An incredibly strong theme and direction make this not just the best episode of Game of Thrones this season, but one of the strongest episodes in recent memory.
NOTE: I haven't read the books. I don't care.
High Sparrow was great. Really great. After season five fired the engine coals up last week, the third episode in the season opened the throttle and gunned it for the cliffs. We spend just enough time with each set of characters to justify their inclusion, and all of them are given poignant moments of decision to ensure their actions will come to affect the fate of the world as a whole. Beautifully written and entertainingly shot, this is probably my favourite episode of Game of Thrones for a long time.
There's one, long, obvious theme that runs through every scene in High Sparrow, tying every subplot and character to one another: identity. So many characters are forced to confront, decide or come to terms with their own notions of self-worth that it almost seems a little on the head or over-the-top at times. Gwendoline Christie steals the episode's early scenes with a fantastic monologue, showing how Brienne of Tarth came to be a knight, and giving her an emotional resonance and depth she hasn't shown before. She's become a very single-minded character recently, a slave to her oath, and this intrusion into her past served to humanise her.
In King's Landing, Cersei and Margery are having a passive-aggressive clash of the titans. Natalie Dormer was a little too pantomime in a scene where Margery plants seeds of doubt about Cersei in Tonmen's mind. It all felt a bit like that scene in Star Wars episode III where Palpatine is telling Anakin about a Sith Lord who learned immortality: we can believe Tonmen is naive, but he'd have to be illogically stupid to not see Lady Tyrell's subtext. Fortunately, Dormer runs away with the honour of the episode's best scene in her next appearance, as she outmaneuvers Cersei in conversation in front of her maidens, reducing her to an embarrassing has-been rather than anyone of power. "Would you like us to get you wine? 11am is a bit early for us." OUCH.
Cersei can sense her loosening grip on influence, and seems to be grasping at any opportunity to exact it. When she has the maester locked up for hypocritical use of brothels, you get the feeling that it was as much of a confidence-booster than anything else, a rare chance to exert power. She then walks amongst the poorest of the city, in a ghetto, and allies herself with a street cleric who - with his bare feet, feeding dozens of the poor and preaching peace and just practices - couldn't bare a more obvious resemblance to Jesus Christ unless he had a beard and halo. Cersei is acting out of character, a sign of her desperation and hunger to cling on to the influence she is losing.
Jon Snow gets a nice tense, centre-stage decision to make this week, and his new position as leader of the Night's Watch hopefully means more of them are coming. Dealing with the fallout of his controversial election win, he's forced to make a couple of big choices that will determine both his own personal fate and the way he is perceived by the men he has been elected to lead. First, he stands by his original rejection of Stannis, choosing his honour over personal revenge. Jon Snow is trying to convince himself that he's no longer a Stark, and that he hasn't been since he took his oath. He then executes a dissident in cold blood, even after he begs for mercy. You sense his internal frustration at his predicament in this scene. His naturally merciful tendencies are already being warped by his responsibility to these men. Had he not won the election, he would only have had his oath to break. Now he's the boss, the rest of the men look to him for leadership and morale, and morale at the wall would perish if their sworn leader abandoned his post for personal conquest.
Snow is just one of three Stark children to cast away their family identity. Arya begins her induction into the society for children-who-must-not-be-named, after casting away the material bonds to her previous life. Sansa returns to Winterfell to marry herself to the Bolton family. She is literally casting off her Stark name in order to claw her way back to influence. "The North remembers" an elderly housekeeper tells her as she returns to her quarters in Winterfell. Sansa, like Arya and Snow, realise deep down that the Stark house runs deeper than purely in name. Their renown throughout the land is too quick to simply dissipate overnight, especially in a world as obsessed with history and standing as Westeros. Political allegiances are quickly broken, but cultural capital fades much slower. Sansa is cashing in her share of the latter for another chance at the former.
Finally, even Tyrion Lannister confronts himself in the final scene, as he cannot bring himself to use a prostitute. Perhaps it's the dark-haired girl's resemblance to the lover he strangled to death, or perhaps he has sunk too low to consider it a worthwhile use of his time. The scene takes a nice twist from out-of-place levity to a genuine moment of character. It makes what might have been an unnecessary scene of comic relief, chucked in at the end as a kind of reward for sitting through such a meaty episode, into yet another memorable turn.
The episode ends with the return of Jorah Mormont, who is the only character in the episode who hasn't overgone a crisis of personality recently. He's hanging around brothels, panting at prostitutes cosplaying as Danerys. He kidnaps Tyrion, which felt a bit disappointing. It seemed like Tyrion's adventures this third season were only really starting to begin. He'd left the confines of his carriage and was let loose to create banter and inspire self-pity in a whole new location. I was quite looking forward to his and Varys' road trip. Two posh, acerbic idiots prancing around a foreign country like Rob Brydon and that other guy doing that BBC Four wine show. I'll always have the idea in my dreams.
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