GAME OF THRONES (S3) EPISODE 9 REVIEW

“In a coat of gold or a coat of red,

a lion still has claws,

And mine are long and sharp, my lord,

as long and sharp as yours.”

 SPOILERS AHEAD

As a King, Robb Stark knows he has to make amends for breaking his word to Lord Walder Frey of The Twins.  Back in Season 1, Robb agreed to marry one of Frey’s daughters in order to march his army to meet Tywin Lannister in the field of battle.  Robb, after being crowned the King in the North, wound up marrying the hot, sexy nurse Talisa in Season 2.  Yep, all the Stark men think with their cocks.  Lord Frey scolds King Robb while also handing it to him that his new wife is a hot piece of ass.  “Your King says he betrayed me for love.  I say he betrayed me for firm tits and a tight fit.”  I like this guy.

Dany is going over her battle plans with Ser Jorah, Ser Barristan and handsome guy.  Daario Naharis thinks they should sack the city of Yunkai one way, Jorah thinks they should do it another way.  He also sees the growing affection between Dany and Daario and gets a little jelly.  After a fantastic fight scene, Dany successfully takes the city and gets all moist when handsome guy shows up and tells her the city is hers.

Sam and Gilly make their way to the Wall and provide nothing else.  One thing that always bugs me about the show is that they include scenes just to remind everyone that certain characters are still around.  “Hey, don’t forgot about the bucktooth broad and the fat kid, they’re important too!”  They did this with Bran earlier in the season.  Speaking of Bran….

Coincidentally, also my “Oh Face”

We finally get to see one of my favorite aspects of the book and that’s the whole “warging” business.  We saw this with Orell (Gareth from The Office) who warged an eagle to do some reconnaissance on the Night’s Watch at The Wall and now we see Bran take a crack at it, although he does it with Hodor.  The gift is strong in Bran since his fall and his little buddy Jojen knows this.  Jojen, a “greenseer” who has visions of the future, has told Bran that he needs to go beyond The Wall to visit the Three Eyed Crow.  Why?  Without giving anything away, because he fucking has too.  Osha, who’s lived beyond The Wall, thinks this is a bad idea.   After a close call with some wildlings, in which Bran wargs his direwolf Summer and tears some shit up, they realize it’s much safer for the Stark heirs to split up, so Osha, Rickon and his direwolf Shaggydog peace out.

Arya and The Hound make their way to The Twins for Arya’s uncle Edmure’s wedding, where The Hound will attempt to ransom the young she wolf to King Robb.  The Hound robs a dude’s wagon and goes to kill him but Arya is having none of it.  She chides him for killing safe targets like old people and little kids.  Later she tells him, “Someday, I’m gonna put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull.”  Will it happen?  I ain’t tellin’ you shit!

Jon Snow is once again put to the test by the wildlings when they chance upon the same holdfast that Bran and company are in.  The wildlings tell Jon Snow to kill an innocent guy to prove he’s truly one of them.  After some back and forth, Ygritte puts an arrow through the guy.  In the book, she winds up slitting the guy’s throat, which I think is much more effective and shows just how brutal she and the wildlings can be.  A fight ensues and Snow kills Orell, who just before dying, wargs into the eagle and fucks up Jon’s face.  In this scene, Jojen convinces Bran that he needs to warg Summer in order to keep them safe.  Bran does and unknowingly helps Jon Snow escape.

Finally, the moment that made me throw A Storm of Swords across the room and caused millions of fans to shit in their own mouths and cry.  The Red Wedding.   I’ve been waiting for this scene since reading the book and I have to say that they played it off really well.  One of the things that doesn’t come across though is how progressively tense things get as the wedding goes on.  Catelyn starts noticing little things like how each dish served gets worse and worse, the drums pounding louder and louder.  In the show, Catelyn knows something is up when the band starts playing “The Rains of Castamere,” (lyrics above).  She knows the song, she knows the significance, and she knows it all adds up to bad news.  Queen Cersei explains to Margaery how the song came about during Tyrion’s wedding.  The song can be summed up like this:  Do not fuck with Tywin Lannister.

There are quite a few details from the book that were left out or changed during this scene, some big, some small.  I’m a fan overall, so I’m not nitpicking.  Here’s a quick list of some that I can think of.

• Robb’s bannerman, The Greatjon, throws a table over Robb to protect him.
• Robb doesn’t bring his wife to the wedding.
• Catelyn’s uncle the Blackfish doesn’t attend the wedding.
• Grey Wind, Robb’s direwolf, kills quite a few Frey men before getting killed.
• Roose Bolton, Robb’s fellow Northman and confidante, whispers into his King’s ear, “Jaime Lannister sends his regards,” before plunging a sword in his back.
• When Arya rushes to the castle, her chapter ends, “The Hound’s axe took her in the back of the head.”  It’s not until many chapters later that you learn he hit her with the flat side of the axe and knocked her out.  You think she’s dead for a bunch of chapters and you want to kill someone for it.
• Catelyn grabs a hold of a Frey dude and puts a knife to his neck.  She pleads with Lord Frey to let her son live.  “A son for a son,” she says.  Lord Frey responds by saying that she’s holding a grandson.  She winds up killing him after Bolton kills Robb.
• Probably the biggest change is that when Robb is killed, Catelyn loses her mind, jumps back and forth between laughing and crying and starts clawing her own face before a Frey slices her throat.

Fantastic episode this week and I couldn’t be happier how it played out.  Even though I knew what was coming, I was still in shock at what I was seeing.  There’s a couple of other details in the aftermath of the Red Wedding that I hope they show, as if you didn’t get punched in the gut enough, that will definitely do it.