- SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A WHOLE LOT OF SNARK HUNTING AND POWER PLAYING …
Depending on your pop culture references, and these days most of us are a giddy, postmodern swirl of just about everything, “Eastwatch”, a reference to one of the gates watching the snowy nothingness north of the Wall, was a whole lot of “Hunting of the Snark” or “Be vewy, vewy quiet, we’re hunting wabbits”.
Either way, Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), who can now pet dragons with impunity – is he a Targaryan after all? You could see Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) thinking hard on that point as she sat atop Drogon post-battle – is off, with an eclectic bunch of volunteers to bag himself a White Walker, the better to convince Cersei they are not solely the mythical inhabitant of wet nurse’s bedtime tales.
But while the idea is plain in theory – want to convince a sceptic? Give ’em undeniable proof – it ignores two very salient points, both with unsettling corollaries in today’s world.
First, while you can turn up with a gurgling bunch of the sullen undead, hell even the Night Walker himself, the odds of people actually believing pivot very much on whether they want to believe you.
Sure, the proof that Westeros faces issues more pressing than dragon-cataclysmic war, and that the bloody musical chairs for the Iron Thrones is so much rearranging said chairs on the decks of the Titanic, would be well nigh impossible to dismiss; but then that has been said about many things such as round earth vs. flat earth, climate change vs not, and yet people see what they want to see.
Delivering up one White Walker may seem like a masterful stroke of Sherlockian genius but people, such as the Maesters of the Citadel who once again dismissed Samwell (John Bradley) as a raving loony prone to fanciful notions, will see what they want to see, and Jon, Ser Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham), Ser Jorah Maumont (Iain Glen), Gendry (Jon Dempsie) – he’s back, he’s really back! – and the Hound (Rory McCann) and Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju) may well be risking their lives for absolutely nothing.
In fact, we know they are, because after Jaime (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) was led, without any forewarning, to a meeting in the bowels of Kings Landing by Ser Bronn (Jerome Flynn) with – GASP! – Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), there to convince his brother to convince his sister to meet with Daenerys and a White Walker, Cersei, who may be preggers with their fourth child and happy to shout the dad’s name from the rooftops (look at Jaime smile!), said she had no intention of playing fair.
And there you have it.
No matter how logical and well thought-out the plan to bag a member of the undead army may be, and let’s be fair, it’s kind of thrown together at best, there’s next-to-no guarantee that Cersei will even play remotely by whatever the rules are.
Why she even saw Jaime meeting with Tyrion, a meeting he was deceived into attending by Ser Bronn on the pretext of some sword playing practice, as betrayal, so the seven gods / Lord of Light / Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) on a Three-Eyed Raven White Walker-spotting Bender knows what she’ll do with one of the Night King’s own popping up in King’s Landing.
Sure, given she stands to be wiped from the face of the earth by Daenerys and her dragon children, who proved immune to the hubris of bloody big spears, and she knows it, but she will exploit an in, any in, no matter how necessary or well-intentioned, and Jon and Deanerys may well be preparing the way for, well, a whole lot more bloody furniture arranging on doomed ships.
All these political machinations did raise a very interesting philosophical dilemma – no matter how noble you may be, and Daenerys has proven she is (mostly) as noble as they come, is power, by its very nature, a corrupting influence that no one can resist?
As the 19th century British politician Lord Action rather astutely observed:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
He wasn’t the first to note the corrosive effects of unfettered rule but he worded it so pithily and with such insightful certainty, that it’s the yardstick by which everyone measures anyone’s fitness to rule.
Will they, no matter how good they may be at first, succumb to the siren song of doing whatever the hell they want when they want and anyone who stands against them be damned?
It was a central question for just about contending character in this episode.
When it comes to Cersei, of course, that ship sailed a very long time ago; there is nothing even remotely good about her anymore, as testified by her willingness to try to sabotage, for her her own advantage, a desperate plan to save all the people of Westeros, no matter where they stand when it comes to who occupies the Iron Throne.
Yes, Daenerys is poised to take the throne but Cersei will do what it takes, even doom the land of her birth, if it means holding onto the corrupting reins of power.
And even good old Daenerys, who claims to be holier than thou, but happily burnt Lord Randyll Tarley ( James Faulkner) and son Dikon Tarly (Tom Hopper) to a crisp – hurrah Samwell, newly fled from the Citadel with books and scrolls that may talk about how to kill the White Walkers once and for all, is the new lord – is prone to some mighty suspect behaviour.
So much so that Tyrion and Lord Varys (Conleth Hill) took a tea break to discuss whether she wasn’t getting a little too much like dad and Cersei, and less the Warrior Princess of Goodness, Virtue and Nivcely-Folder Tea Towels?
She started out well true and the Unsullied, the Dothraki and sundry other peoples who have willingly followed her will attest to her good intentions, but now? Aren’t all the Lannister men who survived the Big Barbecue only bending the knee to avoid being roasted like a Sunday dinner?
Even Sansa Stark, who is having to contend with Little Finger’s (Aidan Gillen) continued, spied-on by Arya (Maisie Williams) duplicity, is tempted to waste a few lords to cement her authority (and happy to let them trash talk her brother Jon, much to Arya’s dismay).
Yep, power is a seductive potion, one that promises much and whispers that all the goodness and virtue will remain intact but once it is attained, it becomes obvious that it will corrupt; how well you weather that, and even if you can, speaks to your character.
In the end, however, important though these questions are, and they go to the heart of the long and winding tale of Game of Thrones, they will all pale into undead nothingness if everyone doesn’t put it all aside and concentrate on the looming threat that, Machiavellian power-playing or not, continues to bear down on them, rendering all power aspirations effectively moot.
- There be zombies on the move! Very cold, very angry zombies … you can fight them … or run from them … or, you know, both at once as “Death is the Enemy” unfolds on the snowy wastes north of the Wall …