This week on Games of Thrones

This week’s episode came with a lot of throwbacks to characters of previous seasons. Hope you’ve got a good memory.

We open with a return to Meera dragging Bran away from the White Walkers (moment of silence for Hodor) while Bran has frantic visions, contrasting the Ice of the White Walkers with the Fire of the Mad King screaming “Burn them all”. This gets derailed when some bloke rides up on a horse looking like one of the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings (or my Skyrim character) and takes out the Wights with a fire mace. Pretty badass stuff in all honesty. Later in the episode we return to them and it is revealed that the mysterious rider is in fact Benjen! Remember? From five years ago? I told you you’d need a good memory. There’s a short explanation of how this happened. He was about to turn into a zombie before the Children of the Forest stabbed him in the heart, because it went so well in the past.

Bit of a change of pace now as we turn to Sam and Gilly heading to his family home. Sam gives her the cover story then drops the fact that his dad would probably murder her given the choice. She seems surprisingly cool with that, then you remember what her dad was like and you understand why. The meeting with the sister and mum goes pretty well, lovely people, it’s only at the family dinner when things start to turn south. Randyll Tarly really is a scary, scary man and you can see the effect he still has on Sam, beating him down to the point where he can’t defend Gilly. Eventually, Mama Tarly fires back and leaves the table. Sam goes to Gilly’s room to say goodbye before deciding against it and taking her, the baby and his father’s Valyrian Steel sword with him. I can’t see how he’s gonna spin this to fit in with his Night’s Watch vows.

We finally have some development with Arya’s story this week as she gets to know her target, who is by all accounts a great actor, and lovely lady. You can tell the writers had great fun writing the backstage scenes between the actors, hopefully all the sass and competitiveness (as well as the hiring of hitmen) isn’t quite accurate to the actors on the show. The climax comes when Arya decides not to kill the actress and warn her about the understudy who hired her. Confirming that Arya will not become a Faceless Man. She retrieves Needle from where she stashed it and hides in a cave in the dark, waiting for the Waif to come and kill her. Now THAT is how you quit a job!

Heading back to King’s Landing and we see the Tyrell troops heading to rescue Margaery after a truly rousing speech from Mace (brought a tear to my eye). A short standoff between Jaime and the High Sparrow Sanders ensues before it is revealed that Tommen has become a BernieBro and that the huge gathered crowd will not, in fact, get to see Natalie Dormer’s boobs. Shockingly, this doesn’t lead to a riot, instead leading to huge cheers from the audience as Jaime and Mace must stand down. Jaime is then fired from his job as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and told he is being sent to help the Freys (Remember? From Season three?) retake Riverrun. We are then treated to a short scene of Walder Frey having a go at his son and sexually harassing his… wife? Daughter? It’s hard to tell with this show.

We finish with a Daenerys scene, not anything substantial in a story sense, just bringing up the fact that she needs 1000 ships to transport her army (conveniently the same number that Euron said he was bringing over) and hopping back onto Drogon and giving another badass speech, I imagine Daario’s getting pretty sick of them by now. I suppose the point of this scene is to show both that Drogon has gotten bloody massive and that Dany finally has some control over him, but honestly it felt pretty redundant.

The title of this episode, ‘Blood of my Blood’, links into many of the stories going on here, with many of the younger characters ditching their family ties for the relationships they chose for themselves: Sam leaves his family for Gilly, Tommen leaves his family for Margaery and the both of them leave their families for the Church. This contrasts, of course, with Arya leaving the Faceless Men, becoming a Stark again when she gets Needle back and Bran reuniting with his Uncle. All in all, not very eventful, but a great breath of fresh air after last week’s heartbreak.