Azor Ahai

 

Today’s episode of the Game of Thrones was perhaps the best ever in the entire series. I don’t remember any single episode producing as much joy as this one did. After watching the first five seasons, you start believing that karma doesn’t exist in George R.R. Martin’s world. It looks like Season 6 has sought out to change that.

First off, Ramsay kills off Roose Bolton, Walda Frey and her newborn son to secure his place as the undisputed Lord of Winterfell. This moment was long overdue. Roose Bolton, along with Ramsay and Frey, are easily my most hated characters. I’ll confess I felt a sort of sadistic pleasure watching Lady Frey getting butchered by Ramsay’s hounds. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the slaughtering of the Freys.

Balon Greyjoy, another of the series’ most disliked characters, also finds himself thrown off a bridge by his brother. Two main character deaths so early in the season was atypical of the show. But the biggest surprise of all had to be the resurrection of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.

In the first half of the show, we see the Wildlings take over the Night’s Watch and capture Alliser Thorne in the nick of time before he sets of to kill Ser Davos and the crows faithful to Jon Snow. And at the end, we see Ser Davos urging Melisandre to try and resurrect Jon. She succeeds and Jon Snow finds himself gasping for breath, his eyes wide before the episode comes to a close. Now this was something that was speculated by fans ever since The Dance of Dragons came out. We all knew Jon Snow would be back. What was surprising was that the creators did so in the second episode itself. Honestly, I was expecting this to happen somewhere at the end of the season.

The episode also sees Theon Greyjoy part with Sansa and head for the Iron Islands. With Balon Greyjoy dead and Yara’s position of power in jeopardy, it’ll be interesting to watch if Theon ends up becoming Lord of the Iron Islands and eventually exacts his revenge on Ramsay Bolton. Jaqen Hagar finally accepts Arya as no one and lifts her off the streets. We also see an interesting back story regarding Hodor. Turns out, his real name is actually Willis and there was a time he could speak. Just when you thought the show couldn’t bring about anything that wasn’t already speculated.

The episode did not make any mention of Stannis Baratheon. I’m beginning to have a feeling that he’s dead after all. But it doesn’t matter that much anymore. It’s a time for the wolves now. The Azor Ahai has been reborn. It’ll be interesting to see how death would have changed the Lord Commander. We’re finally getting to see the Starks make some sort of a comeback. This is going to be one hell of a season.

 

Winter Has Come

 

The Red Woman premiered on HBO on the 24th of April (the day before yesterday). We’ve been waiting for the premier episode of Game of Thrones Season 6 for over a year now. I finally watched the episode today. And boy was it worth the wait. For over a year, GoT fans had been speculating about every character, dead and alive; their futures, the time they’d die, their ancestries. One would have thought that every possible direction the show could go in was already hypothesized by the public. The makers of the show proved us wrong and reminded us as to why this show was one of the most popular, highly rated television series on the planet.

First things first. Jon Snow is dead. But there are encouraging signs that he’ll soon be resurrected in some way. Maybe Melisandre will do the needful. Or maybe Jon Snow has warged into Ghost and Davos will sacrifice the direwolf to bring him back to life. If Jon was to remain dead for the rest of the show, they’d have burnt his corpse. Nothing of that sort happened. Plus, Davos and his troops are eagerly guarding his body. And it also remains that Jon Snow is the last remaining candidate for Azor Azhai. The show has conveniently killed off the rest.

Another person whose fate was of great interest to me was Stannis Baratheon. Roose Bolton mentions that Stannis is dead. Brienne also seems to be riding through the woods without him as captor. But I still refuse to believe he’s dead. They haven’t showed his body yet. And apart from Roose’s remark, the entire episode remained suspiciously tight lipped about his fate. Brienne didn’t even mention him. So, it is still highly likely that the last of the Baratheons is still alive.

I never really cared for Daenerys’ or the Dorne story lines. Doran is dead and the Sand Snakes have taken over Dorne. The Lannisters have yet another enemy to fight against. Daenerys is at some Dothraki camp and the subtitles were in Russian so I couldn’t quite understand what the hell was going on. She’s no longer a prisoner though. That’s kind of sad, to be honest.

The highlight of the episode was its titular character and it was her I was alluding to in the first paragraph. Turns out the red haired seductress is actually over hundreds of years old! The last scene of the episode kind of left me scarred. People who watched GoT for the titties are definitely going to bid farewell to the show. But this was something no one speculated. No on had even thought about it. I still do not know what it means or how it is significant to the plot line. All I know is that I’m counting the days to the next Monday. Winter has finally come.