Vox - Game of Thrones season 6: news and episode reviewshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2016-07-05T10:30:03-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/112924032016-07-05T10:30:03-04:002016-07-05T10:30:03-04:00Let’s predict which Game of Thrones characters will survive the rest of the series!
<figure>
<img alt="The Iron Throne" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1uyXFD7kRkaJRH9GBuiApsKF8bk=/62x0:1862x1350/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50018803/game-of-thrones-poster_85627-1920x1200.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Who lives, who dies, who writes George R.R. Martin’s story? | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most likely character to survive may surprise you. (The least likely is Cersei, which should surprise no one.)</p> <p id="panFkL"><i>Each week throughout </i><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones’</a> <i>sixth season, a handful of Vox's writers have gathered to discuss the latest episode — and now we’re doing the same with the finale. Before you dig in, check out </i><i><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies">our recap of "The Winds of Winter,"</a></i><i> as well the archive of </i><i><a href="http://www.vox.com/game-of-thrones-season-6">our entire discussion to date</a></i><i>. Concluding our discussion for the season is culture editor Todd VanDerWerff.</i></p>
<p id="3fwNuv"><b>Todd VanDerWerff: </b>Now that the sixth season of <i>Game of Thrones</i> is over, the long wait for any information at all about the seventh season (which will air in 2017) begins.</p>
<p id="HvtsR1">But as Rowan Kaiser points out in <a href="https://medium.com/@RowanKaiser/game-of-thrones-gave-me-everything-i-wanted-in-its-sixth-season-is-that-good-ba52e3c1cd4c#.xemyen2cn">this excellent essay</a> on the show’s slow trend toward conventionality (and as I pointed out <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11865838/game-of-thrones-recap-episode-7-arya-broken-man">here</a>), it’s become easier and easier to predict what’s going to happen on this show, at least within reason.</p>
<p id="zRvLs3">So let’s try to predict the thing everyone’s most curious about: Who’s going to die?</p>
<p id="rggx1u">I’ve picked the 15 most important <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Game of Thrones</a></i> characters (because talking about <i>everybody</i> would take too long) and ranked them based on how likely they are to make it to the end of the series finale (which should air at the end of season eight in 2018). With just 13 to 15 episodes left, everybody still alive only has to make it a little further, but the final days of this show should end up being a bloodbath.</p>
<p id="KqTRhf">Anyway, let’s put <i>Game of Thrones</i> to bed for the year by ranking the characters from least to most likely to survive.</p>
<h3 id="5rjHBO">15) Cersei Lannister, least likely to survive</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bYBswcOBWltwdbvrBkFvPJfa4P4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6742187/gotqueencersei.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Bye, Cersei!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="AmhzUM">At this point, after blowing up a sept and killing thousands, then ascending to the throne in the wake of her son Tommen’s death, Cersei is basically the only guaranteed death of the 15 characters I’ve chosen. She might make it a while, but she looks to be the show’s final non–White Walker villain, and she’ll be a doozy of one. But then she’ll die.</p>
<p id="Xcm23f"><b>How far will she make it? </b>Season seven playing out as Cersei versus some sort of alliance between Daenerys and Jon seems pretty likely to me. To that end, Cersei will probably perish in the season seven finale, at the hand of her brother and lover, Jaime.</p>
<h3 id="mxFxi8">14) Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Littlefinger on Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/v2bw0MLg6XIn7-Ab8n6DE3yYReU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6488911/littlefinger.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Maybe Littlefinger will make it! Heh. Right.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="QZ1tYm">Most viewers of the show might rank Littlefinger rather high on this list, but I think he’s dangerously overconfident at this point. I can see a version of this show where he ascends to sit upon the Iron Throne, but I think it’s more likely he’s ultimately, finally outsmarted (probably by Sansa, his protégé) and loses his life.</p>
<p id="5377uR"><b>How far will he make it? </b>He’ll die somewhere in season seven as a supposedly shocking moment.</p>
<h3 id="7xRSSc">13) Davos Seaworth</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3xyGLLVC8Ul7khN5h_90b2zOcZw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710105/gotfinaledavos.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Davos will probably sacrifice himself.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="SFZv6G">I actually expect Davos to make it all the way to the series finale, but not all the way to its end. He’s the old man adviser, and the old man adviser always dies in stories like this.</p>
<p id="10RyzK"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Like I said, I expect him to make some sort of heroic sacrifice in the series finale.</p>
<h3 id="Q4jf7n">12) Melisandre</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lMMx9ePaDESuuJLvb8TldWOpOBQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6370845/melisandre.0.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Even though she’s been banished, Melisandre is still kicking it.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Qvt388">Jon has already told her that if she returns to the North, he’ll have her executed. Considering that the threat of the White Walkers invading the Seven Kingdoms seems imminent, she will almost certainly have to return to the North at some point. She’ll make it to season eight, but she’ll eventually die.</p>
<p id="IltStj"><b>How far will she make it? </b>Somewhere around season eight’s midpoint, she will give up her life to save Jon somehow, thus settling the debt between them.</p>
<h3 id="b1GYLI">11) Theon Greyjoy</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LVn9Jy2XY2Pq0Gf5B9n62gx33OE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6381681/theonsansa.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Theon probably should have gotten hypothermia in this moment, really.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="iyo7kd">Theon has endured so much suffering that there’s an outside chance he’ll survive to find some form of inner peace. But I think it’s more likely he will give his life to save one of the many people he wronged back in the day, presumably one of the Stark siblings.</p>
<p id="QU9PuV"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Early in season eight, Theon will give himself up to save Sansa or Bran. Count on it.</p>
<h3 id="5VbO7e">10) Jaime Lannister</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kCt23yr5mwa-yKobiuZ8f5A21vo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6564107/got6.6jaime.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>But he looks so fancy in his gold armor.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="urzygP">Jaime’s ultimate allegiances are one of the few remaining questions viewers have in terms of who will be on the side of "good" and who will be on the side of "evil." None of the characters have much reason to trust Jaime, but he also increasingly seems uneasy about siding with his sister. This makes him the Snape of the <i><a href="http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/index.html">Game of Thrones</a></i> universe (to toss in a <i>Harry Potter</i> reference at random), which means he’ll <i>probably</i> die, but in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cL527bg0II">a way that makes everybody feel weird</a>.</p>
<p id="TO4R2Z"><b>How far will he make it? </b>He seems like a classic "next to the last episode" kinda death for me. It will come when he’s saving Tyrion, I would bet.</p>
<h3 id="v3jOLv">9) Arya Stark</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rxev8Es1dccbhqEKVv78qmAqFZw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6667729/aryaoranges.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>If she’s not dead already!!!!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="EXvPvU">Another Stark child is going to die. I think that’s just inevitable. The three left alive have made themselves proficient at politics (Sansa), magic (Bran), and violence (Arya), and the show is clearly nodding toward Arya simply becoming a vehicle for vengeance at this point in her life. Vehicles for vengeance rarely make it all the way to the end, and I think Arya is probably doomed.</p>
<p id="A8XTlr"><b>How far will she make it? </b>She’ll get to the series finale, though!</p>
<h3 id="VG0FO2">8) Brienne of Tarth</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ynNJybBxuhVRaNjaF8hHsSUpJHM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6529559/briennesansa.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Brienne heading up the Kingsguard (or Queensguard) just makes too much sense.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="VuSy3y">We’re now among the group of characters I consider more likely to survive than die. Brienne could certainly die in battle against the White Walkers, but she seems more likely to end up heading the Kingsguard after the dust settles. Still, she’s a great swordswoman, which means she could always die in a fight.</p>
<p id="AZRlo1"><b>How far will she make it? </b>If she dies (and I don’t think she will), it will be in the final battle against the White Walkers.</p>
<h3 id="DaFnyD">7) Bran Stark</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Qa1l1nsYvq9ADciGKF55acDNndE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710089/gotfinalebran.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Bran is a great magician now. That will make him a target.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="S9WW4x">Bran now has such immense magical powers that he’s going to prove a great asset to the forces of humanity whenever he rejoins everybody else. But that also means he’ll probably become one of the White Walkers’ primary targets. I think he’ll survive, but one never knows.</p>
<p id="0BVO5c"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Bran’s death in one of the final few episodes could make for a nice "all hope is lost" moment. But I think he’ll make it out alive.</p>
<h3 id="kCPORC">6) Varys</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fwBJJPOuwo-w1WBTawjaBQOla9k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6383579/tyrionvarys.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Varys 4 ever!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="XE9mOo">If Varys dies, it will be at Cersei's hand somehow. That means if he can make it out of season seven alive, I think he’s probably safe forever. And considering he’s one of the show’s most purely entertaining characters, the writers would have to be crazy to kill him.</p>
<p id="Cy4BwH"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Varys will have some sort of place on the small council when the series ends.</p>
<h3 id="AGFFGb">5) Daenerys Targaryen</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LMupuIwaRWw9hGO1TFMf-G8oW2A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6273399/dany.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Things could head south for Dany.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="OwJqI1">The most logical prediction is that Dany survives the series and winds up the queen of the Seven Kingdoms. But that also means she’d be the easiest character to kill off in a "shocking" fashion pretty much anywhere along the way. Remember: George R.R. Martin probably has one more out-of-nowhere death up his sleeve. Dany would be my bet for that, but I also will bow to conventional wisdom and anoint her queen.</p>
<p id="5cB61P"><b>How far will she make it? </b>She’ll be the queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Or she won’t, and she’ll die in some sort of freak accident in the season seven premiere.</p>
<h3 id="aYh8dq">4) Sansa Stark</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qJBtu6lldx5yOT5kfW3NcfY0ZEA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6675273/battlesansa.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Hi, Sansa!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="NidKkQ">Just as one of the last three Stark siblings must die, one of them must live. Sansa strikes me as the most logical choice, if only because the show is trying to build (incredibly weird!) sexual tension between her and Jon, a man she believes to be her half-brother. (He’s actually her cousin.) Plus, Sansa’s going to be incredibly valuable at political intrigue, and that always comes in handy in Westeros.</p>
<p id="41TvqZ"><b>How far will she make it? </b>She’ll enter a politically advantageous marriage with someone, then survive to advise Queen Daenerys. Or she’ll side with Littlefinger and be dragged down by him (in which case, Arya will be the Stark to survive).</p>
<h3 id="zxLcIe">3) Tyrion Lannister</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WKaMGiMEUVl_JbduWrWjU4Qetrs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6457913/got6.3tyrion.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Tyrion will live to quip another day.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="BmG6zp">These top three characters are all "they’ll die in the series finale, if they die at all" characters to me. Tyrion has long been a favorite of book readers, show viewers, and George R.R. Martin himself. He will be the hand of either Dany or Jon, whichever of the two rules.</p>
<p id="0CZlaz"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Even if the White Walkers win, he’ll find some way to advise the Night’s King.</p>
<h3 id="YjaEEW">2) Jon Snow</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rLwdt5H-j1pN21Qs6EHTDD1TRa8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6381687/jonsnow.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>If he could come back from this, he could come back from anything.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="iWRsvm">Jon Snow <i>returned from the dead</i>. He’ll be sticking around. He might even become king.</p>
<p id="Gxglku"><b>How far will he make it? </b>He’s going to live <i>forever</i>.</p>
<h3 id="nt4Ym4">1) Samwell Tarly, the most likely to survive</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pKvt-As_kNU106njlaCEF2IGebw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6457905/got6.3sam.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Sam is probably immortal by now. Let’s face it.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="AKlwtv">Sam is widely seen as an authorial surrogate for George R.R. Martin, with his rotund figure and love of books. Imagine there’s a finale for this show where the White Walkers win and only one character survives. It’s going to be Sam, right? He’s basically the guy who comes out at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy and says, "Oh, shit. Maybe I should have warned somebody!" And wouldn’t it be sort of hilarious if only Sam lived? I agree.</p>
<p id="YSFueH"><b>How far will he make it? </b>Sam is basically that guy in that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last">one </a><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last">Twilight Zone</a></i> episode who is happy the nuclear apocalypse happened, because he’ll finally have time to read, only to immediately break his glasses. He’ll make it the whole way.</p>
<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/best-tv-shows-hbo-netflix-now">The 18 best TV shows airing right now</a></div>
<p>
<script src="//embed.vox.com/cardstack.js"></script>
</p>
<hr>
<h3>Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div data-analytics-viewport="video" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-volume-id="8572" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-placement="article" id="volume-placement-7623" class="volume-video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/12085448/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-deaths-predictions-season-7Emily St. James2016-07-04T14:40:03-04:002016-07-04T14:40:03-04:00Just what happened in the Game of Thrones finale’s most troubling scene?
<figure>
<img alt="Game of Thrones" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/si5hXU72lOq6BVvSI0pqJueB8mY=/99x0:1179x810/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50017239/gotmountain.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Gregor has felt better. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And why are we so bothered by not having instant answers to questions like this?</p> <p id="1voIf7">By far the most disquieting question to come out of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4283094/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">"The Winds of Winter,"</a> <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=tt_ov_inf">Game of Thrones</a></em>’ season six finale, concerns an act we didn’t witness: Just what was the zombified Gregor Clegane <em>doing</em> to Septa Unella behind that closed door?</p>
<p id="ov5eWn">Lest you’ve forgotten, Unella is the "Shame!"-proclaiming nun who presided over Cersei’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/13/11642934/game-of-thrones-oathbreaker-cersei">humiliating walk of atonement</a> at the end of season five. And while Cersei spent most of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12036976/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-cersei-wildfire-frey">"The Winds of Winter"</a> claiming the Iron Throne for herself (after suffering her own devastating tragedy), she made sure to spare a few minutes to get her revenge.</p>
<p id="6RPPvl">To recap, after Cersei gleefully confessed her many crimes to Unella, who was strapped to a table, the queen mother — and soon-to-be queen, period — revealed that Unella’s death, while certain, would not come quickly.</p>
<p id="9tsOWg">And then Cersei called for Ser Gregor, announcing to Unella, "Your gods have forsaken you. This is your god now."</p>
<p id="JLfd3Z">Gregor loomed over her prone figure as Cersei left the room, chanting "Shame, shame, shame," and closing the door behind her. Unella screamed. Cue thousands of, "Ewwww!" tweets.</p>
<p id="IPVQeB">The implication to me, at first, seemed clear: Zombie Gregor was going to rape Septa Unella. Everything about the scene suggested as much, to me.</p>
<p id="tAXcRW">But the more I’ve discussed this matter with other viewers, the more they’ve proposed that maybe Gregor was "just" torturing Unella. And their case is at least somewhat compelling.</p>
<p id="ipnnmG">So what, exactly, happened behind that closed door? Let’s take a look at the evidence.</p>
<h3 id="b1P1k6">The case for Gregor "just" torturing Unella</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YS4Obzz4W22MNbAXIVAGMmVambQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6742179/gotunella.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Septa Unella prepares Cersei for her walk of shame in the season five finale.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="USexlP">So, not to be too crude about it, but <em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones</a></em> has rarely been all that subtle when characters have been sexually assaulted.</p>
<p id="fOwLVG">It might make weird choices, like focusing on a character other than the victim, as it did when <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/5/18/8622119/game-of-thrones-sansa-rape">Ramsay Bolton raped Sansa Stark</a> on their wedding night.</p>
<p id="voPAQI">Or it might avoid acknowledging that what it’s depicting is rape, as was the case when <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499">Jaime raped Cersei</a> in the Sept of Baelor, next to Joffrey’s dead body. But it usually lays its cards on the table when it comes to almost any act of violence.</p>
<p id="n4enrD">And if you look at the framing of that shot through the door as Cersei exits, Gregor is standing near the Septa’s head. Since Unella almost immediately starts screaming, it seems likely enough that Gregor began inflicting physical pain. (The table she’s on also resembles a torture rack.)</p>
<p id="lkxUWr">Finally, there’s the simple fact that Gregor is a zombie who shuffles around a lot. Breaking limbs is something he can do easily enough, but anything that would require more movement seems like a tall order.</p>
<p id="dzWxBw">This is not to say that torture is some sort of easily dismissible act; it’s gruesome and terrible. The only benefit of it in this instance, story-wise, is that torturing Unella would further underscore Cersei’s descent into utter depravity without resorting to sexual assault as a cheaply deployed plot point (something <em>Game of Thrones</em> is guilty of having done in the past).</p>
<p id="BwYQD9">But I still think the strong implication of the scene is rape.</p>
<h3 id="Sv0sK5">Even though it’s not as explicit as we’ve come to expect from <em>Game of Thrones</em>, the scene functions in a very specific manner</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tMP7mm80ceMeGd7ALilpaKIdxF4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6742181/gotcerseiwalk.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Cersei’s walk of shame is at the heart of all of the choices she makes in season six.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="1WOm2P">There’s a certain inference we draw from the image of a man standing over a prone woman in a fictional work, and it’s generally sexual in nature. In a romance, that can be positive; on <em><a href="http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/index.html">Game of Thrones</a></em>, it’s almost always negative.</p>
<p id="TrXowd">So the very nature of the image that closes this sequence seems to imply sexual assault, regardless of <em>Game of Thrones</em>’ usual tendencies toward explicitness. (Similarly, if the showrunners had wanted to imply torture, they<strong> </strong>easily could have hinted in that direction more forthrightly than they did.)</p>
<p id="aG0Ua7">Now consider that implication in the context of Cersei’s relationship with Unella, which primarily consists of Unella punishing Cersei for a number of sins, most of them sexual in nature. It would make sense for Cersei to visit what she would see as a similar punishment on someone she viewed as a tormenter.</p>
<p id="rKgqrF">Also, Gregor removes his helmet, the first time we’ve seen him do so since his corpse was revived. The implication is that more of his armor is going to be coming off.</p>
<p id="hWC2vM">And while it might be a little unfair to bring evidence from the books into the TV show, within the pages of George R.R. Martin’s <em>A Song of Ice and Fire</em> novels, Gregor is known for his raping and pillaging. For those who’ve read the books, that whole sequence would have been unmistakable in terms of what it signified.</p>
<p id="D9D8YL">Finally, there’s the fact that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0372176/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Lena Headey</a>, Cersei Lannister herself, commented to <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/26/game-thrones-cersei-iron-throne">Entertainment Weekly</a> that the scene as originally written was much, much worse:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But it’s so depraved, it’s brilliant. The scene was meant to be worse, but they couldn’t do it. This is like the tame version. It’s pretty bad still though. I’d take being exploded in the Sept over that any day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="kvVJKg">Could that statement refer to extensive torture? Sure. But Headey <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2014/04/21/george-r-r-martin-thrones-rape">knows all about controversies</a> stemming from <em>Game of Thrones’ </em>cavalier treatment of sexual assault, so to me the implication here is clear.</p>
<p id="0rlbVX">But, look, either way, the scene is a sign that Cersei has finally lost whatever tiny scraps of humanity she had left, as yet another casualty of her quest for power and revenge. And that sets her up as the series’ ultimate villain.</p>
<h3 id="7Mb4TG">Why do we demand answers when things are left even slightly ambiguous?</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bYBswcOBWltwdbvrBkFvPJfa4P4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6742187/gotqueencersei.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>One thing not left ambiguous: Cersei is the queen.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="AumVnV">I started writing about this because I was <em>still</em> seeing people ask on various social media channels what had happened in this scene, more than a week after the episode originally aired.</p>
<p id="FbtqOE">The ultimate question, to me, is why we feel like we <em>need</em> to know what happened inside that room. Whatever it was — even if it was just Gregor taking off his armor and forcing Unella to gaze upon his zombie body — it was horrible. We probably don’t need to know the gruesome details.</p>
<p id="IWzCGZ">And to me, there’s very little ambiguity here. Cersei’s arc has always been about a woman, raised in a patriarchal culture steeped in sexual violence, trying to seize her own power within that structure. And having her cave to utilizing sexual violence to get her own revenge would be in keeping with that.</p>
<p id="9bZ8Em">Everything about both the filmmaking and the storytelling of the scene suggests Gregor rapes Unella. And I would argue that goes too far — but it’s hard to have that conversation if nobody agrees on what happened in the first place.</p>
<p id="sg1YrJ">And, of course, if you’re the people behind <em>Game of Thrones</em>, you probably want to keep this scene as ambiguous as possible, because it’s such a horrifying notion to contemplate that it might completely break the story. The best villains are ones where you can sort of understand where they’re coming from, which is why Cersei is such a great villain. Toss in an explicit scene of zombie assault, and it would perhaps turn audiences against her too thoroughly.</p>
<p id="dJo0rQ">But we don’t deal well with ambiguity in art, do we? Fans still construct elaborate theories to "prove" if <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6006139/did-tony-die-at-the-end-of-the-sopranos">Tony Soprano lived or died</a>, and there were many who were certain that Jesse Pinkman had let Gale live at the end of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Breaking Bad</a></em>, season three, even though he <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyj8QiZGUMc">shot a gun into Gale’s face</a></em>. (To be fair, weird filmmaking choices contributed to the confusion there.)</p>
<p id="t4TDUG">Maybe this is because whatever Cersei did, it was so beyond the pale that we don’t want to contemplate it. But ambiguity is often the heart of great narrative, and it’s not as if <em>Game of Thrones</em> hasn’t indulged in it in the past. Yet here we are, wanting answers. Sometimes knowing what happens behind closed doors is worse than not knowing 100 percent for certain.</p>
<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/best-tv-shows-hbo-netflix-now">The 18 best TV shows airing right now</a></div>
<p>
<script src="//embed.vox.com/cardstack.js"></script>
</p>
<hr>
<h3>Watch: Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-482" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/4/12060310/game-of-thrones-finale-gregor-clegane-septa-unella-mountainEmily St. James2016-06-30T10:00:03-04:002016-06-30T10:00:03-04:00Game of Thrones’ High Sparrow didn’t rape, murder, or pillage. People hated him anyway.
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HKD8XcO55_HW3jy9-20Z3hNFkXY=/0x386:2098x1960/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49986867/sparrowblessing.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The High Sparrow will not be missed. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem wasn’t his religion. It was his judgment.</p> <p id="DrU233"><em>Each week throughout </em><strong><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones</a></strong><strong><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">’</a></strong> <em>sixth season, a handful of Vox's writers have gathered to discuss the latest episode — and now we’re doing the same with the finale. Before you dig in, check out </em><a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies">our recap of Sunday's episode</a><i>,</i><em> as well the archive of </em><em><strong><a href="http://www.vox.com/game-of-thrones-season-6">our entire discussion to date</a></strong></em><em>. Next up in our analysis of "The Winds of Winter" is deputy First Person editor Emmett Rensin.</em></p>
<p id="IUvnqA"><strong>Emmett Rensin: </strong>Green smoke from the Great Sept of Baelor: The High Sparrow is dead. His followers are dead. His church is gone. He picked the wrong faith for any hope of resurrection, and there’s nothing left to resurrect in any case. So much for the Mother’s mercy.</p>
<p id="jRjye2"><em>Game of Thrones</em> viewers hated the High Sparrow; the writers of weekly recaps even more so. While even Ramsay Bolton was eventually consigned to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/2/11564220/game-of-thrones-home-recap-ramsay-twist/in/11292403">"Well, we know he’s awful; it’s almost boring now"</a> status, the Sparrow regularly provoked fresh disdain. He was called sanctimonious, dangerous, hypocritical, and evil every time he appeared.</p>
<p id="FEDcq4">The loathing continued right through the end: Slate named the Sparrow the <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/06/06/game_of_thrones_episode_7_the_broken_man_the_high_sparrow_is_the_worst_person.html">worst person</a> in Westeros earlier this season, before calling Cersei’s annihilation of him "a reverse thriller, in which one roots for the evil plot to succeed." <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/game-of-thrones-season-finale-women-and-wildfire">The New Yorker</a> counts the moment when the Sparrow lights up "like the Nazi whose face melts off" among "the many great pleasures" of the finale.</p>
<p>Cersei still earns the episode’s "worst person" designation from Slate, but mainly by default, and with a <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/06/27/game_of_thrones_episode_10_the_winds_of_winter_cersei_is_the_worst_person.html">caveat</a>: She "murders the recent worst person in Westeros, the High Sparrow, and that’s great."</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ugBLQSPnAVmsmYgIJTAeZZpwmg8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6724653/sparrow.jpg">
<figcaption>
<em>Game of Thrones</em> killed one particular "bird" with a shit-ton of wildfire, and viewers rejoiced.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="nFvohb">Shame about the other victims, though.</p>
<p id="9JEftY">The High Sparrow made viewers uncomfortable. It wasn’t only that they hated him; hate, after all, is a pleasure in the world of <em>Game of Thrones</em>, and there wasn’t anything pleasurable about the Sparrow’s misdeeds. Viewers were <em>disgusted</em> by him, turned off, viscerally repelled in a way that not even Joffrey could manage.</p>
<p id="x4WZ1t">Why?</p>
<h3 id="m9EUEd">Evil in Westeros was always relative — until the High Sparrow came along</h3>
<p id="gJeI7k">It isn’t that the High Sparrow did not do evil things. He did. He subjected one woman to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/13/11642934/game-of-thrones-oathbreaker-cersei">a particularly brutal form of sexist public shaming</a> and very nearly did the same to another. He imprisoned a man for being gay and only spared him at the price of poverty and mutilation. His cult, if not routinely violent, was certainly menacing. But it is worth remembering that in the real world, we would find the Sparrow’s actions appalling; by the standards of Westeros, they’re rather tame.</p>
<p id="odr4Ff">Many<em> Game of Thrones</em> fans were willing to relativize their moral compass and to root for characters like Jaime (attempted child murderer), Olenna (successful child murderer), Tyrion (patricidal murderer and slavery enabler), Daenerys (mass murderer and crucifixion enthusiast), and Cersei (judging only by the season six finale, a terrorist, torture advocate, and mass murderer).</p>
<p>They felt no need to defend the less overtly odious Baratheons, Starks, or lesser houses at all — "It’s Westeros!" sufficed to justify their support of feudal aristocrats who routinely lead thousands of peasants to their deaths in order to secure the latest blood claim to this or that castle. At least the Starks are <em>extremely honorable</em> in their warmongering.</p>
<p id="t8f3eB">Viewers weren’t wrong to make those allowances. <em>Game of Thrones</em> is fiction, trivial fiction about dragons and ice zombies, and the point is entertainment, not swearing off every Ser Such-and-Such who commits an atrocity. But the High Sparrow received no such indulgence.</p>
<p>Despite his relatively restrained behavior, despite an earnest (if perhaps misguided) desire to empower the dispossessed of King’s Landing, despite having appeared perfectly content to merely feed those peasants before a myopic Cersei came along to turn him into a weapon, he received no sympathy. He was a hypocrite and a creep, more despised by modern viewers than the monsters who would gladly see those same peasants starve another winter, so long as they get to sit on the very best chair.</p>
<p id="O7uPdA">Again, why?</p>
<h3 id="2SZQgL">The problem wasn’t the High Sparrow’s religion. It was his judgment.</h3>
<p id="VB7ert">Yesterday, Ross Douthat made a similar case <a href="https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/747591456420921344">on Twitter</a>. "On the show and the books, [the High Sparrow] is an apparently sincere man of the people, one of the few commoners to play a political role in Westeros," he wrote. "He champions equality before law, redistribution of wealth—ideas far closer to liberal values than anything his antagonists support. It is impossible, based on the text, to imagine a Westeros ruled by the Faith Militant would be worse off than the Westeros we see."</p>
<p id="SAJGub">"My point," he concluded, "is just that it says something interesting about the story itself and (especially) our pop culture mavens that so many people identified with the privileged warmongering aristocrats in their struggle to crush the story’s lone popular uprising."</p>
<p id="9XvOIK">I suspect Douthat believes the answer is religion. Liberal consumers of premium television and the elites who write about it will forgive immense violence committed in the name of comprehensible self-interest, but will look to any excuse — the High Sparrow isn’t woke enough for 2016! — to resist the more alien motives of the faithful.</p>
<p id="wKXZ5x">But I don’t believe it’s quite that. <em>Game of Thrones</em> has its sympathetic faithful: Septon Ray seems noble, if naive, in his religious pacifism. The Brotherhood Without Banners has its boosters. Even Melisandre isn’t despised for her dedication to the Lord of Light. Most of the hate reserved for her is rooted in<strong> </strong>predictable loathing for women in fantasy, and even when her religion is condemned by viewers — say, because it leads her to <em>burn a child alive</em><em> </em>— it still finds more sympathy than the slightest leer from the High Sparrow.</p>
<p id="mLgYKK">Rather, I think disdain for the Sparrow comes from a cousin of religion: judgment, and particularly the judgment of anyone found less than perfect.</p>
<p id="jYdnrm">The High Sparrow was a hypocrite if he had any flaws at all, and since those flaws were easy enough to identify, the rest of his intentions could be safely ignored. Even the Sparrow’s good intentions became vile in their own way, suspect and typically written off as a mere rationalization for his purported sadism.</p>
<p>Did he look at Westeros and rightly see injustice? Did he look at the Lannisters and the Tyrells and see depravity? Sure, but he’s no saint, so the polite thing to do would be to shut up and play the game as basely as everyone else. That, at least, wouldn’t be so obnoxious. That, at least, would not make everyone so uncomfortable.</p>
<p id="vfhfP6">The High Sparrow was hated because we fear our fellow sinners less than we fear the naming of our sins. I say that in religious language, but I don’t need to: We don’t fear brutality and vengeance half as much as being found out as brutal and vengeful ourselves.</p>
<p>That disgust with the Sparrow, that visceral, gut-rolling discomfort beyond the ordinary fun of hating a fictional killer? That is the terror of a light turned too harshly, the question of whether, deep down, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, even if the person shaming you is just as imperfect as you are. <em>Especially</em> if they are as imperfect as you are.</p>
<p id="GzOlOo">I don’t go in much for the notion that we "learn" about faith or politics or life from television writers, much less for the idea that <em>Game of Thrones</em> is instructively "realistic." But we do learn from how a culture responds to its artifacts, and from the life and death of the High Sparrow we learned this: Hypocrisy is the first sin of the modern world, the one we can’t forgive, even in our suspension of disbelief.</p>
<p id="P21V4T">So as we prepare for the dumb, fun coming war between a zombie, an idiot, and two sociopaths, let us pour one out for the High Sparrow: the most honest monster we’ll ever get in that cruel world.</p>
<p id="R46z9M"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/29/12057510/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-cersei">Previous entry</a></p>
<hr>
<h3>Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div data-analytics-viewport="video" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-volume-id="8572" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-placement="article" id="volume-placement-3738" class="volume-video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/30/12055374/game-of-thrones-high-sparrow-dead-hypocrisyEmmett Rensin2016-06-29T13:40:02-04:002016-06-29T13:40:02-04:00Game of Thrones season 6 was good TV that shows why the series will never be great
<figure>
<img alt="Game of Thrones" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/voRsfMHF_jYsFAZ7uqpllLe6Xqo=/0x0:1771x1328/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49985579/danyboat.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption>Westeros, here we come! Right back where we started from! | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The latest batch of episodes has rendered much of what came before superfluous.</p> <p id="AcMOM5"><em>Each week throughout </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones’</a><em> sixth season, a handful of Vox's writers have gathered to discuss the latest episode — and now we’re doing the same with the finale. Before you dig in, check out </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies"><em>our recap of Sunday's episode,</em></a><em> as well the archive of </em><em><a href="http://www.vox.com/game-of-thrones-season-6">our entire discussion to date</a></em><em>. Next up in our analysis of "The Winds of Winter" is culture editor Todd VanDerWerff.</em></p>
<p id="5ATRfW"><strong>Todd VanDerWerff: </strong><em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Game of Thrones</a></em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">’</a> sixth season is the show’s best since its third, with a bullet.</p>
<p id="7YAuLX">In season six, the show regained the momentum that gradually leaked out of it over the course of seasons four and five, and finally clarified just where its story is headed. Seemingly, we’re watching a patriarchy crumble and be replaced by a government that’s run by women along with men who used to be outcasts, like Tyrion and Jon Snow. That’s a thrilling idea.</p>
<p id="01GFUs">But I can’t shake the feeling that season six also largely revealed that seasons four and five consisted mostly of busywork, of character arcs that could have been handled just as well in an episode or two, rather than across two seasons. That doesn’t diminish what season six accomplished, but it does make <em><a href="http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/index.html">Game of Thrones</a></em> feel less like a grand epic and more like a long sequence of stall tactics.</p>
<p id="1sIySI">The most obvious example of this (and one I’ve discussed before) is the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/17/11960470/game-of-thrones-arya-next-book-george-rr-martin">tale of Arya Stark</a>, who disappeared to Braavos for the better part of two seasons, acquired assassin skills, and has now returned to Westeros as a more deadly killer. But what changed about her core character? Nothing, really. She just got more proficient at murder. (There are some intriguing fan theories about her, but placing the burden of the story on a twist that takes place at its end is rarely a good thing.)</p>
<p id="kjN6GB">The same is true of just about everybody else on the show. Jaime and Brienne’s arcs for much of the past few seasons, for instance, seem to focus primarily on getting them out of King’s Landing so they can’t stop certain events from happening. (Cersei’s character development, for instance, needs an absent Jaime, mostly.) Dorne is a disaster of a story that seems to have no bearing on anything. And what was the point of Tyrion’s struggles with the slavers this season?</p>
<p id="hD9h6K"><em>Game of Thrones</em> is better than ever at delivering on big, powerful moments. I don’t know that the show will come up with another sequence as hypnotic and stunning as the opening of the season six finale, which paired <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1014697/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Ramin Djawadi</a>'s piano-heavy score with images of the characters preparing for a moment that would leave many of them dead.</p>
<p id="4WOt4r">But the stuff <em>between</em> those big, powerful moments feels more hand-wavy than it has in the past, as if everyone involved is saying, "I guess some stuff happens then, and eventually Arya stabs Walder Frey." The stabbing will be well done. The other stuff will feel like a leftover subplot<strong> </strong>from an earlier outline.</p>
<h3 id="fO7CUm">That hand-waving keeps <em>Game of Thrones</em> from joining the great TV pantheon</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U9navmykTGpiKlN0gu-9xFhIOWc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6598539/got6.7cersei.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Cersei, u r perfect 2 me.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ux8swk">This, I think, is what keeps <em>Game of Thrones</em> from joining the pantheon of great TV dramas. Compare it with something like <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Breaking Bad</a></em>, another series that knew how to blend important themes with pulpy thrills.</p>
<p id="P54hQ6"><em>Breaking Bad</em> really put a lot of effort into making you question absolutely every aspect of its central character’s life philosophies. By the time that show ended, you had retraced Walter White’s motivations again and again and again, analyzed what his journey said about how the show’s creators viewed life on this planet, and considered every possible impetus for why he did what he did. Even if you’re skeptical about the show (as I was toward its end), it’s hard to miss the thoughtfulness of its construction.</p>
<p id="13GSvh">We could also look at this another way, by focusing on the one <em>Game of Thrones </em>character whose journey has been relentlessly detailed at every juncture: Cersei Lannister. Like Walter White, she has some legitimate grievances (the patriarchy has kept her from being her best self) that she uses as a reason to commit incredibly evil acts, and like Walter White, she gradually loses her humanity.</p>
<p id="U6wtNl">And every step of Cersei’s journey is stunning. She’s a true antihero, in the Tony Soprano<strong> </strong>sense of the word, and between <em>Game of Thrones</em>’ writers and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0372176/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Lena Headey</a>'s performance (the best in the series), the show delivers whenever she’s onscreen. It’s not a coincidence that the opening I praised above is all about Cersei’s plan unfolding around her, nor is it a coincidence that most of season six is explicitly framed by the contrast between Cersei’s journey and Jon’s.</p>
<p id="uzZOo3">Once you get beyond those two characters, though, is there anyone else on this show whose journey hasn’t been beset for seasons at a time by the sense that the writers have just forgotten about them? Season six’s improvement, in some ways, may stem from how the writers increasingly just stopped writing story for characters who didn’t have it, which is why Sam and Littlefinger appeared in only a handful of episodes.</p>
<p id="vhWqG4">But Cersei’s arc makes me long for a <em>Game of Thrones</em> we’ll now never get, one that didn’t go full-tilt after big, impressive moments and instead stayed a little quieter, a little more character-focused, and a little more capable of greatness.</p>
<hr>
<h3>Watch: Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-4762" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/29/12057510/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-cerseiEmily St. James2016-06-28T15:39:00-04:002016-06-28T15:39:00-04:00Game of Thrones season 6 finale recap: the many deaths in “The Winds of Winter”
<figure>
<img alt="The Iron Throne" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0M_SjjaBfqKCGSNIU5ujVpOIbi8=/60x0:1860x1350/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49958705/game-of-thrones-poster_85627-1920x1200.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="v0NCuN">
<em>Spoilers follow for </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Game of Thrones</a> <em>season six, episode 10, </em><em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4283094/">"The Winds of Winter"</a></em>
</h3>
<p id="Y3nNlI"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/"><em>Game of Thrones</em></a><em> </em>concluded its sixth season with a bang, killing off a slew of long-running characters in locations spanning from King’s Landing to the Riverlands.</p>
<p id="ATMixt">While <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/19/11966220/game-of-thrones-season-6-battle-of-the-bastards-recap">"Battle of the Bastards"</a> had more onscreen deaths overall, due to the large number of military grunts who were killed, "The Winds of Winter" killed off far more <em>named</em> characters.</p>
<p id="LMCdO5">Indeed, fittingly for the longest episode of <em>Thrones </em>ever, more known characters died in this episode than in any previous one. The bulk of the casualties came in King’s Landing, where Cersei Lannister’s magical <a target="_blank" href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Wildfire">wildfire</a> bomb wiped out all of her rivals in the city —<strong> </strong>though the fallout ended up costing her her son as well.</p>
<p id="utqA7q">But Arya Stark was no piker, either — she managed to cross a big name off her list and get revenge for the Red Wedding in a particularly gross and fitting (and Shakespeare-inspired!) way.</p>
<p id="P0UArd">In retrospect, it appears that much of this<em> </em>sixth<em> </em>season was about clearing the decks of various supporting characters and storylines, to better set the stage for a final showdown among the true major players — Daenerys, Tyrion, Cersei, Jon, Arya, Sansa, Bran, and the White Walkers — in the (likely two) remaining seasons. Here’s a recap of who <em>won’t</em> be joining them.</p>
<h3 id="WAAJv6">1) Margaery Tyrell, her brother Loras, and her father Mace</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Margaery Tyrell is now queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Good for you, Margaery! (HBO)" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HzRrjYinQj7N9eiHfyVjNdaAJuM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3647444/marg.0.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
</figure>
<p id="5fSlt8">The Tyrell family has been a fantastic addition to the world of <em>Game of Thrones</em> since they became a political force in season two — kinder and less deeply disturbed than the Lannisters, but savvier and more ambitious than the Starks. "I want to be <em>the</em> queen," Natalie Dormer’s Margaery said back in then, and her family helped her achieve that aim — first flipping their allegiance from the Baratheons to the Lannisters, then murdering King Joffrey when he proved to be ungovernable, and finally winning over and marrying Joffrey’s far more pliable brother King Tommen.</p>
<p id="jZUENd">But Margaery was too successful at becoming "<em>the </em>queen" for her own good. Because once she managed to marginalize her main rival for that title — Cersei — the paranoid and embittered queen mother made a fateful decision to fight back by empowering the High Sparrow’s religious fanatics. Soon, Margaery’s brother Loras was imprisoned by the Faith for his homosexuality, and when Margaery perjured herself to cover it up, she was arrested, too.</p>
<p id="39Y51u">Even in prison, Margaery proved to be a savvy survivor, eventually making an alliance with the High Sparrow to free herself by convincing the king himself to convert. (Her own conversion appears to have been a temporary expediency rather than something sincerely felt.)</p>
<p id="vv3RH4">Again, though, Margaery apparently failed to imagine just how far Cersei would go to save her own skin until it was too late. As the Tyrells, the Sparrows, and various notables gathered in the S<span>ept of Baelor for Cersei’s trial, the queen mother detonated a cache of magical wildfire that the Mad King had hidden beneath the city long ago — killing, among many others, Margaery, Loras, and their lovable but oafish father Mace.</span></p>
<p id="eGBLEw">Farewell, Tyrells! As happens so often in <em>Game of Thrones</em>, your reasonableness couldn’t, in the end, defeat vicious ruthlessness and cruelty. However, we’re reminded that the most formidable Tyrell of all — Margaery’s grandmother, the Lady Olenna — departed the capital a few episodes back, and is now plotting with the Sand Snakes of Dorne and Varys out there to get revenge...</p>
<h3 id="6i3R3O">2) The High Sparrow, Brother Lancel Lannister, and a whole lot of other Sparrows (plus Uncle Kevan Lannister)</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H7-7xbXQ4HYeoV0u34Fns81CwC4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6706215/sparrow.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
</figure>
<p id="8EDP36">The other high-profile victims of Cersei’s wildfire bomb were, of course, Jonathan Pryce’s High Sparrow and the rest of the Faith Militant, who have dominated the politics of King’s Landing for the past two seasons.</p>
<p id="KN1djI">Cersei had hoped to use the Faith to eliminate her rivals, the Tyrells. But the High Sparrow — a nameless peasant — proved far more ambitious and dangerous than she anticipated. He wanted to purge King’s Landing of depravity, and his gaze naturally went straight to the top — to Cersei, whom he imprisoned and infamously forced to make a <a href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Walk_of_atonement">"walk of atonement"</a> through the streets last season.</p>
<p id="uTFaPZ">This year, the High Sparrow seemed more formidable than ever, as he won over both Queen Margaery and King Tommen to his side and preempted a Lannister /Tyrell attempt to depose him. But unfortunately for him, Cersei’s knowledge of the wildfire hidden beneath the Sept of Baelor proved to be her trump card. The explosion seems to effectively eliminate the Faith as a political force, but it remains unclear how the people of King’s Landing will react to this.</p>
<p id="7RCaqN">Shortly beforehand, Lancel Lannister — another character who’s been around since season one, first as King Robert’s squire, then as Cersei’s lover and King’s Landing comic relief, and then as a religious fanatic serving the High Sparrow — met a similar fate. Stabbed by a little bird after he discovers the wildfire stash, Lancel tries to avert the oncoming catastrophe by extinguishing the slowly melting candle that would trigger the explosion — but doesn’t make it in time and is burned to death. (Lancel’s father, Uncle Kevan Lannister, whom we never got to know all that well, also dies in the explosion.)</p>
<p id="0tMRIF">Meanwhile, Septa Unella — who infamously kept ringing the bell and yelling "shame!" during Cersei’s walk — seems to meet a fate worse than death. She’s now Cersei’s prisoner and subject to some sort of torture from the Mountain that we thankfully don’t get to see.</p>
<h3 id="HDFngd">3) Grand Maester Pycelle</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5hZwFZBALZcfvl944WMRj0RsAG0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6705067/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-24%20at%205.21.24%20PM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
</figure>
<p id="ZyJqYH">Poor Julian Glover. For six years, the actor was desperate for his character, Grand Maester Pycelle, to do more on <em>Game of Thrones </em>— he even <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/04/julian-glover-game-of-thrones-pycelle.html">came up with the idea</a> that Pycelle would be faking his infirmity, so he’d have more of an acting challenge. He got his way on that change but on nothing else, really — Pycelle was a doddering, ineffective fool to the end.</p>
<p id="zY8ZrM">And that end arrived this episode, when Qyburn’s child spies — the "little birds" who formerly worked for Varys — stabbed him to death shortly before the wildfire explosion. (In the books, it’s Varys himself who kills Pycelle at the end of <em>A Dance With Dragons</em>, but the show has rearranged things here.)</p>
<h3 id="Fjde04">4) King Tommen Baratheon</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AkeLAZkigeNzkB7DkhB7KXyJhew=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6705095/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-24%20at%205.25.24%20PM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
</figure>
<p id="wxAECs">If it was just everyone so far on this list who had died, Cersei would have been thrilled. But in <em>Thrones</em> things are never so easy, so of course, her play at mass murder leads inevitably to the death of her final remaining child, King Tommen, as well (fulfilling <a href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Maggy">that prophecy</a> a witch gave her during her childhood).</p>
<p id="BNeCRe">Tommen, who was unable to live with what Cersei had done and jumped out a window, is the third king on the Iron Throne to die during the course of the series, after his "father" Robert Baratheon in season one and his brother Joffrey in season four. After several seasons of Joffrey’s depravity, it was a nice change of pace for the various King’s Landing schemers to now have to deal instead with the kind but weak-willed Tommen.</p>
<p id="Qt0UmG">Indeed, Tommen got a lot of hate this season when he aligned with the Faith and turned against his mother. He meant well, though — the Faith had won enough support that it had to be accommodated, and the only alternative seemed to be mass slaughter. Cersei, of course, chose that alternative.</p>
<p id="CWGRod">And though Daenerys seems destined to take that chair soon enough, it's now Cersei who has succeeded Tommen in the short term, taking the Iron Throne for herself.</p>
<h3 id="KRNZq9">5) Walder Frey and two of his sons</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mr-nd6oo6efKtNkHCDHiPLRy5OI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6705075/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-24%20at%205.22.49%20PM.png">
<cite>HBO</cite>
</figure>
<p id="rJZV1V">Many chickens came home to roost this episode — and in one of its most shocking and unexpected twists, Arya Stark not only resurfaced in Westeros but exacted bloody revenge against the Frey family for her mother and brother’s murder at the Red Wedding.</p>
<p id="rWrKAs">Arya’s killing of Walder Frey is of course satisfying — as with Ramsay, one of the series’ most cruel and evil characters has gotten his comeuppance. But, far more gruesomely, she only takes out Walder <em>after</em> she has not only killed his two sons — <a href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Walder_Rivers">"Black Walder"</a> (who killed Catelyn Stark) and <a href="http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Lothar_Frey">Lothar</a> (who killed Robb Stark’s pregnant wife Talisa) — <em>but baked their corpses into pies and served them to him</em>!</p>
<p id="yTWjJr">This gruesome bit of involuntary cannibalism is an adaptation of something that happens under very different circumstances in <em>A Dance With Dragons </em>— there, the Northern lord Wyman Manderly <a href="http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Frey_Pies/Theories">is heavily implied</a> to have baked three Frey sons into pies and served them to Freys and Boltons feasting at Winterfell.</p>
<p id="sBxu9Z">But with that, George R.R. Martin was <em>himself</em> making a reference to <a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=titus&Act=5&Scene=3&Scope=scene">Shakespeare’s infamous and incredibly gory revenge play <i>Titus Andronicus</i></a>, in which the title character gets revenge for crimes against his family by killing his enemy Queen Tamora’s two sons, baking them into pies, and feeding them to her before killing her too. Here’s the scene <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25GLxOafMks&t=6m43s">in Julie Taymor’s filmed version</a>:</p>
<div id="CRfDPV">
<div>
<div style="left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe style="top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/25GLxOafMks?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1&start=403"></iframe></div>
</div>
</div>
<p id="lwUlNb">Titus proclaims: "Why, there they are both, baked in that pie / Whereof their mother daintily hath fed / Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred." Those Braavosi players would have a blast with this material.</p>
<h3 id="lIOn9I"></h3>
<hr>
<h3>Watch: Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-8866" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-piesAndrew Prokop2016-06-28T14:09:00-04:002016-06-28T14:09:00-04:00Game of Thrones season 6 finale: Cersei has nothing left to lose now — that’s terrifying
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U6z7N0eaN0HoyGyKfI5aj3Xlh4c=/0x6:2100x1581/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49965889/cerseinonthrone.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Cersei is just getting started. | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="sMyx4t"><em>Each week throughout </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones’</a><em> sixth season, a handful of Vox's writers have gathered to discuss the latest episode — and now we’re doing the same with the finale. </em><i>Before you dig in, check out <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies">our recap of Sunday's episode</a>, as well the archive of <a href="http://www.vox.com/game-of-thrones-season-6">our entire discussion to date</a>. First up in our analysis of "The Winds of Winter" is culture writer Alex Abad-Santos.</i></p>
<p id="OfwnDt"><strong>Alex Abad-Santos: </strong>At the end of <em>Game of Thrones</em>’ season six finale, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies">"The Winds of Winter,"</a> Daenerys Targaryen cuts an imposing figure. She has her army. She has her fleet of ships. She has her dragons. Dany can taste the cold, dry metal of the Iron Throne.</p>
<p id="eH3hRL">But my money isn’t on her. It’s on Cersei.</p>
<p id="ONWtH5">Cersei has two pivotal experiences in the finale. The first is that she gets rid of the only woman in Westeros who knows what she is capable of. The last look on Margaery Tyrell’s face says it all — she knows she's been outplayed, outsmarted. She knows she underestimated Cersei.</p>
<p id="gn6OXd">The second, and more important, turning point is that Cersei loses her nephew-child Tommen, and with him any semblance of humanity. In a very ride-or-die moment, Tommen just virgin-suicides himself out of a window after finding out his wife, the High Sparrow, and a bunch of other important people had just involuntarily attended a wildfire barbecue.</p>
<p id="NoFlsi">Tommen was the model of an inconsequential <em>Game of Thrones </em>character, but to Cersei he was the only thing keeping her human. And now (or rather, a year or so from now, when season seven starts), we’ll see what a merciless Cersei means for Westeros.</p>
<p id="PUNhTy">I don’t totally believe that Cersei is a pure sociopath, though I could be convinced: In keeping with that prophecy she heard so many years ago<strong>, </strong>Joffrey, Myrcella, and now Tommen are dead. They’re her excuse for revenge, and revenge thrills her to the bone. Cersei sees avenging their deaths as love; everyone else sees it as opportunity for Cersei to let go and be her true self.</p>
<p id="TiV432">That’s believable.</p>
<p id="0POwxv">What I’m more certain of is that "The Winds of Winter" marked the end of Cersei’s humanity. Tommen, Joffrey, and to some extent Myrcella were the only thing keeping Cersei in check and preventing her from going "full Cersei" on her enemies. She is a cunning, intelligent woman, and when her children were alive, she knew full well that her actions could result in repercussions against them. There was always this sense that she was holding back, because it'd be in their best interests. Whether that counts as love depends on how you read Cersei.</p>
<p id="dWPeIg">But now she has nothing left except for Jaime. And with no one else who she’s directly responsible for, there’s no telling what she’s capable of or the lengths she will go to (in battle or as a ruler) to see her will be done. The look on Jaime’s face when he returns to King’s Landing — a mixture of shock and fear — signals that he knows hell is coming.</p>
<p id="Cn8DLd">It’s fitting that all this happens in the same episode where Dany says goodbye to her Bae of Dragons, Daario. Dany knows Daario will make her vulnerable, and there’s a painful symmetry between Dany and Cersei. Dany talks about her weaknesses, that it’s impossible to act in your own best interests when you have someone else to think about. Cersei has just lived through it.</p>
<p id="WCbNjI">And now this finale has all but set up a clash of these queens in season seven.</p>
<p id="c6NA09"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies" style="font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, ">Read the recap</a>.</p>
<hr>
<h3>Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div data-analytics-viewport="video" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-volume-id="8572" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-placement="article" id="volume-placement-7271" class="volume-video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/27/12037490/game-of-thrones-season-6-finale-cerseiAlex Abad-Santos2016-06-27T09:49:00-04:002016-06-27T09:49:00-04:008 winners and 7 losers from Game of Thrones’ giant-sized finale
<figure>
<img alt="Game of Thrones" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gGb4QhXfqNyyJ44w95MhxlC71OA=/0x0:1798x1349/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49959441/gotfinaledanytyrion.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>We’re goin’ to Westeros! | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Winner: Cersei Lannister. Loser: Cersei Lannister.</p> <p id="2mhJCy"><em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Game of Thrones</a></em>’ season six finale<em>, </em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4283094/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">"The Winds of Winter,"</a> is a surprisingly muted episode of television for one that seemingly kills off <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12027556/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-deaths-wildfire-frey-pies">half the show’s cast</a>.</p>
<p id="eDZuNu">Wildfire explodes, Cersei takes the Iron Throne, Jon Snow’s parentage is confirmed, and Dany heads for Westeros (finally), but the whole hour feels rather like an introduction to the <em>real</em> action. Indeed, everything after the destruction of the sept of Baelor feels rather like the show immediately launched into the season seven premiere.</p>
<p id="AkyV3z">This isn’t a bad thing. <em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones</a></em> is all momentum now, and any time it stops to reflect is time to realize that much of its plot doesn’t make sense anymore, and its characters are defined almost solely by what other characters tell us about them. (Notice how hard the show works to convince us that Dany and Daario were in love, when they’ve barely shared scenes together in ages.) So simply plowing ahead with the story might have been the best call.</p>
<p id="8lFBBm">But the resulting episode was, like the season preceding it, heavy on incident and light on meaning. Yes, the hour was pretty remarkable at times. But <em><a href="http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones">Game of Thrones</a></em> still used to be a show wrapped in rich themes, and now it’s pretty much one where characters shuffle from place to place, while the series tries to figure out where they’ll be when the endgame begins.</p>
<p id="ajeAgX">If that sounds rather critical, I still had a lot of fun watching this episode, enough fun to name more winners and losers than usual. As such, here are eight winners and seven losers from "The Winds of Winter."</p>
<h3 id="DUFuik">Winner 1: Cersei Lannister</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U9navmykTGpiKlN0gu-9xFhIOWc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6598539/got6.7cersei.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Cersei will have her revenge.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="3ybEZ4">By almost any measure, Cersei rules this episode. She perfectly executes her plan to smite all of her enemies, particularly the High Sparrow and Margaery. (Only Olenna isn’t present when Cersei reduces the sept to rubble.)</p>
<p id="TYXwyP">She essentially decimates both House Tyrell and the Faith. And she even ascends to the Iron Throne, though under tragic circumstances (more on that in a bit). If Lena Headey is considering Emmy tapes, well, she should stop. This episode is all she needs.</p>
<p id="uEe1Zt">If there’s one reason to hesitate when it comes to proclaiming Cersei a winner, though, it’s how <i>Game of Thrones</i> has effectively placed her in the role of the horrible villain who must be defeated, just in time to take over for Ramsay.</p>
<p id="hhpfOn">She’s certainly a better character than Ramsay, and a more interesting one, but it seems like the show is building to some sort of meeting between Dany and Jon, and she’ll probably just be the way of that.</p>
<p id="CYPyYe">Still, it’s not hard to be a little swept away by how Cersei was reduced to nothing, then got her revenge in seemingly record time. If she had to endure some losses along the way, so be it. But she’s got the full weight of the Seven Kingdoms behind her now, <em>and</em> she’s seemingly made everybody comfortable with the idea of a queen on that throne, an idea Dany may later thank her for.</p>
<h3 id="h4hzZt">Winner 2: Jon Snow</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3xyGLLVC8Ul7khN5h_90b2zOcZw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710105/gotfinaledavos.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>He does, however, get to work with Davos, and that seems fun.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="uHE8yD">The episode ends with a very clear set of parallels among Jon, Cersei, and Daenerys. <i>Game of Thrones</i> has carefully built up all three characters’ leadership styles, and now, we’re going to see which of them holds the greatest sway over the people.</p>
<p id="u1qqyj">In terms of advantages, Jon has the least of any of the three. Cersei has the full weight of an entire kingdom, while Daenerys has a bunch of ships, a large army, and three dragons.</p>
<p id="jFsWor">Jon has the fierce loyalty of a few people. But, hey, they really, <em>really</em> like him, and on <em>Game of Thrones</em>, that’s often enough.</p>
<p id="QsoJH7">What’s interesting is how the show seems really invested in convincing us Jon is the King in the North, when its other two major rulers are women, and Sansa has as legitimate a claim to the kingdom as anybody. (None of them know <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12029644/winds-of-winter-recap-jon-snow-parents">Jon’s true parentage</a>, after all.)</p>
<p id="OUNwD6">To some degree, this is because Sansa doesn’t think she should rule just yet. However, it feels like the tight bond between Sansa and Jon might fray around this central question. We’ll see.</p>
<h3 id="eNBHei">Winner 3: Daenerys Targaryen and her ragtag band of misfits</h3>
<p id="pMYvQw">Did Daenerys and everybody stop off in Dorne to pick up Varys? Does this mean that the Sand Snakes and Olenna are #TeamDany now? Do we know why the four characters in that final shot of Dany, Tyrion, Missendei, and Varys were chosen?</p>
<p id="Ur7AYG">It doesn’t matter. It’s just nice to see Dany on her way over to Westeros after <em>six seasons</em> of bluster.</p>
<p id="DytJrX">I couldn’t tell you what this season’s Dany story was supposed to accomplish for her, beyond her acquiring an entire Dothraki horde as her army (and striking an alliance with the Greyjoys), but I’m glad we’re getting this show on the road.</p>
<p><span>Plus: That shot of the dragons swooping and dancing among the ships was <i>Game of Thrones</i> at its epic best. It's hard not to be at least a <i>little</i> excited.</span></p>
<p id="4ZrUGa">My theory is that the newly banished Melisandre will bump into Jorah next season, cure his greyscale, and allow herself to hear the good news of #TeamDany. It’s what the Lord of Light wants.</p>
<h3 id="zYKAmw">Winner 4: Samwell Tarly, maester in training</h3>
<p id="q03Ywo">The shot of Sam staring longingly at the gigantic library at Hightower went on so long that a friend messaged me to ask if he was about to be stabbed. But, no, it was just a really long shot of Sam smiling while he looked at a gigantic library.</p>
<p id="gseCQ9">That said, I don’t blame him. That library looks like a pretty great place, and I presume that we’re leaving off with him in the same way we left off with Bran a couple of seasons ago. The next time we see him, he’ll probably be incredibly knowledgeable in all sorts of mystical arts. At the very least, he did a fine job of bullshitting his way into the place when the maesters’ reception desk hadn’t even <em>heard</em> about Jeor’s death.</p>
<p id="w9Bnlf">Meanwhile, he’s going to have to find somewhere for Gilly and young Sam to hang out. No women and children in the library! (Maybe Queen Cersei will have something to say about that.)</p>
<h3 id="QLTihH">Winner 5: Arya, more or less</h3>
<p id="wQmGQR">Walder Frey was an intriguing loose end on a show that has a habit of lopping off loose ends as a matter of course. It was clear he would die at some point; the question was simply who would deliver the killing blow. When Jaime more or less wrote off the old coot by insulting him and walking away, it left an opening for the Stark you’d most expect to kill Walder: Arya.</p>
<p id="MZQFEV">In the post-episode discussion from <i>Game of Thrones</i> showrunners <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1125275/?ref_=nv_sr_1">David Benioff</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1888967/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">D.B. Weiss</a>, the two tried to portray this as a sign of just how far gone Arya is, how troubling it is that she’s the kind of stone-cold murderer who would feed a man pies containing the body parts of his own sons. (Maybe she saw <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408236/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Sweeney Todd</a></em> recently.) But I find it hard to get too worked up over Arya killing Freys. Maybe if she stalks and kills Jaime we can talk.</p>
<p id="OEyJBK">Anyway, it seems like Arya is taking over a lot of the story that would have gone to the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/11/11881374/game-of-thrones-lady-stoneheart">sadly-not-adapted Lady Stoneheart</a>. That means the sorts of wild fan theories that greeted the books-only character are now attaching themselves to Arya, so I guess we have that to look forward to.</p>
<h3 id="32haxV">Winner 6: Whomever came up with R + L = J</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Qa1l1nsYvq9ADciGKF55acDNndE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710089/gotfinalebran.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Bran’s impressed too.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="cX6MIC">Long, long ago, some brave internet theorist came up with the idea that Jon Snow’s parents must have been Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, and that Ned had raised Jon as his own bastard, because he knew Robert would kill the boy if he heard tell of the kid’s royal blood. Others have embellished upon this basic framework over the years, but it’s long been perhaps the most popular fan theory about the books.</p>
<p id="6O9CWm">And it’s true! Just like everybody guessed, Jon is the child of Rhaegar and Lyanna. Good work to you, internet commenter. You figured it out!</p>
<p id="hEFTo3">For now, only Bran knows this truth (or maybe he’ll tell Meera), but it seems like he’s not too far from Winterfell. He can let Jon in on all of these secrets the next time the two see each other, which will probably be in the season seven finale, given how time works on this show.</p>
<h3 id="I4pso7">Winner 7: Director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0764601/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Miguel Sapochnik</a>
</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aT05Ey26sjHcnsiwX9HIJ_HfhSU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710091/gotfinaleponies.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Lookit all the pretty ponies.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="NQfzBf">Sapochnik has a strong claim to winning an Emmy for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4283088/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_4">"Battle of the Bastards,"</a> but his work on "The Winds of Winter" is just as impressive, thanks to his use of muted colors, wide shots, and a deliberate pace that only enhances the tension in moments like the one where everybody is waiting for Cersei to blow up the city. His choice to hold on the window as Tommen strode out of frame, then right back in to pitch himself out of it, was masterful.</p>
<p id="Ay9AH4">This episode is full of dark moments that the characters can’t take back, and Sapochnik matches that with gorgeous shadows and a distant camera that suggests some of these characters are unknowable to us now. (Check out how he gradually pulls us back from Cersei throughout the episode. Even her close-ups aren’t as close.)</p>
<p id="iVfp6v">Also, he keeps framing Jon and Sansa in a way that seems meant to directly nod toward Ned and Catelyn Stark, and I don’t know what to do with that information.</p>
<h3 id="gjIqXP">Winner 8: Lady Lyanna Mormont</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O6GL4Gnl0Tv54uRn-qsizcrucek=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710093/gotfinalelyanna.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Hero child.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="DE7Lzz">Lady Lyanna is by far the best character <i>Game of Thrones</i> introduced this season, and I hope she lives forever.</p>
<h3 id="hVREzB">Loser 1: Cersei Lannister</h3>
<p id="qqrsoH">Sure, Cersei got everything she always wanted, but at a terrible cost. She’s now lost all of her children (after Tommen took the dive out the window), and even Jaime seems a little terrified of her at this point.</p>
<p id="nwjv58">All of that might be okay if she had somehow held onto whatever little bits of soul she had left, but she also sicced a zombie rapist on Septa Unella, the nun who guided her long walk of shame last season. On a show that has done an admirable job of pulling back on its sexual violence this season after everybody complained about it last season, that moment was... a little much (to put it mildly).</p>
<p id="WmU3OC">In short, Cersei might be a short-term winner, but she’s still losing the game in the long run. She doesn’t have many valuable allies left, while Dany and Jon are accumulating them left and right. Next season should be very interesting for her.</p>
<h3 id="rE2IWT">Loser 2: All of House Tyrell</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ws78xGNnlMdeGIvZyGU6haTKWpg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710097/gotfinalemargtom.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>In happier times.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="TIg5B6">I’ll be honest. Margaery Tyrell’s death might be one of the most shocking deaths on the show in several seasons.</p>
<p id="S0ZjHm">It’s not that the plot <em>needed</em> her around. She was mostly just a foil for Cersei. But it seemed like she was protected by all of the relationships she had with various characters and the way she seemed integral to a variety of plots.</p>
<p id="DrcnLc">I guess not. House Tyrell is pretty much done for at this point. Yes, there are remnants of it back in Highgarden, and Olenna is out there to plot her revenge (which will hopefully prove effective), but the Tyrells as we know and love them are effectively over, burned away in a haze of green wildfire.</p>
<h3 id="LW7gAo">Loser 3: House Frey</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DKgFrmFKAR8kjXncnPOxMG2dlCw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710099/gotfinalewalder.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Unsurprising death.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Vp6xpp">This, however, was not surprising at all. If you had told me after the Red Wedding that Arya would kill and bake two Frey boys into a pie, then stab Walder after revealing what she had done, I would have said, "Sure! Sounds about right!" That didn’t make it any less satisfying.</p>
<h3 id="MPguoc">Loser 4: Sansa and Littlefinger</h3>
<p id="TLjApi">The North is Sansa’s to claim. All she has to do is tell Jon that she wants to. But she stands aside, in rather atypical Sansa fashion, then actually apologizes to him for not telling him that Littlefinger might be coming. We can debate the ethics of Sansa telling or not telling Jon about that development, but it’s absolutely the sort of thing you don’t apologize for after the fact. You just act like it was always meant to happen.</p>
<p id="20nSgS">Even worse off is Littlefinger, who insists that he will sit upon the Iron Throne, with Sansa as his queen, only to be quietly rebuffed. And yet as Jon is acclaimed the King in the North, Sansa shares a meaningful glance with ol’ Petyr Baelish, one that makes me think we haven’t seen the last of this plot.</p>
<p id="ljgwIK">In general, Littlefinger strikes me as a character who will die next season. He just wants the Iron Throne too much to ever have it. I finally understand why people felt irritated by Anne Hathaway’s Oscar campaign a few years ago.</p>
<h3 id="kpKwXk">Loser 5: Daario</h3>
<p id="HkVCFH">The vast majority of scenes in "The Winds of Winter" consisted of certain storylines being closed off, and me saying to myself, "Well, I guess that story is over." Such was the case with Daario, whom the show worked hard to convince us was Dany’s true love, even though it never seemed at all interested in this.</p>
<p id="LCnSrl">Daario wanders off and out of the plot. I’m sure <i>Game of Thrones</i> will eventually find some way to wrap him back in for the final battle, but I think I agree with Tyrion when he says that leaving <span>Daario behind</span><span> is not, ultimately, a great loss in Dany's pursuit of being queen.</span></p>
<p id="ZSeoWA">Now we get to figure out whom Dany will find the most advantageous husband. Even money’s on Jon, but you never know.</p>
<h3 id="sGA9dG">Loser 6: The Seven Kingdoms’ postal service</h3>
<p id="7K2kBB">Now that everybody seemingly travels everywhere via a teleportation service, you’d think important documents would no longer be sent by ravens, which can be shot down or even just get lost. But no! Everybody in the Seven Kingdoms is poorly informed because their mail is delivered by birds. <em>Actual birds</em>.</p>
<h3 id="2YAHU7">Loser 7: Fans of the books</h3>
<div class="align-right">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Game of Thrones" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/juI1ahrilesGQiLMQCxjOofxoXs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6710103/gotfinalesparrow.jpg">
<cite>HBO</cite>
<figcaption>Probably the Sparrows won’t be that important to the endgame.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="227duh">As George R.R. Martin has greatly complicated the world of his books and his cast of characters, it’s been tempting to think he’s either writing himself into corners he can’t get out of or creating an epic tale that has grown far, far beyond its original trappings of Starks vs. Lannisters.</p>
<p id="E7mV95">But the longer <i>Game of Thrones </i>is on the air, the more clear it becomes that the endgame in the books must be some version of... Starks vs. Lannisters, with a Daenerys wild card thrown in. We know that Benioff and Weiss know, more or less, how the books are planned to end. And now we know that they feel they can largely remove certain characters from the narrative (like, say, all of the Tyrells) without affecting where things are headed.</p>
<p id="X4IF9m">Yes, the ending of the show will probably be very different from the ending of the books. But <span>Benioff and Weiss are</span> likely going to paint with the same shades, and as the show gradually winnows its cast down to the Lannisters, Starks, and Dany, it seems all the more apparent that the books will travel in the same direction. The huge sprawl of the books, in the end, seems like a kind of distraction.</p>
<h3 id="yXV1XX">Agree? Disagree? Join me in comments at noon Eastern to discuss this episode and other cultural topics. I’ll be there for 90 minutes.</h3>
<p id="WpQUQD">And answer my question for you: <strong>Who will sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the series? </strong>I’ll give you my answer in comments!</p>
<div class="vox-cardstack"><a href="http://www.vox.com/cards/best-tv-shows-hbo-netflix-now/game-of-thrones-hbo">Game of Thrones: Yes, HBO's hit is tired. But it's still fun to watch.</a></div>
<p>
<script src="//embed.vox.com/cardstack.js"></script>
</p>
<hr>
<h3>Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-9991" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12036976/game-of-thrones-finale-recap-winds-of-winter-cersei-wildfire-freyEmily St. James2016-06-26T22:12:38-04:002016-06-26T22:12:38-04:00Game of Thrones just revealed Jon Snow’s real parents
<figure>
<img alt="jon snow sad" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iP7p9wKLuvsfy_2bg5ytIxaBmwM=/71x0:570x374/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49958765/kit-harington-sad-jon-snow-game-of-thrones.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Jon Snow shows emotions, but I don't feel any! | HBO</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3>
<em>This whole post is full of spoilers for the </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6"><em>latest season of </em></a><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11528362/hbo-game-of-thrones-season-6">Game of Thrones</a>,<em> so please turn away if you are the kind of person who is bothered by that.</em>
</h3>
<p id="7Cdvax">Bran Stark's latest vision in <i>Game of Thrones</i>' season six finale "The Winds of Winter" finally reveals what superfans of George R.R. Martin's <i>A Song of Ice and Fire</i> have long suspected: Jon Snow is not Ned Stark’s bastard son at all. He’s Ned's nephew — the son of Ned's late sister Lyanna Stark, and of Rhaegar Targaryen, Daenerys’s older brother.</p>
<p id="czk00g">Clues to this effect have been sprinkled hither and yon throughout the vast backstory revealed in Martin's novels, and the theory — known as R+L=J — is sufficiently accepted in the fandom that the show’s revelations hardly count as spoilers. Nonetheless, there is a difference between a widely believed theory and a confirmed one, and the latter is what we now seem to have.</p>
<p id="6yBtis">Within the fiction itself, meanwhile, this revelation significantly changes our understanding of several different aspects of the story. For one, it establishes Jon as a potentially legitimate claimant to the Iron Throne. It also establishes a Targaryen heritage for Jon, which may let him wield dragons or fire immunity in whatever action is to come in future episodes. But it also <em>undermines</em> Jon’s claims to leadership in the North, and most of all it undermines our <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/23/11742992/game-of-thrones-the-door-recap-review-starks" target="_blank">Stark-centric view</a> of the backstory to the entire series.</p>
<h3 id="5lueHu">A short history of Robert’s Rebellion</h3>
<p id="EF8CCE">As you may recall, when <i>Game of Thrones</i> begins, Robert Baratheon sits on the Iron Throne, assisted by his younger brothers Renly and Stannis on the Small Council. Jon Arryn, lord of the Vale, has served for years as hand of the king but is now dead, and King Robert is asking his old friend Ned Stark to take over for him while Viserys Targaryen lives in exile, dreaming of retaking a throne that is rightfully his.</p>
<p id="lE4JDl">This all comes about due to an epochal event known as Robert’s Rebellion.</p>
<p id="38cxsQ">The history of this rebellion has been taught to us by the winners, and it goes like this:</p>
<ul id="236cKM">
<li>Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark were living in the Aerie under the tutelage of Jon Arryn as fosters.</li>
<li id="pZOv9o">Robert was engaged to marry Ned’s sister Lyanna. </li>
<li id="b9VK2B">Rhaegar kidnapped Lyanna, and Rhaegar’s father — King Aerys II — had Ned’s father and his older brother killed when they complained about it.</li>
<li id="XBkIWZ">Aerys then demanded that Arryn hand Ned and Robert over to him. Arryn refused, and led Houses Arryn, Stark, and Baratheon in a successful rebellion that House Tully joined after both Ned and Jon were engaged to Hoster Tully’s daughters. House Lannister joined at the last minute. </li>
<li id="lSZcvP">Robert took over as king because he was a distant Targaryen cousin, appointed his mentor Jon Arryn to serve as hand, and married Cersei Lannister to further cement the alliance. </li>
</ul>
<p id="yqCns7">At the end of the war, as previously seen, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/5/8/11566614/game-of-thrones-jon-snow-parents-recap">Ned and Howland Reed fight Ser Arthur Dayne</a> outside the Tower of Joy to find Lyanna but she does not survive the war.</p>
<p id="7kiDvD">Ned then returns to Winterfell with a baby, Jon Snow, who he presented to the world as his bastard son and raised among his trueborn children. Ned never told Jon or anyone else who his mother was. What we see in this episode is that Lyanna was pregnant during the war and gave birth to a child — presumably Rhaegar’s son — shortly before dying. <em>This</em> is the baby that Ned brought back with him to Winterfell. Not his son, but his nephew.</p>
<h3 id="0QdVFU">Why would Ned lie about all this?</h3>
<p id="OsUAJ3">Well, way back in season one we see Ned and Robert — who are close friends and political allies, let's recall — arguing about whether they should assassinate Daenerys way off in distant Essos. Robert, you see, believes that any surviving Targaryen child is a mortal threat to his regime. Ned believes that murdering children is wrong and they should let Daenerys be.</p>
<p id="msNDI6">Also recall that, as has been mentioned several times in Dorne-related plots, upon joining the rebels the Lannisters sacked King's Landing and immediately murdered the two Targaryen children they could find.</p>
<p id="C3zlj7">Ned and Lyanna would both know, in other words, that the new regime could never allow Rhaegar's son to survive. Ned, not wanting to murder his nephew, came up with the idea of simply pretending that he's not Rhaegar's son. He would, instead, claim Jon as his <em>own </em>son by some unknown woman and then raise him among his family up north.</p>
<p id="PyCCox">But now, years later, Jon's Targaryen blood would seem to set him up for something to do with dragons and perhaps a bid to sit on the Iron Throne as part of his larger mission to save the human race.</p>
<h3 id="hDzUNV">What are the implications of R+L=J?</h3>
<p id="jpUCcm">One set of implications relates to the politics of the North.</p>
<p id="VG8Agz">Here Sansa, by law, ought to be Ned’s heir now that all his sons are dead. But the fact that Jon is a man and has been widely known in the North for years as Ned Stark’s son, combined with the fact that he leads an army, has given him a strong de facto claim to political authority. If he’s actually Ned’s sister’s son, then his claim goes from questionable to garbage.</p>
<p id="q2FGlt">On the other hand, it turns out Jon might have a decent claim to the Iron Throne.</p>
<p id="5T0lex">The son of Aerys’s son Rhaegar should have a legally superior claim to Rhaegar’s little sister Daenerys.</p>
<p id="WXpAYV">It’s true that Jon is, as far as we know, a bastard. But it’s also true that Targaryens practiced plural marriage, and for all we know Rhaegar and Lyanna were legally married — at least in Targaryen eyes.</p>
<p id="CceRbB">And regardless of the legal details, if Jon has Targaryen blood in his veins that may mean he has Targaryen superpowers, including immunity to fire and the ability to ride dragons. That’s the sort of thing that could come in hand when fighting an army of ice monsters. Conveniently, there’s longstanding speculation that the hot springs that keep Winterfell inhabitable have something to do with a dragon or dragon’s eggs in the crypts beneath the castle.</p>
<h3 id="BeRYiV">If Ned’s story about Jon isn’t true, what else isn’t true?</h3>
<p id="J45nFb">That’s an excellent question.</p>
<p id="fZB6jn">Basically everyone in a position to know — Varys, Jamie, Doran Martell, etc. — agrees that Aerys II was a bad king, and the part of Robert’s Rebellion where he overreacts and makes everything worse by threatening to kill Robert and Ned makes sense.</p>
<p id="R7eB6p">But everyone who worked alongside <em>Rhaegar</em> seems to think he was an all-around good guy and remembers him well. Why would he kidnap the daughter of one of the most important lords of the realm, who happened to be betrothed to one of the other Great Lords of the realm and whose foster father was a third Great Lord? That’s awfully impulsive.</p>
<p id="NYzdiC">What if Lyanna ran off with Rhaegar out of true love, despite her betrothal to Robert? That would change the narrative somewhat. What's more, though arranged marriages are certainly par for the course among the Westerosi nobility, there's no good reason for the Starks to have preferred a match with Robert Baratheon to one with the heir apparent to the Iron Throne.</p>
<p id="kBsmvR">Unless, that is, the intertwined network of houses Baratheon, Arryn, Stark, and Tully that ultimately brought down the Targaryens was conspiring to overthrow the ruling house since <em>before</em> the alleged abduction. This is the <a href="http://towerofthehand.com/blog/2012/01/05-southron-ambitions/">"Southron Ambitions"</a> theory, which is much broader and less specifically grounded in the text than the core R+L=J theory.</p>
<p id="pa1s82">According to Southron Ambitions, Mad King Aerys was much less paranoid (though no less brutal) than his "official" portrayal, and was combating a very genuine threat to his rule that existed long before the specific Lyanna crisis. At a minimum, Southron Ambitions posits a "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you" view of Aerys's downfall.</p>
<hr>
<h3>Watch: Game of Thrones' time travel, explained</h3>
<div class="volume-video" id="volume-placement-7800" data-volume-placement="article" data-analytics-placement="article:middle" data-volume-id="8572" data-volume-uuid="61b111db2" data-analytics-label="Game of Thrones' time travel, explained | 8572" data-analytics-action="volume:view:article:middle" data-analytics-viewport="video"></div>
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/26/12029644/winds-of-winter-recap-jon-snow-parentsMatthew Yglesias