The forecast calls for Snow, dear friends.
We will get there eventually, but seriously, did we think that Kit Harington was kicking it in Belfast just to play dead and receive sponge baths from Carice Van Houten? While that sounds great, it’s looking like he’ll have a much more active role now…
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“Game of Thrones,” season 6, episode 2, “Home,” written by Dave Hill and directed by Jeremy Podeswa, is largely an episode about faith. About the faith that one does or doesn’t have in those closest to them, about the faith that people have in forces both supernatural and earthly. We know that in the world of Westeros, faith in other human beings in questionable, and faith in otherworldly beings is powerful, if unreliable.
Regarding the title of the episode, both Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) speak about their desires to go home — but for both of them, their homes no longer exist in the same way. Bran can warg into his home, but he can never truly go back. When Theon speaks of “home,” where does he speak of? Winterfell? The Iron Islands? He hasn’t been with his true Islander family since he was a child, so where does home exist for Theon at this point?
We open with a visit to grown up Bran, who has morphed from the little kid he was in season four, to a long-lost member of Oasis. He’s in a cave with the Three-eyed Raven (Max von Sydow), the two of them warging BACK in motherfucking TIME like there ain’t no warging rules at all. Back to the Warg Future. Bran gets to revisit Winterfell during the adolescence of his father Ned Stark, training younger brother Benjen in sword fighting.
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But Bran’s interested in Willis, whom he recognizes as a young Hodor (Kristian Nairn). Willis is a simple stable boy, but he can talk (many more words than “Hodor”), which fascinates Bran, who wants to know what happened to his friend and caretaker. But, The Raven makes Bran return to the cave, saying, “it is beautiful beneath the sea, but if you stay too long you’ll drown.” Though they are cooped up in the cave, with a bored Meera Reed (Ellie Kendrick), they’ve got to prep for war and stick together.
A family desperately in need of some therapy is the Lannisters, cooped up in King’s Landing and trying to cope with Myrcella’s death. King Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) doesn’t even let his own mom Cersei (Lena Headey) attend his sister’s funeral. Instead, it’s just him and uncle-dad Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) at the wretched affair. Tommen uses the opportunity to complain that he feels like a terrible king (because he is) for failing to protect his mom and wife, and Jaime urges him to go make up with Cersei.
After Tommen leaves, Jaime has a nice chat with the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce), a dude who never wears shoes but also doesn’t go anywhere without a shadowy cadre of armed and dangerous young monks. The two of them chat about death, atonement, sins, and whatnot, and it ends with the Sparrow throwing down the gauntlet that, even without important names, titles, money, his crew rules this turf. Get ready to rumble.
In Meereen, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) is getting drunk and trying his hand at dragon training, because, “that’s what I do, I drink and I know things,” he declares. Also, why not? They’re stuck there with no boats, the slavers have taken back their property in Astapor and Yunkai, and the dragons are wasting away in the catacombs. Also, he always wanted a dragon as a kid.
