Sansa made plans, mythological secrets were revealed, and tragedy struck the North in Game of Thrones 6×05.
The title of Game of Thrones 6×05, “The Door,” may hold one very specific (and overwhelmingly emotional) reference, but the title does more work than is initially apparent. Stepping away from the episode’s jaw-dropping closing moments, it’s also interesting to consider the events of Game of Thrones 6×05 in the context of narrative doors dragged open… and slammed cruelly shut.
In Braavos, for example, a door opens for Arya whether she wants it to or not. For all her painful progress, “the girl” still struggles to crack the Faceless Men’s facade — “You’ll never be one of us, Lady Stark,” the waif taunts. But Jaqen H’ghar offers Arya one last chance, and charges her with the murder of an actress known as Lady Crane.
But what Arya faces in her investigation is less a door and more a funhouse mirror reflection of the life she has tried so hard to shed. Lady Crane, it turns out, portrays a dignified Cersei Lannister in a play that presents Ned Stark as a scheming idiot, and Joffrey as an nobly affable boy king. Forced to watch her father’s execution again and confronted with the knowledge that Sansa has been forcibly married, Arya’s identity as an anonymous killer thins visibly.
And though this would-be anonymous killer insists that she is willing to take the life assigned to her, it’s hard to say whether Arya Stark will truly walk through that ominous door.
Meanwhile, political doors are swinging wildly in the Iron Islands, where Yara Greyjoy makes a valiant claim for the Salt Throne. As promised, Theon passionately adds his voice to her cause, but the door slams shut on Yara’s groundbreaking play when Euron Greyjoy makes his entrance — through something of a back door, it must be said.
Euron boldly affirms that he did murder Balon, in order to free the Ironborn from the vise of “two wars we couldn’t win.” Promising to lure Daenerys Targaryen to their side with a mighty fleet of ships, Euron wins the Salt Throne, is ceremonially drowned, and crowned with driftwood. Yara and Theon, however, hack out their own trapdoor in their uncles machinations, zipping away to unknown possibilities on Euron’s best ships. Euron vows to kill them, but hey, it’s not like he has a history of murdering family members or whatever.
Speaking of Daenerys, the Burner of Doors (as she might as well be known) fights against fate once again as she returns to Meereen. After Dany sighs that she doesn’t know what to do with the man who is both traitor and savior, Jorah reveals his affliction to her. But rather than accepting the closed door of Jorah’s renewed exile, Dany charges the lovelorn knight to find a cure for his greyscale and return to her side.
Which, you know, sounds a lot easier than it probably is.
In Meereen proper, Tyrion continues his fight to keep the doors of power open and he strolls down a corridor eerily similar to the one Cersei walked last season in King’s Landing. Tyrion invites a religious order — a Red Priestess of R’hllor — to help him assert and maintain Daenerys’ power.
While Kinvara is of a different religious brand than the High Sparrow, she arrives in Meereen with just as much of an agenda as Cersei’s self-appointed nemesis. Kinvara also knows far more than she should, blithely bypassing Varys’ attempts to curtail her entry with illicit keys to the eunuch’s terrible past. While she seems fanatically loyal to Dany, it’s also hard to shake the feeling that Tyrion has opened the door and let a hornet in to the halls of power… one that may carry poison on its stinger.
Speaking of poisonous flying creatures, Littlefinger arrives on the scene in the North, allowing Sansa to kick in the doors that have held back her own story. (I don’t think it’s an accident that Sansa meets with Baelish in the ruins of Molestown, light streaming in from shattered doors.) But Sansa is decidedly unused to forging her own possibilities, and her heady confrontation with Littlefinger may carry an edge of warning.
Could the Blackfish really have retaken Riverrun? Is there truly an army waiting for Brienne, to lead back to Sansa? Or is this fractured party a seed planted by Petyr Baelish — a closed door in disguise?
“Close the bloody gate,” Dolorous Edd orders, as Sansa, Jon, Brienne, and their allies depart from Castle Black. It’s a funny moment, but I can’t help but wonder if some brighter possibility has been closed forever.
In any case, there is little need to turn to metaphor in order to find the relevance of doors in Bran’s section of Game of Thrones 6×05 — even from the start. (But hey, I’m going there anyway.) Bran’s visions are almost all centered on the heart tree he and the Three-Eyed Raven inhabit, itself a door to the past, and a crucial portal in the great and terribly mythology of this story.
First, Bran observes the creation of the White Walkers by none other than the children of the Forest themselves. This paradoxical origin story is itself due to a breach in the perceived natural order. “We were at war,” Leaf explains. “We were being slaughtered. We needed to defend ourselves… from men.”
And then Bran opens another terrible door, alerting the Night’s King to his presence. Before he and the Three-Eyed Raven can complete his SparkNotes education, the Walkers and their undead wights assault the weirwood tree; Meera attempts to haul Bran’s dreaming form to safety, screaming for him to wake up and warg into Hodor, who is frozen with terror.
Bran eventually does this — well, mostly — but he and Meera are lucky to gain a half step on the furious Walkers. Summer is stabbed to death by wights, and Leaf sacrifices herself to bring down more of the zombies. The Three-Eyed Raven is killed by the Night’s King, turning to dark shreds of memory within Bran’s deadly half-dream.
As Meera and Hodor race to escape the weirwood cave, Bran watches his father depart from Winterfell for fostering at the Eyrie. They force their way through a door and back out into the unyielding North, Meera screaming for Hodor to “hold the door” fast against the army of wights.
And as Bran, lingering in both worlds, listens to her voice, a door opens within the reverie. Young Hodor — Willas — sees the traveler clearly, hears Meera’s screams echoing from the future. Overwhelmed, he falls into a seizure, crying “Hold the door!” as he shakes and shudders… and as the door of his mind swings shut with terrible finality, he is left with only one word: Hodor.
“Hold the door!” Meera screams still, not knowing what she does, and Hodor does. The words that stole his mind now steal his life as the endless wights bite at him through the wood. But still, as Meera and Bran escape into the snow, Hodor holds the door shut for Bran and Meera — making sure their one hope of survival remains; that terribly fragile door remains open.