Whats up, Special Ed?
It took three weeks, but the Game of Thrones Death Pool has now officially begun. After two forebodingly quiet weeks, episode 3 was non-stop action. The army of the dead was as formidable as advertised, overrunning Winterfell with ease.
Our heroes had spent the last three seasons accumulating the world's greatest soldiers, reams of magic weapons, and 3 actual dragons just for this battle and none of that did shit. All the Dothraki, all the Unsullied, and everybody with a dragon glass sword is dead. Despite all that devastation, only four characters in our pool died and they were all B-listers:
- We guess Jorah was the most emotional loss but we can live with it.
- Bran forgave Theon before he went out, which is nice, but we never did. We've been waiting for Stupid Theon to get offed for so long at this point we couldn't even be really happy about it. It was just more of a relief. Like, ugh, finally. FOH, Theon, you dumb idiot.
- Melisandre has been predicting her own death for a couple years, so that wasn't a big deal.
- Beric was definitely cool but we all knew he was toast once his hipster buddy with the top knot went down. For the record: we're saying Beric died and became a wight. Even though we didn't see it on screen, there's no reason to think he wouldn't have been resurrected along with the rest.
But the big news is that The Night King is dead. Nobody's more disappointed about losing the NK than we are, and not just cause we picked him to sit on the Iron Throne. The history and origin of the White Walkers was only briefly touched upon on the show.
A big part of what made the NK so scary was the mystery, and every move he made gave us more questions than answers: Who is he? Why is he doing this? Why now? What's the deal with those trees? (he's unconsciously drawn to the Godswood but not able to enter the Three Eyed Raven's tree up north, what's up with that?) What are those symbols he draws with the corpses of his prey? Why was he fire-resistant and why didn't Bran know he would be?
Well, it seems the Night King's secrets will die with him, and that's a huge deal for our pool for a few reasons: Only one person (Jenny Fay) guessed Arya as the NK's killer. That two point bonus might be enough to keep her at the top of the standings in what's shaping up to be a low-scoring contest. Also, without the Night King, there presumably won't be any more un-dead which severely limits the potential scores in this pool. Some folks have as many as ten characters becoming wights, they're fucked. Lastly, there are now only three episodes left and a lot of story left to tell; if they have to spend screen time explaining all the open questions from just the last three episodes, there won't be much time to rack up the body count.
The margins in this game are shrinking quickly, but Cercei told us way back that when you play the game of thrones you either win or you die.
Let's all hope so.
Here's the week 3 standings:
Valar morghulis, everybody!
