"You will die tomorrow."
Hello everyone!
So.
It happened.
Episode Nine.
I swear the number alone should come with a warning when it's Game of Thrones, because, looking back on previous seasons, the penultimate episode of each has ALWAYS been the one that made people remember just why it was that they initially began watching the show in the first place.
Season six, episode Nine, did not disappoint either.
Not only was it brilliant visually and condensed in terms of space and time, but it was also pretty much an epic smack-down which told us who will, in the end, probably prevail and stand over the charred and/or frozen corpses of their enemies.
Although, I will also freely admit that I made a very vital mistake in eating dinner prior to watching the episode.
Special shout-out to Maegan because, well, she told me not to, and I didn't listen.
Looking back on past seasons, we can easily discern that the number 9 seems to be that mystical force that 7 is in fairytales, only 9 kind of means a lot of carnage and death if it's an HBO thing.
Season 1 saw the execution of Ned Stark; season 2 was the fabled Battle of Blackwater; season 3 introduced us to the Rains of Castamere at the Red Wedding; in season 4 the Wildlings attacked the Wall in a colossal battle; season 5 we all tried not to cry too much as Shireen was sacrificed (much like Agamemnon's daughter back in the day).
So, yeah, when the title 'The Battle of the Bastards' was unveiled, you can bet that the internet as a whole pretty much went ka-boom.
Because as soon as the word 'bastards' comes into play, there are only two plausible choices: Jon Snow, and Ramsay Bolton.
Game of Thrones has this tendency of coming up with characters who we love to hate, Ramsay the last in the long line of his predecessors; admittedly, we all wanted him dead and gone, gone, gone.
But episode Nine didn't start off with the North: we were first introduced to the current Meereen crisis, which Daenerys and Tyrion managed to avert and turn into something that will pretty much go down in history books as rather legendary for them: a Lannister telling a Targaryen not to go burn everyone alive.
Preventing Dany from becoming the Mad Queen, they end up using the three enraged dragons to do some burning of their own along the Masters' fleet; I pity these guys for suggesting they'd kill the beasts. I'd love for them to try, honestly.
Once the dust settles, the Iron Fleet arrives, and Yara makes a pact with Dany, which will or won't hold, we'll see.
While our Dragon Queen is mustering her fleet to sail back home, the North is prepping for the biggest battle since ... well, a long time ago.
Jon and his commanders are desperately trying to make the best of the terrain with their outnumbered forces, knowing that one wrong move will kill them all, while Sansa is being a whining baby with no smart alternative even when she tells her brother that she feels insulted he didn't ask for her opinion, and that his plan isn't good, but she doesn't know a better one.
And also she seems to have still been going back and forth between whether or not they'd even attack, seeing as she kept insisting they needed more men, but none were realistically to be found.
The one logical thing she did say? Rickon would die; as a natural-born son of the Stark House, he's a bigger threat to Ramsay than Jon or Sansa, something dreamer Jon doesn't grasp yet.
Unfortunately for us viewers, this proves correct as Rickon is shot through the chest while running towards his half-brother, which launches the attack. The Stark forces are nearly overwhelmed when the Knights of the Vale ride to their rescue, with a smug looking Littlefinger preening beside Sansa, who obviously swallowed her pride and went a-calling in the night. I wonder where the guy went off to after she told him no the first time? Did he just, I dunno, set up camp and had mani-pedis?
The fight doesn't end there though, as the giant Wun Wun kicks down the doors of Winterfell before dying himself, and Jon defeats Ramsay in single combat, regaining the ancestral Stark seat.
Good job, now we have to focus on the freaking White Walkers.
And the cheerry on the cake?
Sansa unleashing Ramsay's own hounds on their former master, hounds he had starved on purpose for a week, and who devour him rather gleefully.
Payback, as they say, is a -.
Was it a booming episode or wasn't it?
It was nitty, it was gritty, it killed off another Stark (sadly) but it ALSO killed off Ramsay, and that's worth pretty much anything in my book. Now if the Lannisters would just realize they're in trouble all would be well, but the finale is titled 'The Winds of Winter', so I'm hoping it'll be super good.
xx
*images not mine
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