Summary
Fresh off the arrest of Ned Stark, the Lannisters begin to massacre the rest of the Stark’s servants and guards throughout the castle. Arya successfully flees after stabbing a stable hand, while Sansa is taken prisoner and forced to write to her family in the North.
With news of his father’s imprisonment Rob Stark calls the banners to begin a march to King’s Landing. This brings its own host of issues as Rob has to maintain the banners while being inexperienced at war in general. As the Lannister’s march toward their camp, Rob must make a decision of where to send his army.
On the Wall Jon Snow faces the consequences of Ned Stark’s treason, but this development is overshadowed with the presence of a man coming back from the dead assaults Jon.
Daenerys experiences her first raid by the Dothraki on another group of people who are just simple herding folk. A dispute arises after Danny attempts to take all the female slaves so none of them are raped. One of Khal Drogo’s riders takes offence to this and accuses the Khal of being controlled by Danny, who is a foreigner. In the fight that ensues Khal Drogo is injured.
Discussion
The Pointy End marks the end of the beginning. Throughout the show so far there has been few depictions of violence of existential threat to any of the characters, this episode now begins to change. Ned Stark is now locked away deep in the dungeons, unable to protect his family from the dangers of the world.
The title itself is extremely important. It references the conversation between Jon and Arya before they go their separate ways in episode one. Arya summarizing the act of wielding her a sword as stabbing them with the pointy end.
I think that carries a lot of weight in this episode and for the show. The phrase Arya says is obviously true, even Jaime Lannister makes a similar allusion about men being filled with water that are prone to leaking. But this phrase also oversimplifies the act of killing, there are other consequences including on the people doing the killing themselves. Underlying a lot of this season has been the inexperience of killing for a lot of the younger characters.
Many of the characters are “green” or “Summer children”, never seeing combat or experiencing the hardships of Winter. Rob Stark himself is sending an army to war and has never experienced a battle. This is made clear with Lord Umber challenging his authority and demanding he lead the vanguard, which Rob answers the challenge by holding his ground as the leader. But clearly the facade is not real, nearly breaking down in front of his command when he sees his mother arrive and looking to embrace her immediately like a boy lost in a world he does not understand.
Arya, the coiner of “the pointy end”, has to kill a child in order to escape and save her own life. Although the act was simple, it is clear that it did have an impact on her. It also parallels nicely to the fact that the Hound killed the Baker’s son while she killed a stable hand.
Out of all of the Starks and most characters on the show, Sansa gets a bad rap. This is mostly attributed to her naivete and immaturity. She often is infatuated with the story she tells herself, that Joffrey is a good person and he will be a great king with her as the queen. She even romanticizes and emphasizes that she wants his babies. Of course, at this point in the show the facade of a good Joffrey has a few cracks but it has not been shattered yet.
But can we as an audience blame the naivety of Sansa on her? As mentioned earlier she is a “Summer child” relatively sheltered from the bulk of dangers in this world. She is also a woman of the aristocracy, given stories to better swallow the pill of forced marriage for political gain between great houses of Westeros.
Some have pointed out the historical similarities between her and a certain monarch that became extremely successful in her time. Sansa is naive, especially in this episode, but I think as the season goes on it is important to look at how she grows in terms of navigating the politics around her.
Danny herself also has new experiences as she walks through a raid on a small herding community. Although she has ambitions to conquer Westeros and reclaim her throne, she is sickened by the bloodshed and the enslavement of the people here.
Her biggest issue though appears to be the enslavement and rape of women, which she has seen throughout her life. This is where the Daenerys as a liberator of the slaves begins to formulate in her head. Obviously, she has some political leverage since she is pregnant with the Khal’s child who is prophesied to rule the world. She uses this to try to work within the system of slavery to get them some kind of quasi free status. They will be her slaves instead of harmed by anybody else.
During all of this conflict down South the Jon storyline brings back the forces that have been mounting since episode one. Not only has the world of the show been negligent on the White Walkers, but the show has as well. This is the first time we see a byproduct of them since the very first scene in episode one.
Through this bizarre creature that is dead but alive that only dies to fire we see the horror scenario begin to play out. While the entire kingdom is about to be plummeted into a civil war, greater forces are mounting an existential attack on all of them.
Finally, let’s talk about Ned Stark. After failing to establish Robert’s decree and not bending the knee he is now sealed deep under King’s Landing in a dark dungeon. In this dungeon Varys comes and discuss events with him.
These scenes are incredibly interesting because we see the flaws of not only Ned Stark’s logic, but of most of the aristocracy in Westeros. Specifically with Ned Stark’s actions though, Varys criticizes the fact that Ned played his hand while announcing everything.
Considering that so far in the series one could write everything important about Ned Stark down to a paragraph and struggle to get more information out of Varys besides the fact he is a eunuch shows the two extremes they occupy. One of them is stuck in a dungeon with the real possibility of dying and the other one is Varys.
One of the greatest lines this season and one that defines Varys perfectly comes when Ned asks who he truly serves. “The Realm, my lord. Someone must.” In this we see that Varys is above the petty inner house rivalries. To Varys his main pragmatic goal is the overall well-being of Westeros even if that means having to go along with regime changes that are not so easy to swallow. There is obviously more to this that can be discussed at another time but clearly in this dungeon we see that Ned was in over his head while others had much larger machinations.
Few other highlights that were awesome but not really a lot to expositate on:
- Barristan Selmy being dismissed from the King’s Guard.
- Syrio fighting with a wooden sword against men in full armor. But did he die though?
Next time: Baelon
The Talking Gator 