Game of Thrones: Second Sons   First Watch 
August 21, 2015 12:59 PM - Season 3, Episode 8 - Subscribe

Come one, come all to the Wedding from Hell in King's Landing! (Also, Melisandre gets her leech on with Gendry. Dany meets the Titan's Bastard and Sam and Gilly meet an older gentleman.)

--
Tyrion: “I won’t share your bed. Not until you want me to."
Sansa: “What if I never want you to?"
Tyrion: “And so my watch begins."
--


Longer Summary (contains spoilers)
In King's Landing: With their wedding hours away, Tyrion visits Sansa. In the Sept of Baelor, Cersei threatens Margaery with a story of how House Reyne, former bannerman of House Lannister, were exterminated by Tywin when they rebelled. After arriving at the Sept, Sansa is walked down the aisle by King Joffrey. In an effort to embarrass Tyrion, Joffrey takes away the stepstool Tyrion was going to stand on during the ceremony when he put a Lannister cloak around Sansa. After an awkward moment, Sansa kneels, Tyrion cloaks her and they are married. During the wedding feast, Tyrion gets very drunk. Joffrey, after threatening to rape Sansa, calls for the traditional bedding ceremony to begin, in which the celebrants are stripped naked and carried to their bedroom by a crowd of wedding attendees. Tyrion puts a stop to that by threatening to castrate Joffrey: "Then you’ll be fucking your own bride with a wooden cock!"

Everything Stops.


Tywin defuses the situation: “I’m sure Tyrion did not mean to threaten the king.” Tyrion mocks himself, blaming his threats on his drunkenness. He avoids punishment. Tyrion departs the feast with Sansa, and though Tywin has ordered Tyrion to consummate his marriage, he tells Sansa he will not share her bed until she wants him to. Sansa asks what Tyrion will do if that never happens, and Tyrion jokes that he is resigned to never having sex again. "This has the added benefit of scoring him points with Shae, who arrives in the morning to find Sansa's sheets pristine and unbloodied. Is it too much to hope that these three will work out an "arrangement"?"

At Dragonstone: Melisandre returns to Dragonstone with Gendry and takes him to see King Stannis, who recognizes Gendry as one of Robert's bastards. Stannis visits Davos in the dungeons to discuss Melisandre's plan to sacrifice Gendry. Davos objects, since Gendry is Stannis' nephew. Stannis reveals that Melisandre has prophesied "a great battle in the snow." Stannis makes Davos swear to never try to kill Melisandre, and frees him. Melisandre seduces Gendry, ties him up and places three leeches on his body to draw out his powerful Kingly blood. ("…only on "Game of Thrones" are you winning if you only have a leech full of your own blood ripped from your genitals.") "Stannis and Davos enter to find Melisandre naked and Gendry tied to the bed with leeches on his chest and genitals. Awkward, sure, but we’ve all been there." Stannis then ritually burns the leeches. As he does so, he speaks the names of the three "usurpers to his throne": Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, and Joffrey Baratheon.

In the Riverlands: Assuming (wrongly) that The Hound is sleeping, Arya grabs a rock and goes to kill him, and then: "I’ll give you one try, girl. Kill me and you’re free. But if I live, I’ll break both your hands." Arya drops the rock and The Hound remains on her List. Clegane heads for the Twins with his captive. He intends to ransom Arya to her brother Robb.

At Yunkai: Ser Jorah tells Dany that Yunkai has employed a mercenary group called the Second Sons, which is led by a man named Mero. "Titan’s Bastard arrives in Dany’s tent. Pretty much from the moment he sits down chummily next to Dany we know he won’t survive this episode and we’re counting the minutes until he gets killed. He says Dany reminds him of a booty-licking prostitute and demands to see her naked to know if she’s worth fighting for (Thrones fans have already seen Dany naked and can vouch). If Dany’s dragons were in the tent, they would have roasted this guy without prompting (and they should be in the tent, logically, since she’s meeting with three dangerous rivals, but let’s just say the dragons were busy saving the producers some coin)." Dany meets with Mero, his co-captain Prendahl na Ghezn and his lieutenant Daario Naharis. She attempts to bribe Mero to renege on his deal with Yunkai and fight for her, and gives him two days to make a decision. Later, in the Second Sons' camp, the three leaders plot to kill her. Daario is selected as the assassin. After nightfall, he enters Dany's camp disguised as an Unsullied. He enters her tent and shows her and Missandei the severed heads of Mero and Prendahl, He tells Dany that he killed his superiors after disagreeing with the plot to kill her. He then kneels and pledges the Second Sons, as well as himself, to her cause.

Beyond the Wall: Quick, name the least likely character on Game of Thrones to kill a White Walker! Sam and Gilly continue their journey to the Wall, stop at an abandoned hut for the night and discuss a name for her son. When they hear a murder of crows cawing nearby, Sam leaves the hut to investigate and is attacked by a White Walker. The Walker shatters Sam's sword with a single touch and tosses him aside then moves towards Gilly, presumably to take her baby. Sam finally disproves his own opinion of himself by bravely attacking the Walker from behind and stabbing it with his dragonglass dagger. The Walker disintegrates, spectacularly. Sam and Gilly then flee into the night.

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Davos [To Stannis]: “Forgive me your grace, I’m not a lettered man, but is there a difference between kill and sacrifice?”
--


Introduced in this episode
Characters
* Mero, a Braavosi sellsword known as the Titan's Bastard. He is one of the captains of the Second Sons.
* Prendahl na Ghezn, one of the captains of the Second Sons
* Daario Naharis, a lieutenant in the Second Sons,

--
Cersei [To Margaery]: “You ever call me sister again, I’ll have you strangled in your sleep.”
--


Notes (cribbed from here-- there are spoilers below)
* The episode is named after the Second Sons mercenaries, but the entire episode deals with "second sons" of various forms: Tyrion is the spurned younger son of Tywin Lannister and is being forced into marriage to further his father's plans; Sandor is the second Clegane son, but unlike his brother Gregor he has turned his back on the Lannisters; Stannis was the second Baratheon son after Robert, and is struggling with how to claim the throne of his deceased brother; Gendry is functionally a "second son" (a less well-regarded son) due to his bastard status; similar to Gendry, Samwell talks with Gilly about how his father was cruel to him - even though Sam actually was his father's firstborn son, he considered Sam a disgrace and functionally the "second son" behind Sam's younger brother.
* The doll that sits next to Sansa's mirror in her first scene of the episode is the same one that her father Eddard Stark gave to her as a gift back in episode 3 of Season 1, "Lord Snow", though at the time she said she was too old to play with dolls. Eddard said it was made by the same toymaker who produces dolls for Princess Myrcella Baratheon.
* Sansa apparently covered Tyrion with a blanket some time after he passed out on the couch (unless he got up in the middle of the night, but it's strongly implied that we are later shown when he first wakes up).
* The significance of dragonglass is finally revealed: the substance is lethal to White Walkers. The cache of dragonglass daggers was discovered at the Fist of the First Men in episode 8 of Season 2, "The Prince of Winterfell" (exactly one season ago), but none of those who found it had any guess as to its purpose.
* This episode was nominated for the 2013 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Single-Camera Series.
* Tyrion referring to himself as "the God of Tits and Wine" is a reference to a joke he makes in the Season 2 episode "The Prince of Winterfell", in which he asked Varys: "The Lord of Light wants his enemies burned. The Drowned God wants them drowned. Why are all the gods such vicious cunts? Where is the god of tits and wine?"

--
Mero: "I'll come looking for you when this is all over."
[Mero slaps Missandei on the butt as he walks out]
Dany: "Ser Barristan. When it comes to battle, kill that one first."
Ser Barristan: "Gladly, your Grace."
--
posted by zarq (2 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This is a First Watch with Books thread.

Please do not reveal spoilers for subsequent episodes from any source.

Thank you.
posted by zarq at 1:00 PM on August 21, 2015


A look back at Sansa's and Tryion's wedding in the book: Empathy Upon Courage, Patriarchy Atop a Fool, and Sansa Stark Kneeling
posted by homunculus at 5:03 PM on February 19, 2016


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