Game of Thrones Recap Season 7, Episode 2: Nothing Is Certain

The seventh season's second episode is a valuable reminder that this show will always love to mess with you.
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When it returned for its seventh season last week, Game of Thrones was in a giving mood. From Arya’s revenge for the Red Wedding to Daenerys’ long-awaited arrival on Dragonstone, it was a great week for both the fans who’d waited years to see those scenes on screen, and whoever gets to play those BONG-bong-BONG drums during climactic moments.

After watching the show finally sprinkle a few drops of cold water on the dusty brows of its long-suffering fans, it’s tempting to think maybe the show has turned a corner in its penultimate season. Like the ex you’ve been away from just long enough to forget how manipulative and cruel they really are, perhaps Game of Thrones has lulled you into thinking that it’s changed, that it loves you, that things are going to be different now.

This episode is a valuable reminder that Game of Thrones is still the same thing it always was: a show that loves to mess with you.

In the opening moments of “Stormborn,” it seems like Varys might be the next fan-favorite on the chopping block, as he finally comes face-to-face with the Targaryen queen he tried to assassinate. Sure, he’s brought Dorne and the Tyrells to her cause, but after so many years of fending off glib power players and stealthy saboteurs, Dany is understandably distrustful of a shadowy political puppeteer who once tried to have her killed with weird fluorescent scorpions.

In a scene that feels eerily reminiscent of perhaps the most uncomfortable political dinner in modern history, Daenerys pointedly questions whether Varys might someday turn against her and demands that he offer his unquestioned allegiance—only to have him reply that all he can offer is what we might call honest loyalty.

Varys insists that his first duty is to the people rather than their autocratic rulers, but promises to tell her directly if he has concerns about her rule rather than conspiring behind her back. Dany seems to accept this, but warns that disloyalty will lead to a very special sort of firing: “If you ever betray me, I will burn you alive.”

As she stands at the board of the great game now, Daenerys is in a remarkably strong position. While a widely-despised and weakened Cersei controls less than half the Seven Kingdoms, Daenerys has a Dothraki horde, an Unsullied legion, an Ironborn fleet and three dragons at her disposal—more military power than her ancestor Aegon I had when he conquered Westeros more than 300 years ago. With Dorne and House Tyrell ready to join her cause, it seems like Dany has already got this W in the bag, which should be the first sign things are about to go horribly wrong.

After all, believing that you know exactly what is going to happen can be a dangerous thing. Just ask Melisandre, the Red Priestess who was so certain of the visions she saw in the fire that she convinced men to father shadow babies, murder their brothers and burn their own children alive. She believed these sacrifices were necessary and that the outcome was ordained, but it all crumbled in the snow outside Winterfell anyway, along with her sense of infallibility.

When she returns to her old home at Dragonstone to pay homage to its new ruler, she is far more circumspect about the precise will of R’hllor. “Prophecies are dangerous things,” she tells Daenerys. She may have her share of compelling theories about the identity of Azor Ahai, like every other Game of Thrones fan, but she no longer confuses her own Reddit threads for canon. And rather than fire visions, she has some very practical advice for the young queen: summon Jon Snow.

When the raven arrives at Winterfell with Dany’s invitation—along with a secret decoder ring message from Tyrion—Jon and Sansa are less than enthused. After all, the last time their grandfather went south to meet a Targaryen ruler, he was boiled alive in his armor. When Ned went south, he was beheaded. When Robb went south, he got beheaded and had his corpse turned into a furry. Point is, things don’t tend to end well for Kings in the North who head south, and despite Sansa and basically every noble in the North telling him to stay, Jon insists on going anyway. Ignoring the advice of everyone around you and learning nothing from the deaths of your relatives: It’s the Ned Stark way!

Arya finds herself at a crossroads of her own when she returns to—wait for it—the Inn at the Crossroads. After eating a hot pie with Hot Pie, she is shocked to learn that Jon has retaken Winterfell from the Boltons, and heads outside for another on-the-nose moment where she literally stands at a crossroads and tries to decide which way to go: south to vengeance, or north to family. In the end she heads north, not just away from King’s Landing but away from her mission, away from the path she has traveled with every step she has taken since her father’s execution at the Sept of Baelor.

The reunion Arya sets out for is not the one she finds; after she makes camp in the Riverlands, she finds herself surrounded by a pack of wolves, and who stalks out of the woods to greet her but Nymeria, her long lost direwolf. Arya’s face lights up: It’s finally happening. Not only is she en route to Winterfell to reunite with her brother and sister, but now another piece of her life that was cruelly taken away seems to be falling back into place.

“I’m finally going home,” she tells Nymeria. “Come with me.” Instead, the direwolf takes a long look at Arya, and disappears into the woods. It’s a bit heartbreaking, but Arya’s face softens after a moment. “That’s not you,” she whispers. Whatever Nymeria’s life was years ago, it’s very different now; she’s spent more time away from Arya than she ever did with her, and transformed into the wild, deadly queen of what I choose to imagine is some sort of Ocean’s Eleven wolf pack. Even if she still loves Arya, why would she go back to being a pet? Would that even make sense?

It’s a question worth asking about Arya, too. There has always been both a psychic and thematic bond between the Stark children and their wolves, and it was no accident that Nymeria survived—and thrived!—only because Arya forced her to go off on her own and leave the Starks behind. Perhaps this is the moment when Nymeria returns the favor.

It is easy to imagine Arya’s life in two parts, before and after. For a long time, Arya wanted what we all want when we suffer terrible loss: to find some way back to the before. She wanted all the Starks to reunite and glue the broken teacup of their family back together, as though that could unbreak it. That’s not how loss works. There are too many missing pieces, and even if she could assemble them all, they’d never fit back together in the same way.

Her parents and two of her siblings are dead, and the ones that remain are survivors of wars, rapes, and horrors beyond imagining. One is a paralyzed seer who can travel in time and mind-control animals, another survived a marriage to Ramsay Bolton and became defacto Queen in the North, and another took over the Night’s Watch, got murdered, and came back from the dead. She’s become a highly trained assassin capable of taking out the deadliest killers from the House of Black and White while blindfolded. They’re all pretty damn far from that idyllic Stark family portrait back in the series premiere, not just in who they have become but the roles, responsibilities, and missions they’ve accepted.

Arya, for example, is a hitwoman par excellence who just wiped out an entire House of their most hated enemies all on her lonesome. What use are her murder skills in the North, where she’d be surrounded by family and allies? Beyond the immediate catharsis of finally going home and hugging Jon and Sansa, what else does Winterfell hold for her? Nostalgia is about wanting to go back to something, rather than going forward to something. Which way is Winterfell?

And then there’s poor Theon, who still clearly bears the scars of his intense physical and psychological torture by Ramsay Bolton. When Ellaria puts the moves on Yara and tells Theon to bring her a drink, his response is instantly servile—and disturbingly reminiscent of those moments when Ramsay gave Theon commands while doing creepy sex things. There’s no going back for him either; he will never be the same person he was before, never glue those pieces back together the same way, no matter how often Yara labels him her “protector.”

That appellation becomes particularly ironic when their fleet is attacked and summarily destroyed by their uncle Euron, and Theon is so overwhelmed by post-traumatic panic that he drops his sword and leaps into the water, leaving Yara in the clutches of their murderous uncle with a blade to her neck. If you’d been hoping for a neat, heroic end to Theon’s redemption arc, then welcome to the many disappointments of this episode.

In conclusion: Nymeria rejected Arya and left her in the woods; Yara’s fleet was destroyed and she was taken captive; most of the Sand Snakes died; Dany’s naval capabilities and likely her Dornish support have been scuttled, and Theon betrayed and abandoned his sister at a critical moment that neither she nor he will probably ever forgive him for, if either of them even survive. In short, it’s Game of Thrones. It will never love you and it will usually fail you, but depending on what you’re into, it might still be able to show you a good time.