Even the series doesn’t mourn his loss so much as it observes that, without a Red Priest around, there will be nobody to revive Beric if he dies again.Ĭompared to the run-in with the bear, Jon and his men’s subsequent skirmish with a White Walker and a group of wights is a matter of child’s play.
Yes, Thoros does end up biting the dust, a result of the wound he sustains while trying to fend off the bear with his flaming sword-an act that scares the Hound off-but there’s a sense that he meets his end because he’s the only character with a name here with whom the audience is least familiar. These redshirts, or redfurs if you prefer, are clearly the ones who will end up dying, which doesn’t exactly up the stakes in the lead up to the episode’s remaining battles. The disemboweling of a random, nameless character in Jon’s band suggests that the series is taking a few cues from Star Trek. To begin with, Jon’s group is subsumed in a literal storm on their way to their destination, and within which they’re attacked by a massive blue-eyed bear. It seems obvious that Game of Thrones is trying to establish a sort of calm before the storm that it can then upend once Jon’s band reaches its destination, and yet this is where the episode’s direction falls flattest. It’s useless information, padding that does nothing to warm viewers throughout the torpid march north. There’s obvious history between Jorah and that family sword, but because the series has only ever deigned to show us Jon’s relationship with Jeor, the late Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Jorah’s refusal to accept the blade signals nothing other than the way in which Jorah’s sense of honor has developed from the low point at which he once passed along information about Daenerys. The hollow exchanges are legion here, as when Jon attempts to return Longclaw, the Valyrian steel sword given to him by Jeor Mormont, to Jeor’s son, Jorah (Iain Glen). We saw the moment when the Hound nearly lost his life to Brienne, and while Tormund may very well have lost his heart to her, the series has failed to establish that relationship in any way beyond a few GIF-worthy stares.
#GAME OF THRONES BEYOND THE WALL GIFS HOW TO#
At one point, Tormund (Kristofer Hivju) dispenses valuable advice-read: comic relief-on how to keep one’s balls warm in the frigid cold: “Fucking’s best.” (And this is before he becomes the center of a bait-and-switch scheme at the climax of the battle between Jon’s men and the White Walkers who surround them.) But worse, perhaps, is the moment that sees Tormund waxing as poetically as he can to the Hound about Brienne of Tarth, a powerful woman they both respect. Indeed, what’s the point of Gendry (Joe Dempsie), front and center again after being incognito for four seasons, having issues with the Brotherhood Without Banners that once betrayed and sold him to Melisandre if his gripes are to be resolved with only a warm drink from Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye)? Certainly it’s a little too easy for Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann) to suggest that Gendry stop “whinging” over the past, especially when long-simmering feuds and rivalries are essentially what have defined the series thus far.Īt times throughout “Beyond the Wall,” it’s as if the writers are going to almost metatextual lengths to strip the show’s characters of their humanity. It feels a little like a betrayal seeing the way that Game of Thrones, in its bum-rush toward what’s feeling like an increasingly preordained finish line, goes about cavalierly disregarding all the hard work it’s done across seven seasons in giving certain characters a profound sense of purpose. There’s no handwringing about who might die here, and in contrast to “The Spoils of War,” which strikingly invited our sympathy for those on both sides of the skirmish at the episode’s climax, “Beyond the Wall” simply offers up a battle between CGI dragons and CGI zombies, to pulpy effect but no moral consequence.
Given how hard the series has worked to establish not only the stakes of Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) mission, which supposedly only he could carry out, but also the terror of the creatures beyond the wall (who seemed unstoppable in “Hardhome”), it’s almost ludicrous how Daenerys simply swoops down out of nowhere to save the day. It’s an action-packed moment, for sure, but its sense of thrill is ultimately unearned.
Far sooner than most of us probably expected, “Beyond the Wall,” the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones’s seventh season, sees Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) dragons doing battle with an army of White Walkers.
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