rise and Jaime’s Evolution]Whoops, I buried the lead: We’ve left Meereen! We’ve left Meereen! Well all of us except Daario, who’s sticking around to keep the peace in the city as well as the rebranded Bay of Dragons. Forget Meereen, he said (in a way), speaking for all of us.Dany’s long, long-awaited departure, backed by a growing list of powerful allies, was but one of a host of major events on Sunday, which packed an enormous amount of plot movement into its 69 minutes as it set up the homestretch of “Game of Thrones.” Winter officially arrived, according to the weather ravens. Arguably the most popular fan theory about the show — that Jon Snow’s parents are really Lyanna Stark, Ned’s sister, and Rhaegar
Read more：http://www.kissyprom.co.uk/blue-prom-dresses-online Targaryen, Daenerys’s older brother — was seemingly confirmed. Littlefinger announced his desires on the Iron Throne to Sansa. Arya embraced her destiny as a free-ranging assassin.Oh, and pretty much every annoying person in King’s Landing met an end or, in Septa Unella’s case, is headed there eventually. Cersei’s death roster included Margaery, Loras, Mace Tyrell and the High Sparrow, who kept on mansplaining up to the moment he realized he’d been outwitted and was turned to ash. Also: Pycelle, Uncle Kevan, Lancel the twit and finally the tragically ineffectual Tommen, who in his poignant final moments finally embraced the reality we first understood when we saw him cavorting with Ser Pounce in Season 4. The boy wasn’t cut out for the full-contact politics of King’s Landing.His mother, however, most assuredly is. Lena Headey has always been one of the strongest performers on the show and it was a thrill to see her again with a full head of steam, culminating in Cersei’s paean to hedonism with Unella: “Even confessing feels good under the right circumstances,” she said. (“Shame! Shame!” she added later, in perhaps the highlight of the episode, after turning the septa over to a chillingly helmetless Mountainstein.)Ms. Headey’s performance was but one element in a sequence that, technically, ranks among the show’s best. Miguel Sapochnik, who directedlast week’s battle-heavy episode, brought a different kind of precision and urgency to Sunday’s installment. Cersei’s scheme unspooled amid insistent strings and a series of shots — those vicious little birds taking out Pycelle, Lancel and the dwindling candle-fuse, Margaery’s growing concern and rising tension in the Sept — that built inexorably to the High Sparrow’s realization that he wasn’t as smart as he thought.Cornered, Cersei had resorted to her credo about the “Game of Thrones” — you win or you die — and accepted her own dire fate, as prophesied by the witch years ago. Compared to her grief at the loss of Joffrey and Myrcella, she treated Tommen’s death as the price of doing business. Tired of trying to shape events as the person behind the person — be it a husband or son — she finally took the power she craved by force and dared anyone to stop her. Long may she reign.[ Looking for something to watch now that “Game of Thrones” is done for the year? Subcribe to the New York Times’s TV and movie recommendation newsletter. ]Count me among those who bought all the misdirection this year, the loss and abandonment, the failure of multiple schemes — I thought Cersei was a goner. But while her survival was genuinely surprising, the mechanics of this latest amazingly effective pyrotechnic overthrow (see also: Dany’s big blaze) were less so, thanks to Tyrion reminding us all last week about the stashes of wildfire beneath parts of the capital city.Indeed, whether because 1) “Game of Thrones” has surpassed George R.R. Martin’s intricate plotting, 2) the story has become too big and obsessively covered, or 3) we’ve become wiser to the ways of the writers, the big moves this season seemed broader and more clearly telegraphed. Examples includeJon Snow’s return, certainly, but also the Hound’s return, Arya’s dispatching of the Waif, Ramsay’s death and the Knights of the Vale’s last-second battle-swinging attack in last week’s Battle of the Bastards. (Only the death and definition of Hodor brought the nuclear OMG factor that became the show’s signature with things like Ned Stark’s execution and the Red Wedding.)The Sept sequence was so artfully handled that I didn’t really mind but it does make me consider how the sense of mystery will likely begin to dissipate from “Game of Thrones,” as longtime theories are confirmed and we pivot toward the final clashes. It’s unavoidable as the story begins to contract toward its conclusion. But I’m already feeling a little melancholy about the show becoming more about big battles and resolution and less about uncovering new pieces of this captivating world.By the end of Sunday’s episode, the major contenders were lined up and ready for action. In addition to Cersei we had Jon Snow and Dany, finally positioned as the clear champions of their respective constituencies, with no one besides us and perhaps Bran aware of how deeply the two of them might be connected.
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