What's up, Special Ed?
Not a lot going on this week in the GoT Death Pool. No new deaths or bonus revelations, but we are updating the scoreboard with a couple left over notes about Ep 3:
We confirmed that Beric did indeed become a wight. There was some debate due to his appearance on the funeral pyre at the start of ep 4. It turns out only the White Walkers shattered into ice dust when the NK died, but wights just fell down and became dead bodies again.
We went ahead and marked Theon, Jorah, and Melissandre as “Not a wight”. We’re assuming that no one else will be resurrected in the last two episodes so we’ll post the Alive scores and WW scores concurrently from now on.
Episode Four featured two dramatic deaths but neither character was previously essential enough to make The List. That’s why this episode kind of sucked – they moved the plot moved forward but all the narrative set pieces were pure fluff. Instead of revealing anything new about our enigmatic characters’ motivations, or altering the trajectory of the story in any way, this episode gave us the old cool-looking dragons, cool-looking boats, and heartbroken couples breaking up. Boo fucking hoo.
Look, it’s not that we don’t care about Gendry, Brienne, and Greyworm’s feelings. It’s just that we’re clearly pressed for time and, with all the other B-stories being omitted this season, at least two of the break up scenes seemed superfluous.
Let’s take a look at some of the other shit that doesn’t matter from the antepenultimate GoT:
I guess Doarn is still a thing. They have a new prince who nobody seems to gives a shit about.
Jon tells Samwell he’s his best friend ever right in front of Ghost. WTF, Jon?!
Tormund and the Free Folk are going home. Peace. Pretty sure we’ll never see how essential this new alliance would be for Sansa and the new wards of Winterfell as they struggle to maintain their independence from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Arya and The Hound go on the road again. Back in the day it took Arya and The Hound about a season and a half to get from Kings Landing to Winterfell, and it was probably our favorite part of the whole series. It looked like everybody got back down south in about 5 minutes this week. Another HUGE missed opportunity there.
Tyrion and Bran convene the ultimate meeting of the minds. The Queen’s advisor - “the cleverest man in the world” - consults with the all-knowing Three Eyed Raven. What incredible secrets will be revealed???
TYRION: Sweet wheelchair, Bran. Is that new?
BRAN: Yea, man. I went back in time to find the sweetest wheelchair ever. Sick, right?
TYRION: No doubt. So, you gonna be king of Winterfell now or what?
BRAN: Nah. Imma chill.
TYRION: Cool cool cool.
Anyways. Episode 4 closed with Daenerys looking REALLY mad, with at least three of the bad guys from The List standing right in front of her. The standing are still very tight, and we’re pretty much guaranteed to put some points on the board early in Episode 5, so The GoT death pool is still anybody’s game!!!
Valar Morghulis, everybody!