Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 2 Review
Another week, another Game of Thrones episode to go over. Today, it’s time to dive into the happenings of the second episode in the final season to the Game of Thrones season.
The episode starts off right away with Jamie Lannister explaining why he has come to Winterfell around the council in the north so to speak. Danny, Sansa, Tyrion and Jon are all sitting discussion what they should do with him before Brienne steps in and backs him up.
As the episode continues it resembles the final goodbyes to what can be presumed as a good chunk of the cast. I for one see this as being the swan song episode for Jamie as all the deeds he does, his story seems to have run it’s course and really closed out his character in a good way.
Jamie meets with Bran in the godswood and apologizes for pushing him out the window in which Bran trips him up saying that if that did not happen he may have not become the three eyed raven.
Sansa and Danny have a cold discussion together about what the plans are for the north where Danny finds out that Sansa has no intentions of yielding the north to her.
In a meeting to plan the battle out they discover that the Night King just wants to snuff out the history of man by killing the three eyed raven. When Bran was touched by the Night King in a vision in season 6, the mark acted as a sort of tracking device. The plan has become to use Bran to lure the Night King and kill the Night King to kill the majority of the wights. Theon Greyjoy, who shows up sometime after Jamie swears to protect Bran during this encounter.
Jon, Sam and Edd stand atop the wall in Winterfell and remember their adventures and their fallen brothers. Sam touts his accomplishments that leads them to laugh. This scene pays off mostly because Ghost is in the background. If there are no dragons in the episode, then they can afford to but in Ghost apparently.
A portion of the cast is all sitting around a fire talking about their adventures that the viewers can relate to over the seasons. Tyrion, Davos, Jamie, Brienne, Tormund, Podrick are all gathered together to stay warm by the fire. Tormund acts as the comical relief for the entire episode that is pretty enjoyable even though every one of his interactions seems to be over the top. Jamie knights Brienne after Tormund asks by women are not knighted. Earlier on in the episode Jamie asks to fight under Brienne’s command at the final battle in Winterfell. She does not explicitly say yes but I think it’s safe to assume that is what will happen now. All the characters end up sharing a final few drinks with each other until the wine is gone.
Podrick sings a song that can only make everyone think of the Lord of the Rings scene in Return of the King where Pippin sings to the steward of Gondor while Faramir marches to his death. With this scene and the scene from the last episode relating to the dragons flying and my relation to Aladdin, it seems that the writers really are running out of original content.
Elsewhere in Winterfell, Arya talks with with Hound out on the wall. They share a few moments of silence with some little dialog and then she heads off. She runs into Gendry who then gives her the weapon she asked him to make and they precede to spend their last night together in an unexpected love scene that just felt odd. Mostly I think because we have seen Arya as a little girl from the beginning of the show and this scene was a radical departure from that image even though she has become a grown ruthless killer through the run of the show.
Jon actively avoids Danny for most of the episode before getting caught staring at his mothers gave in the crypt and admitting that he has a better claim to the throne. This shocks Danny but before they can get much further in the discussion the horns blow as the white walkers arrive in the outer fields of Winterfell.
The whole episode plays like a calm before the storm. There is no down south scenes with Cerci, so we can assume we will not hear from her again till episode 4. I appreciated the amount of background characters up in Winterfell that were not the main cast. It made the world feel more lived in. Something the previous episode extremely lacked. It was an overall improvement to the last episode and did the job getting me hyped for next week. What did you think? Comment below and let us know!