Jon returned to the story, Arya changed her path, and the past turned painfully present in Game of Thrones 6×03, “Oathbreaker.”
“Oathbreaker” is an episode about stories, given meaning by eventual endings. But by and large, Game of Thrones 6×03 held back its characters sought conclusions, leaving characters to struggle for meaning in their own aching narratives.
The most obvious example of these fractured stories is Bran, who is whisked through history to witness the final confrontation of Robert’s Rebellion. Staged before the lonely Tower of Joy, Bran watches at his father and his friends (including Meera’s father Howland Reed) battle the formidable kingsguard of Aerys Targaryen. The scene is a slaughter, the violence inexplicable; the only explanation, offered by the legendary knight Arthur Dayne, is that Rhaegar wanted them to guard the little tower.
But though young Ned tries to invoke a sense of ending to the slaughter — “Now it ends,” he tells Dayne — there are no satisfying conclusions to be had. Ned is moments away from death at the hands of the great knight, only saved when Reed stabs Dayne from behind. And though Ned follows the sound of a woman’s screams up the tower steps, Bran cannot communicate with him; nor can he follow to see the end of the story.
Confronted with Bran’s rage back in their nest, the Three-Eyed Raven promises that Bran will not share his tree-bound fate. But even this promised ending is not what it seems. Before Bran can leave, the Raven says, he must learn “everything.”
And what, after all, is the end of everything?
While Bran struggles with his “studies” far in the North, Sam changes the script on Gilly as they sail across a seemingly endless sea. Instead of going to Oldtown as dictated by Jon, Sam plans to leave Gilly and the baby with his family at Horn Hill. But Gilly stubbornly clings to her own version of the story, in which Sam is the father of her son, and promises between these two lost people still mean what she always took them to meant.
Daenerys too has a shock awaiting her when she is forcibly reunited with the Dosh Khaleen. Dany continues to repeat her titles, clinging to the idea that her destiny is far grander than these other women. But here in Vaes Dothrak, Dany is not special; she is not the only widow of a once-great Khal, and the Dothraki do not take kindly to women who break free of their prescribed roles.
Dany’s fate, it turns out, is not sealed among the Dosh Khaleen after all. Thanks to her transgressions, her fate will be decided by the combined Khalassars — and the promised ending of as a venerated widow is not remotely assured.
Meanwhile, the tiny coalition in Meereen struggles to prevent their next chapter from being written for them by the Great Masters (probably in blood.) In King’s Landing, Cersei and Tommen struggle for the same, with perhaps even greater futility.
Cersei’s attempt to assert power through Qyburn and his Little Birds proves utterly futile when it comes to bending the will of the Small Council. No amount of stubbornness will resolve into the narrative of control that Cersei has written in her head — at least not yet. Tommen, of course, finds his story subverted once again into the High Sparrow’s soothing religious pedagogy.
In contrast to most of the unfinished or open stories gaping through Game of Thrones 6×03, Arya actually completes a part of her own tale. She suffers through the Waif’s brutal training, recounts the story of Arya Stark as though it belonged to someone, and finally finds her place in the darkness.
Jaqen H’ghar encourages the girl to drink from the deadly fountain — “If a girl has no name, a girl has nothing to fear,” he tells her. The girl drinks and finds her vision restored, repeating that she is “No one.”
But Needle is still hidden in the rocks beyond the House of Black and White. Arya Stark’s family is slowly converging on her old home; Rickon now emerging into a horror story with Ramsay Bolton as the narrator. Is Arya truly no one? Or this tale have a trick ending?
In either case, it is Arya’s once-brother Jon who concludes the story of stories in “Oathbreaker.” Awakening from death, Jon is overwhelmed by the wrongness of it. “I shouldn’t be here,” he says, thrust back into a story that had ended. Davos advises that Jon keep failing — keep pushing his story forward, for better or worse. Melisandre urges him to reveal the secrets of the afterlife, but Jon cannot validate her religious tales. Death, he tells her, had no narrative; it was simply nothing.
Jon’s resurrection does provide a happier ending for his allies, but a bitter one for his enemies. He oversees the execution of the traitors who killed him, left with their voices in his ears. Alliser Thorne is content with the ending to his story, believing that he has done right by the Night’s Watch.
“Now I rest,” he tells Jon. “You’ll be fighting their battles forever.”
Olly, the last young traitor, says nothing; that story was probably destined to end in tragedy. Jon cuts the rope that holds their lives and watches the conspirators die. Then, thrust back into a story greater than he can imagine, Jon tries to end the matter on his own terms. He hands Dolorous Edd his thick black cloak. “You have Castle Black,” he says bitterly. “My watch is ended.”
But though Jon Snow might end his watch, trying to close the chapter and the wounds that still gape open, it seems unlikely that his story will conclude quite that easily.
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