Every Game of Thrones season finale has a tough act to follow: the ninth episode drops a bombshell on the audience, and it’s left to the final installment to pick up the pieces and set up the action for next year. Usually, the best this kind of episode can do is make viewers forget it’s doing a lot of dramatic grunt work, making up for a lack of water-cooler chat fodder with good writing and quick transitions between characters. “Mhysa” had plenty of both, but also felt excellent by the show’s typical standards, picking up where “The Rains of Castamere” left off and exploring the Red Wedding’s implications, both personal and political. … Read More

So: this was it. If you’re a book reader, this was the episode you’ve been waiting for since the day Game of Thrones came on the air. If you’re not a book reader, this is the episode your book-reader friends haven’t shut up about since the series became a hit. And now that everyone’s had a few hours to accept that, yes, the last ten minutes of that episode really did happen, it’s time to process just what makes “The Rains of Castamere” so significant beyond mere shock value. … Read More

The best and worst part of a show whose moral is that there’s no such thing as traditional morals is that characters we’ve come to know as basically good (or at least complex) end up on opposite sides by circumstance alone. We’ve already seen this through Game of Thrones’ famous odd couples — Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister’s conversations at Harrenhal, for example, or the growing relationship between Jaime and Brienne. “Second Sons” brings this point home with its emotional centerpiece: Tyrion and Sansa’s wedding, which gathers together the King’s Landing power players in one unhappy mess of rivalries and disappointments. … Read More