Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken PLot SummarY:
After much corpse-bathing and lie telling, Arya (Maisie Williams) finally advances to the next level in her training at the House of Black and White. Jorah (Iain Glen) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) run into some trouble on their journey to Meereen. Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen) arrives in Kings Landing and divulges some surprising news to Cersei (Lena Headey) in hopes of eventually gaining control of Winterfell. Lady Olenna (Diana Rigg) also returns to Kings Landing to bargain with Cersei regarding Loras’ (Finn Jones) release from jail, only to watch helplessly as the Faith Militant places both Loras and Queen Margaery (Natalie Dormer) under arrest. Over in Dorne, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Bronn (Jerome Flynn) arrive at the Water Gardens to rescue Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free), only to be engaged in combat by the Sand Snakes and eventually foiled by Areo Hotah (Deobia Oparei) and the Dornish Guard. In Winterfell, Theon (Alfie Allen) is allowed to momentarily regain his identity as he walks Sansa (Sophie Turner) down the aisle, but is rendered Reek once again once the newlywed couple heads to bed and Ramsey (Iwan Rheon) orders him to watch as he brutally forces Sansa to consummate their marriage.
We’re just past the midway point in this season of Game of Thrones and “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” finally starts to provide some forward momentum for some of the season’s previously idling storylines. It’s a densely-packed and satisfying installment that covers a lot of ground, spanning from Braavos to Winterfell and everywhere in between at a breathless clip without giving short shrift to any of the plotlines within. Each scene this week felt crucial and significant, as though we’re finally moving beyond the extensive table-setting of the earlier episodes and into the meat of the season.
After she was missing in action for the past two weeks, we finally catch up with Arya, still early in the “all men must serve” phase of her training at the House of Black and White and still patiently bathing corpses with no word of impending advancement. Although, from first glance, she initially appears to have adopted the calm, stoic demeanor of The Waif, it soon becomes clear that Arya remains brash, impatient, and headstrong – in short, very much Arya – when she attempts to sneak a peek at where the bodies go and snaps at The Waif, demanding to advance to the next level in training. The face Arya presents to the world is still stubbornly very much her own and that refusal or inability to appear as anyone but herself leads to her naivete in detecting The Waif’s clearly fabricated story. Arya still can’t help but present her true face and thus expects the same of others. After a little whip-intensive training from Jaqen (Thomas Wlaschiha), Arya eventually learns to convincingly step inside the role of someone else (here, a mirror image of the sickly child dropped off by her desperate father) and is granted entrance into the chamber of faces, a gallery where the visages of the dead are displayed like so many Party City masks, ripe for the picking. The chamber of faces is perfectly mystical and eerie and offers some promising developments for Arya, as the scene closes with the tantalizing remark from Jaqen that, “A girl is not ready to become no one, but she is ready to become someone else.”
While Arya needs to learn to lie, dishonesty is the native tongue in Kings Landing and Cersei, Littlefinger, and the Tyrells are all fluent speakers. Littlefinger’s return to Kings Landing results in a rather entertaining and pointed conversation between he and Cersei (their barely concealed contempt for one another was deliciously palpable) and his surprise revelation that Sansa is at Winterfell and betrothed to Ramsey Bolton. When it comes to Littlefinger, the only certainty is his untrustworthiness, so while I wouldn’t be totally shocked if his divulging of Sansa’s whereabouts is indeed part of a grand scheme to sacrifice the girl in order to claim yet another title, I doubt it. For one, it seems ludicrously far-fetched and Rube Goldbergian to assume Littlefinger would conspire to have Joffrey murdered, arrange to have Sansa spirited away from Kings Landing in the wake of his death, hide her and tutor her in the Eyrie, arrange her marriage to Ramsey and bring her back to Winterfell all so he could turn her back over to Cersei in hopes that she’ll grant him Winterfell in return, after Stannis’ army and the Boltons tear each other to pieces over it first, of course. There are just too many cogs in that machine for it to be a plausible scenario and I find it much more likely that Littlefinger’s loyalties (for what little they’re worth) lie with Cateylnn’s daughter, not the Lannisters.
Cersei also holds court with another master of political deception when Lady Olenna (the superbly snide Diana Rigg) returns to Kings Landing to demand Loras’ release. The Tyrells have been practicing a lie of omission when it comes to Loras’ homosexuality. Though it’s a widely known secret throughout Westeros, their policy has been to acknowledge it privately, but never mention it publicly, even going so far as to arrange a marriage between Loras and Cersei. Unfortunately for Olenna’s brood, this widely recognized and willingly overlooked lie is easily uncovered by the fanatics of the Faith Militant. Even worse, the Faith Militant view Margaery’s crime of lying before the Seven to protect her brother as a sin equally as grevious as Loras’ homesexual dalliances and the two are hauled off to imprisonment while Cersei smirks contentedly and Tommen looks on terrified and helplessly (Joffrey may have been wretched, but at least he had the ability to keep his mother in check, a skill weak young Tommen sorely lacks).
While Cersei gloats over her victory over the Tyrells, over in Dorne, Jaime and Bronn penetrate the Water Gardens in their attempt to bring Myrcella home (though it’s soon apparent that Myrcella is perfectly happy in her position as one half of Game of Thrones’ very own Romeo and Juliet). Unfortunately for the Kingslayer and his surprisingly golden-piped travelling companion (that Bronn is a man of many talents, indeed), the Ellaria-incited Sand Snakes stage their attempted kidnapping of Myrcella at the same time. A fairly riveting fight scene ensues (it’s always entertaining to see the swords of Westeros do battle with the whips, spears, and tsais of foreign warriors), but the battle is ultimately cut off and brought to a stalemate by Areo Hotah and the Dornish guard, who promptly place all those involved and Ellaria under arrest.
Meanwhile, the other Lannister brother meets a similar fate on the road to Meereen with Jorah Mormont. As always, Dinklage’s Tyrion is captivating to watch in each moment of screen time and I loved his regretful, inadvertant breaking of the news of Jeor Mormont’s fate and his wisely dubious questioning of Jorah’s loyalty to Daenerys, slaying the notion that one is entitled to rule based solely on family lineage (“Why? Because her father, who burned living men for his amusment, was king?”). Just when they’re starting to feel comfortable with one another, Tyrion and Jorah are taken captive by slavers en route for the recently reopened fighting pits of Meereen. Tyrion’s quick thinking and even quicker tounge when hyping Jorah as a world-class warrior and saving his own neck (and cock) in the process, to boot were reminicsent of the Imp’s wily cleverness when captured by Catelynn Stark back in season one and it’s always a delight to see Dinklage flex those powers of persuasion, even if the end result is ultimately the same in that the two are still headed to Meereen and an eventual audience with the Dragon Queen.
The episode is bookended with the other Stark sister, as we turn to Winterfell for Sansa’s wedding night to Ramsey Bolton. After showcasing some Littlefinger-inspired backbone with the creepy, jealous Myranda (as always, I love Sophie Turner’s icy cold side), Sansa rejects Theon’s escort down the aisle and ultimately says her vows in the Godswood to Ramsey (in a beautful, candlelight snowy scene). What follows is a moment that’s proven controversial in light of the show’s somewhat cavelier portrayals of rape in the past, as Ramsey forces himself upon his new bride while Reek is ordered to watch. My problem with Ramsey’s assault of Sansa isn’t that it’s gratuitous or sensatizonalized (unlike Jaime’s rape of Cersei last season, there is textual precendent for this encounter, with Sansa taking on the role of Jeyne Poole), but that I’m very tired of seeing Sansa victimized and abused. From a televison narrative standpoint, I completely understand the necessity of folding the Sansa / Jeyne Poole storylines into one, but I was hoping Sansa would exhibit some of the agency she supposedly developed under Littlefinger’s tutelage rather then serving as the meek prey for yet another psychopath. It’s hard to watch, but I’m hoping that Sansa ultimately emerges from this unfortunate union unbowed, unbent, and unbroken, applying some of her hard-earned saavy to overcome the Boltons and her circumstances and leave her victimhood behind once and for all. Here’s hoping that next week brings a better day to Winterfell.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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Kimberlee Rossi-Fuchs is a Senior Writer for Pop-Break, regularly covering Game of Thrones, Louie, Futurama, and Boardwalk Empire, as well as other delectable nuggets of TV, film, and music throughout the year. Since graduating with Highest Honors from Rutgers University with a degree in English, Kimberlee currently finds herself in a financially comfortable, yet stifling corporate environment where her witty and insightful literary and pop culture references are largely met with confused silence and requests to, “Get away from me, weirdo.” Still, she’s often thought of as a modern-day Oscar Wilde (by herself) and one day hopes her wit, charm, and intellect (again, self-perceived) will make her a very wealthy, very drunk woman. She’s also the mother of a darling little boy, Charlie Miles (aka Young Chizzy) who she hopes will grow up to not be too embarrassed of all of the baby pics she relentlessly shares of him on various social media sites.
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