‘Game of Thrones’ Season Five: What Did We Learn
Stabbings and sorrow and shame, oh my: On Sunday night, Game of Thrones concluded its already dark fifth season with an episode that ran blacker than Jon Snow’s blood on the frozen snow. But a look back at the past 10 hours of television reveals that it wasn’t always this way. On the contrary, the show was all about contrasts, rekindling hope and snuffing it out in a cycle of highs and lows that’s a far cry from the relentless grind its detractors decry.
Take a look at the political game that gives the show its title. Things may be bad now, but the season began with the possibility of setting up something better, as a quartet of newly minted leaders took charge and tried to shape the system to suit their vision. The Night’s Watch elected good-hearted Jon Snow as their 998th Lord Commander. Daenerys Targaryen settled in as the monarch of Meereen, attempting to rule through diplomacy rather than dragons. Stannis Baratheon became the new King in the North, following up his daring rescue of the Wall from a wildling invasion with a plan to defeat the even more dangerous forces of House Bolton. And after a lifetime of playing second fiddle to the men in her life — her husband, her father, her son Joffrey, and her brothers Jaime and Tyrion — Cersei Lannister found herself in almost complete control of King’s Landing, ready to rule more or less openly on her own.
But as Lady Sarah of House Palin once put it, “How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ out for ya?” Jon governed nobly, Cersei ruthlessly; Stannis and Dany somewhere in between. Yet all four fledgling regimes ended in roughly the same place — with their leaders dead, deposed, defeated, or stuck between a Dothraki and a hard place. In fact, each was undone by events they themselves had set in motion. Jon fell to the men who’d elected him after ignoring their concerns about the Free Folk in their midst. (Et tu, Olly?) Dany’s attempts to moderate and mollify her divided city by reopening its fighting pits led to a massacre that required a last-minute dragon-assisted exit. Stannis executed his own daughter to preserve his messianic image; he then lost his dignity, his army, his wife, his war, and quite likely his life in return. And Cersei empowered religious fundamentalists to eliminate her rivals, only to become their biggest victim.
Indeed, fanaticism emerged as both a key plot driver and a central thematic focus this season. Played by veteran actor Jonathan Pryce (Brazil), the High Sparrow and his Faith Militant turned the previously genteel faux-Catholicism of the Seven into an ISIS-like onslaught of theatrical violence. Their trademark star-shaped scarifications have an emblematic quality that echoes the bronze masks of Meereen’s terroristic Sons of the Harpy; they too adopted a symbol of their national religion as an icon of intimidation and fascist conformity. They truly were “faceless men,” in a way that the killer priest Jaqen H’ghar’s House of Black and White could surely appreciate. Yet even the killings perpetrated by the House’s young acolyte Arya pale in comparison to the brutal fires lit by Melisandre and Stannis for the Lord of Light. The Red God’s true believers first claimed the life of the stubborn but noble — and strategically valuable — King-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder, then sacrificed Stannis’s own daughter. No matter where you go, nothing’s more dangerous than a person who knows they’re in the right.
‘Game of Thrones’ Season Five: What Did We Learn, Page 1 of 2