Jon Snow (who dies and comes back to life), Beric Dondarrion (the previous recipient of R’hllor’s apparent fondness for resurrections), Benjen Stark (who cannot be saved from dying, but who is rescued from being raised again as a wight) – Game of Thrones’s sixth season has featured many characters who have faced down death in […]

There was a moment in this week’s episode that crystalized much of Game of Thrones’s plot, thematic variations, and, of course, its underlying quasi-medieval reality. And, perhaps amazingly enough, it has nothing to do with violence – and everything to do with obedience.

“Fuck justice, then – we’ll get revenge.” It’s a funny line, delivered by Yara Greyjoy to her devastated brother, Theon (one of just several titular broken men in this week’s installment), but it’s more than just a glib one-liner – it also just so happens to be the very heart of Game of Thrones’s (and, […]

There seem to be two dominant thematic motifs at work in “Blood of My Blood,” simultaneously building off of and tugging at one another. On the one hand, there is the conceit of returns: most notably, Uncle Benjen Stark makes his grand debut on the narrative stage after a five-year and 53-episode absence, but there’s […]

It’s easy to sort through “The Door’s” various moments of note – the revelation of Wylis’s transformation into Hodor, the choosing of Euron Greyjoy as the next king of the Iron Islands, Sansa Stark’s confrontation with Lord Petyr Baelish – and pick the dominant thematic motif: (re)birth, particularly considering that Euron has a literal return […]

Daenerys Targaryen’s emergence from the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen is, of course, a turning point in the entire series, heralding the Mother of Dragons’s rise as the head of all the Dothraki – a long-dangling plot thread since the very first season – and a major stepping stone to her invasion of the Seven […]

When Jon Snow hands his command over, both figuratively and literally, to Dolorous Edd Tollett, he’s taking his own life, identity, and destiny into his own hands for perhaps the first time since the very first episode, when he first chose to join the Night’s Watch. Yes, there have been times when his autonomy has […]