Game of Thrones Season 5, Episode 10 Recap: "Mother's Mercy"

As expected, we jumped around a lot in last night's season finale, but we didn't actually get a lot of closure. "Mother's Mercy" left us with a lot of questions, some bigger than others. Let's recap what went down last night and indulge in some extremely premature guessing about what we can expect in season six. Hopefully the wild speculation will keep us warm in the long, cold winter of hiatus.

DORNE:

Let's kick it off, again, by getting Dorne out of the way, hopefully for the last time. Maybe I've been harsh with the Dorne plotline. I mean, if nothing else, the scenes were great times for bathroom breaks. I guess the big payoff we've been building to here was Jaime coming out to his daughter-niece, and that was a touching moment... for the thirty seconds it lasted. (We could have a conversation here about another young girl dying to further a grown man's story, but I'm sorry, I'm just so tired. We all know it's kinda fucked up.) It was nice that she picked up Dorne's liberal social attitudes during her semester abroad. Maybe everyone on this show would chill out if they just spent a season in the water gardens. Just please, don't make me watch it. I've sat through a person called Sandra Sand the Sand Snake saying "you want a good girl but you need a bad pussy" once and I don't think I have the strength to do it again.

Ellaria and the Sand Snakes end their disappointing season with a win, as Ellaria defies Doran by giving Myrcella the Poison Ivy treatment, but you can't imagine it's going to be much longer-lived than Ellaria's victim herself. Doran was pretty clear there would be no second chances. Ellaria is going to have to run for it or die. There's also the political tension between Dorne and King's Landing to consider, but that's not a much more exciting prospect, especially considering King's Landing has bigger, more fundamentalist problems. I'm more interested in how the reunion between Jaime and Cersei is going to go. We've seen Cersei utterly lose it when Joffrey died. How bad is the blowback going to be when her only daughter gets assassinated by a gang of foreign lady-bastards? We also know Jaime is a romantic at heart, in his own incestuous way. How is he going to like hearing that Cersei was stepping out with Lancel? Cersei and Jaime, despite all their mistakes and sins, are characters we care about, which is more than can be said about any of these gold-clad, inconsistently accented strangers from Dorne.

KING'S LANDING:

Speaking of Cersei, let's give it up for this season's MVP, Lena Headey. Cersei's long walk back to the Red Keep was the physical embodiment of Headey's season five performance. Headey bared it all with vulnerability and dignity. Over the course of the show, she has given a character who could have been an utterly loathsome villain complexity and pathos. Even die-hard Cersei haters must have felt at least a twinge of sympathy for her as she held her head high to fight her way back to her son. Plus, I'm pretty sure those scary nuns shaved her pubic hair with a blunt-looking straight razor, which sounds like a nightmare nobody deserves.

Cersei endures it all and arrives upright, but quickly breaks down once the doors are shut. Luckily, FrankenQyburn's there with his newly gold-plated Six Million Golden Dragon Man. The Mountain 2.0 is introduced with an ominous new backstory: he's taken "a vow of silence" until the Lannisters' enemies have been dealt with. He's as imposingly big as ever and his new smoky eye look seems dangerous, but the High Sparrow is no slouch and he has a city full of cannon fodder faithful for his enemies to hack their way through, so even "Ser Strong" probably won't be enough to prop up the crumbling Lannister regime for long. My one complaint about the conclusion of this season's events in the capital is: what about Margaery??? Olenna's move may have been a strong retaliatory blow, but what does she have cooking to free her grandchildren? Anything? But we'll have to wait until next season for any resolution on the Tyrell kids, or to find out whether or not Tommen ever puts on his big boy pants and at least gives the whole running-the-kingdom thing a solid five minute try.

MEEREEN:

Meanwhile, in Meereen, somehow everyone made it out of the stabfest in the fighting pit and now Daenerys's boys are left sitting in her empty pyramid missing their khaleesi. In the absence of their queen, the guys have devolved pretty quickly into petty in-fighting, arguing over who has the best skills and who loves Daenerys the most. Eventually, it's decided that Tyrion will take over the ruling of the city, with ample help from Grey Worm (someone the people respect) and Missandei (someone Daenerys trusts). I like this plan! I'm kind of shocked that Daario, whose main advice up to this point has been "if you don't like it, stab it," is the brains behind the decision, but sure, fine, it's entirely possible I just care so little about him as a character that I don't fully get the nuances of his political theories. The best part about this is Varys showing up like a 75th minute super sub, ready to revitalize a flagging team. His connections plus Tyrion's experience, Missandei's knowledge of the people, and Grey Worm's popularity and military background actually make me hopeful that someone might actually manage to put out the dumpster fire that is Meereen next season. While The Dream Team is working on that, however, Daario and Jorah are going on a pissing contest of a roadtrip to find their missing queen. I'm significantly less excited to see how that turns out.

Daenerys, meanwhile, is stuck back where she started, in the middle of a swarm of possibly-antagonistic Dothraki. Drogon's looking a little worse for wear, so Dany better hope these guys are friendly. Given that she's the widow of a rival khal, it's not looking good, but Daenerys won over a Dothraki horde once, maybe she can do it again. It'll be interesting to see her repeat this part of her journey, after all the ways she's grown since season one.

BRAAVOS:

Someone else revisiting the ghosts of season one last night was Arya, who finally avenged her swordmaster, Syrio Forel. Her execution of Meryn Trant is brutal and inelegant, more of a vicious shanking than an assassination. She stabs his eyes out, she perforates his lungs a whole bunch, and she slits his throat, all with the help of a face borrowed from the House of Black and White's big hall of corpse skins. While it was exciting to see Arya finally making some headway on her hit list, the satisfaction, like all pleasurable feelings on this show, was short-lived. Jaqen catches her returning the borrowed face, and he's not impressed. She killed the wrong person, he says, so someone else has to die. As nasty as The Thin Man is, I'm not stoked on a god who thinks he's more murderable than Trant, who spends some of his final moments getting off on smacking around young girls. In fact, between the Mother's so-called mercy, the Lord of Light's abandonment, and the Many-Faced God's fucked up priorities, this episode wasn't a particularly good look for any of Westeros's gods.

Because Arya went rogue, Jaqen drinks poison to balance the life she stole from the Many-Faced God. Arya is upset, but she forgot who she's dealing with. Someone with Jaqen's face emerges to stand over the corpse and monologue about faces and poisons while Arya goes blind. I don't expect this to set Arya too far back, because she's a determined and resourceful person who has lost worse than her eyes. What I am curious about is what this means for her training at the House of Black and White. Is she going to stick around? Or is a god with a very literal eye-for-an-eye policy too much to deal with, despite the training the endless parade of Jaqens can offer? Will they even want to continue training her after her infraction? Either way, I think this bodes well for next season. No matter where she goes, no matter whether or not her blindness is permanent, this event is going to change Arya. Unlike the rest of her family, her consequences for leaping without looking weren't fatal; she still has a chance to learn from this.

WINTERFELL:

Things are also looking up for Sansa, hallefuckinglujah. As the Boltons are prepping for Stannis's army, she uses the chaos to slip out of her chamber, light her Batsignal candle, and make a run for it. She's stopped by a bow-toting Myranda, but, as expected, Theon finally gets his big Return of the Jedi moment of redemption. Interestingly, after watching Myranda splatter in the courtyard like a ripe watermelon, Sansa and Theon decide jumping from the battlements is still the best escape option. Literally anything is better than Ramsay though, so I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Disappointingly, Ramsay manages to live through the episode, so it's fully possible that he'll come after the escapees next season. I think the best option for rescue is still Brienne, even though she missed her chance this time. Brienne missed Sansa's cry for help because Podrick, well-quizzed in the banners of the realm, notices that Stannis is on the way. Like Arya, Brienne is quick to jump on a chance for revenge, and she's been promising to pay Stannis back for Renly since season two. We don't see an actual body and the shot cut away before the actual blow, so it may be too soon to celebrate, but who cares: good riddance to that dude.

It was a rough day all around for Stan. He woke up to half his sell-swords abandoning him, taking all his horses with them, followed quickly by the news that his wife hanged herself. In a shocking twist, it looks like people aren't particularly inclined to stick with a dude who burns his own child to get ahead, especially since the only good that came from Shireen's sacrifice seems to have been some melting snow. Even Melisandre peaces out pretty quick, well aware that even divine intervention wouldn't be enough to get Stannis through the battle. For as much as the show has insisted on Stannis's tactical brilliance in combat, this is twice he's been bested by a newbie commander, and it took less than two episodes and some minor setbacks for him to completely reverse his stance on filicide. Like, Ramsay and his buddies snuck right in, and then hundreds of mercenaries snuck themselves and a bunch of horses back out. Who exactly is watching this camp? Of all the logic failures in the Winterfell plotlines this season, these are some of the most minor, but still.

Another question I have is: if Stannis is truly dead, does that mean Balon Greyjoy somehow won the War of Five Kings without leaving his house? Despite the blood magic leech-burning two out of three usurpers definitely don't recommend? There might be something to the "what is dead can never die" Greyjoy mantra, because otherwise, I don't know how this could have happened. Back when the war broke out, if you'd told me Tommen and Balon would be the last men standing, I would have thought you were lying.

THE WALL: 

Melisandre seems just as shocked as the rest of us when she arrives at the Wall, very subdued after running out on her figurehead. When Davos asks about Shireen all she does is shake her head. I think it's safe to say if Davos gets wind of her part in the little girl's death, none of the gods, old or new, are going to be able to save Melisandre from his vengeance. Elsewhere in Castle Black, Sam "Having the Best End of the World Ever" Tarly gets some more good news: Jon agrees to send him to Old Town to become the maester of the Night's Watch, which is really the profession Sam was best suited to all along. Sam also points out that it's the best way to protect Gilly and Sam Junior from the brothers of the watch, but it turns out Jon's the one who needed the protection most, and when he lets Sam go, he loses his last ally.

This season has telegraphed a lot of things, but even by the show's standards, it was like sirens started wailing and neon lights started flashing every time the camera lingered on the murderous pout of Olly the Orphan. I won't lie, the Benjen reminder from the "previously on" clips made me momentarily so excited that, like Jon, I was ready to go bounding out into the zombie-filled snow on the hunt for surviving Starks, but viewers saw the signs that Jon missed. The second Olly came into the room, we knew it was a set-up. The scene was brutal, the muttered "for the watch" stabbing just as deep as the daggers, a reminder of the Lannisters' regards that heralded Robb off his mortal coil seasons ago. And of course, the final blow came from Ominous Olly himself, as we knew it would.

I only have one question about this and it's where the hell was Ghost? I guess he could have been dispatched by Jon's murderous brothers while they were setting up their festive "traitor" billboard and getting the grim torchlight just right for a good old-fashioned group stabbing. They went through the trouble of concocting the elaborate Benjen callback to get him down there in the first place, so they clearly had planning meetings, like they were preparing the most morbid surprise party of all time. I have a feeling Ghost will be back though. In fact, I'm about 90% sure Jon will be back as well.

Melisandre already showed a lot of interest in Jon during her previous stay at Castle Black, and now she's turned up again, conveniently just as the Lord of Light is suddenly in the market for a new poster boy king. Remember Beric Dondarrion? Resurrection is not out of the question. While you're at it, remember that Benioff and Weiss have said they got the job by guessing who Jon's mother was. Remember that Littlefinger's expression in Winterfell's crypt essentially introduced the R+L=J theory into the show's mythology. Jon is too important to die. Robb and Ned were important because they were heroic figures that we could root for, but now there are (probably) only two seasons left and it's too late to suddenly introduce someone else. Even if this is an unhappy story, it's still a story, and Martin, Benioff, and Weiss are all aware that stories need heroes. They're all saying the right things now. Kit Harington promises he's done, but it doesn't seem like everyone's buying it. There are so many theories, so many possible ways for Jon to survive this. Melisandre, White Walkers, Ghost, warging... pick one. It's probably not just a bad case of denial, at least as long as the writers are smart.

At this point, having a character stay likable and stay alive would be the bravest, most revolutionary thing this should could do. We've talked about it in earlier recaps, but misery has become predictable, five seasons in. Martin's having the same problem with the books. What was brave and uncompromising the first time or two has become repetitive and only a completely pessimistic nihilist would argue that it's realistic. A good guy has to win sometime. Only time (and set photos and IMDb) will tell, but I'm willing to bet that Jon is going to be that good guy.