Ramsay took fate into his own hands, Bran learned secrets, and something big happened at the Wall in Game of Thrones 6×02.
There is a question of connection playing throughout this episode, echoed by its title — “Home.” There is a sense of anchors being pulled, of being lured toward the familiar; a suggestion of belonging, in a series that has woven endless stories of disenfranchisement.
Bran Stark (himself returning to our televisions after a full season spent hiding in his tree) is only the most evident example of this theme. Bran finds himself back home in Winterfell when the episode opens, relishing in the innocent safety of his father’s youth. His uncle Benjen and aunt Lyanna feature prominently, young, happy, and strong, and even Hodor is present — gentle, talkative, and known as “Willas.” Though the Three-Eyed Raven does not allow Bran to remain in the dream, it is clear that Bran has found a sense of belonging through the magic of the trees that Meera, alone and lonely, has long since lost.
In King’s Landing, Cersei is barred from seeing Myrcella to her final resting place in the Great Sept, but finds her home and desires delivered unexpectedly to her. While Jaime is forced to recognize the dominance of the simple High Sparrow and his hordes, Tommen returns to his mother. Propelled by guilt and unable to rescue Margaery from the Faith, the young king confesses his desire to adopt a decidedly more Lannister (read: violent) style of leadership.
“You raised me to be strong, and I wasn’t, but I want to be,” he tells Cersei. “Help me.”
“Always,” she says, a spindle of power finally falling back into her lap.
In Meereen too, there is a growing sense of belonging — and not just because all the other liberated cities of Slavers’ Bay have returned to the control of the Masters. Nor is it because Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm have any real power over the city, or even the ability to find the culprits who burned Dany’s ships. As they huddle in the Great Pyramid, it couldn’t be more clear that this ruling triumvirate has less power or place in Meereen than the wind.
But Tyrion does manage to find an affinity in Meereen in Game of Thrones 6×02. It’s not with the wine; against all expectations, it is with Rhaegal and Viserion, Daenerys’ last two dragons. Tyrion diagnoses their refusal to eat as symptomatic of being bound and sealed in the vault (dragons are clearly not at home in close quarters) and decides — with no small amount of drunken idiocy — to go and solve the problem. Miraculously, he does, insisting to the creatures that he is a friend, and relating his childhood love of dragons.
Tyrion admits that he cried himself to sleep as a boy when he learned that the dragons were all dead. “But here you are,” he marvels, freeing Viserion and Rhaegal from their thick manacles. Tyrion has brought them one step closer to where they are meant to be… and perhaps himself as well.
Meanwhile, Arya is offered another chance at finding her home in Braavos after another brutal beating by the Waif. In typical paradoxical fashion, Arya rejects Jaqen H’ghar’s offers of food, shelter, and her sight by continuing to insist that she is “No One.” Finally, Jaqen invites her to return to the House of Black and White. “A girl is not a beggar anymore,” he says, though what Arya is meant to become remains a mystery.
In the North, it is disenfranchisement that remains the propelling force through the action. It is Ramsay Bolton’s desires to remain in Winterfell, the home that is not his home, that lead him to murder his father; it is partly this desire, and partly his familiar sadism that leads him to murder Walda and her newborn son.
But as much as the Karstarks may hope for new leadership in the North, Sansa’s flight to the Wall raises doubts that the Starks will truly be overthrown. Even as Theon decides to return to his own home of the Iron Islands, Sansa is pursued by an increasing urgency that will hopefully take shape soon.
The theme of homecoming also echoes through the Iron Islands, where Balon Greyjoy is — at long, long last — returned to the Drowned God by the secretive arrival of his brother Euron. Even for a Greyjoy, Euron doesn’t seem terribly stable, but it seems he’s come home for a reason; after burying her father, Yara expresses her intent to take the throne of the Islands, only learn that a Kingsmoot will select their next king. And Yara, of course, is a woman.
Of course, it is by the Wall that the greatest return of Game of Thrones 6×02 takes place. After Dolorous Edd returns with the wildlings, bringing Tormund and his people into a place Alliser Thorne insists they do not belong, Davos asks Melisandre for a miracle. To bring the Lord Commander back from death.
Despondent and lost from her faith, Melisandre initially refuses; she does not believe in the rite, or at least in her ability to perform it. Davos tells her that he is not looking to the Lord of Light for aid — he is asking “the woman who showed me that miracles exist.”
And so Melisandre returns to her ritual, washing Jon Snow’s body, chanting, and cutting his hair. “Please,” she finally intones in the common tongue, a plea for the shelter of belief as much as anything else.
And it works. It works, after the mortal men and women have exhausted their trust, after Tormund and Edd, and Melisandre and Davos have given up Jon Snow for dead. But in the presence of Ghost, that unfailing companion, Jon Snow gasps.
He opens his eyes.
And he returns home.