“Game of Thrones 4×05: First Of His Name” Review

We’re officially halfway through the season and the suspense is just driving me crazy. In Sunday’s episode, not only do we get an awesome fight between The Night’s Watch and the mutineers but we also get the answer to a mystery that has been grasping us since the series has started: Jon Arryn’s murderer. From the past couple of slower episodes, this episode was a great halfway point by giving more answers and tying up some plot lines.

I’m not sure where they found Tommen’s actor but he looks so much like Jack Gleeson that I was afraid that they magically brought Joffery back. But fortunately the episode starts with Tommen’s coronation into kinghood. With gold crown upon his head and his baby face looking nervous, it looked like he was trying on a Halloween costume. But Halloween costume or not, he still gets the hot girl at his side. He looks over and sees Margaery making kissy faces at him only to be cock-blocked by his overbearing mother. Cersei goes over to Margaery and notes that she’s still wearing black to mourn Joffery. “He was my King” she says.

“He was your nightmare,” Cersei quickly retorts. Cersei finally confesses that she knew how evil her son was and his actions genuinely shocked her, but there is a love that comes with the first child that never seems to go away. It was great to finally know that Cersei was not oblivious to her son’s horrid actions. We genuinely saw her maternal side in this scene. I would say that I wish we could see that side all the time, but then that would mean we couldn’t hate her anymore which is something too great to give up.

Across the sea in Meereen, it looks like Daenerys’ work across the slave bay hasn’t been very effective After freeing all the slaves and installing counsels in Yunkai and Astapor, they have all been overthrown.

“How can I rule seven kingdoms when I can’t even control Slaver’s Bay? ” she asks her fellow colleagues.

She then decides to not go to Westeros for now and save the slaved people she once freed. This is a very interesting turn for Daenerys because she worked hard the whole series just so that she can get to Westeros but now she has found a soft spot for these people. I wonder how long the “ruling” will take place until she remembers that all of this was for her to get back to fight for the Iron Throne. Then again, she only had 10,000 soldiers to fight with so I suppose that it’s fine to delay for now.

At The Eyrie, Little finger and Sansa go to meet with Lady Lysa Arryn. However, Sansa is not Sansa anymore. She’s Littlefinger’s “niece” Alayne. If the guards found out that she was Sansa Stark, they would turn her in to King’s Landing without a second thought. Thankfully Lady Lysa doesn’t have as eccentric as an entrance as she did last season. In fact she treats Sansa warmly and has her son, Robin, show her to her room. As soon as she leaves, the murder mystery is solved: Lysa was responsible for her own husband’s death. With the help of Littlefinger, she poisoned his drink and sent a letter to Catelyn, blaming the Lannisters. This just makes Littlefinger more confusing and awesome at the same time. There is absolutely no word to describe him and I don’t think there ever will be. At this point, I’m rooting for him to take over the Iron Throne. Anyone that cunning truly deserves it. And after hearing their very vocal love making, I suppose that Littlefinger can be considered the trooper in this situation when looking to rule over The Vale and all of Westeros.

But any woman can be jealous of her man being with other women- especially if they’re 13 year old girls. While having a meal together, Lysa berates Sansa on why Littlefinger cares for her so much. She pulls out accusations of them having sex together. Deep down, she probably knows that Littlefinger saved Sansa because he loved Catelyn but I suppose she doesn’t want to admit it to herself that he is using her for her title.

Arya and The Hound are getting ready to go to sleep and Arya won’t sleep until she says “every fucking person’s name in Westeros”. She says the regular list such as Cersei and The Mountain but as she is about to go to sleep, she chillingly says The Hound as she closes her eyes, with him turning around and just staring at her. Despite wanting to kill him, though, she hesitantly takes sword lessons from him after he ridicules her teacher, Syrio Forel , for dying at the hands of Meryn Trant. While he may not be as sweet as Syrio was, he might teach her a thing or two that’s not “water dancing”.

The action really begins at the end of the episode in the north. Bran and his crew are still captured by the mutineers and seem to have no luck of getting out. What’s even worse is that they take Meera and are ready to have their way with her until they hear The Night’s Watch invading their territory. With them distracted, a member of The Night’s Watch comes in and a rescue party looks like it’s in order. Sadly, it isn’t. The “rescuer” turns out to be Locke and instead of bringing him to Jon, he tries to run away with him so that he can be executed by the Boltons. Bran does one of the most interesting things in the series by “warging”, or switching bodies, in Hodor. So when he’s running off with a soulless Bran, Hodor comes up behind him and snaps his neck. This was a certainly a great way for Hodor to get some action even though it technically wasn’t him doing it.

But then, after that adrenaline rush, I suddenly got somewhat annoyed. After Bran got back into his body, he’s literally feet away from Jon and is calling out to him. However, Jojen- newly freed thanks to Hodor- tells him not to go to him because he still needs to find the three eyed crow. I know that they were probably never meant to meet, but Bran traveled so far just to get to Castle Black to see Jon and when he’s right there, Jojen convinces him to just leave. Give me some eye contact between them or something!

But that annoyance quickly faded when Jon went face to face with Karl, the leader of the mutineers. It seemed like an even fight at first but when one of Craster’s women stabbed him on the side and distracted him, Jon puts his sword right through his mouth! It was an incredibly satisfying scene to watch and made my respect for Jon go up.

Now that that plot line is cleared, Castle Black can finally focus on fighting the Wildings and with only five episodes left, I can only imagine that they are getting closer. Hopefully we’ll be hearing more from them soon. The episode ends with Jon burning Craster’s Keep for going and letting the women live their own lives. Maybe now that that place is burnt down, the writers will ease up on the rape scenes, right?