Game of Thrones: Mother's Mercy, season 5, episode 10, review: 'powerful and sad'
Hands up if you thought this season of Game of Thrones – like season three – would end on a happy note? Or even on a bittersweet note, like season four?
If so, more fool you. After treating us to the (literally and figuratively) uplifting vision of Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys escaping on a dragon in the previous episode, the programme-makers clearly decided we’d had quite enough happiness and exhilaration, and instead decided to end season five in the bleakest way possible: on a lingering shot of a murdered Jon Snow (Kit Harington), eyes frozen open, surrounded by a growing pool of dark blood.
True, this probably isn’t the last we’ll see of Jon (he’s far too significant a character), but, while the return of Melisandre (Carice van Houten) to the Wall was certainly intriguing, the episode gave us no hint of resurrection for Jon; no flickering eyelids, no sudden magic or mystery, no whisper of an escape. All we got was stark, dead Snow.
A group of Night's Watchmen, led by Alliser Thorne (Owen Teale), betrayed and stabbed their Lord Commander, fearful of his decision to allow Wildlings behind the wall. But it felt both inevitable and terribly sad that the “man” to deliver the final blow was in fact barely a man at all, but young Olly (Brenock O'Connor). There was a certain symmetry here and a sense of violence endlessly begetting violence, with Jon dying at the hands of the boy who killed his lover Ygritte – who had, in her turn, murdered Olly's own family.
Elsewhere, that extra-slow, extra-gloomy version of The Rains of Castamere got a fair few outings: Tyrion aside, it’s not a great time to be a Lannister. The words “poor Cersei” probably haven’t been uttered by that many people before, but this week, the character (played by the excellent Lena Headey) underwent a humiliation that was so painful, and so absolute – forced to undergo a naked, barefoot walk of penance through the streets of King’s Landing, surrounded by jeerings, spitting crowds – that it was hard not to wince.
Given all the murder, rape, torture, skinning and burning alive going on elsewhere in Game of Thrones, it seems a little strange to say that watching Cersei have all her hair hacked off felt especially brutal, but it was nonetheless true; seeing one of the show’s most addictively watchable female villains stripped and shorn, more vulnerable than ever before, was strangely upsetting.
By the time the dreaded walk was over, it was almost cheering to watch the deliciously malevolent Qyburn (Anton Lesser) present Cersei with every fallen queen’s dream: the ultimate strong, silent hero. That towering body clearly belongs to The Mountain – but the question of what exactly is festering under that helmet remains. Personally, I wouldn't volunteer to lift it up.
Meanwhile, Cersei’s daughter Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free) was also having a pretty terrible day. She gets top marks for open-mindedness (sweetly acknowledging that her uncle is in fact her father, assuring him that this is All Totally Normal and Okay) but zero marks for character judgement, after accepting a poisonous kiss from a decidedly murderous looking Ellaria (Indira Varma).
Across the narrow sea, the relationship between Daenerys and Drogon seemed to have soured pretty quickly – in the previous episode, he was rescuing the silver-haired queen from certain death; in this episode, he was trying to nap, and she was snippishly complaining about the lack of food: "At the very least you could hunt us some supper.” That's gratitude for you.
Still, to see Daenerys return to the land of the Dothraki, and eventually end up surrounded by a swirling mass of horsemen, was a thrilling twist: one that reminded us exactly where she started (a frightened young bride, sold like a slave to Khal Drogo), and just how far she has since come.
Perhaps the episode's saddest moment, Jon's death aside, was witnessing the downfall of Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane). The fascinating thing about Stannis is that he's a man who has made terrible, sometimes horrific decisions (most notably, sacrificing his own daughter) – but always in pursuit of what he believes is a righteous cause. It wasn't just greed or ambition that spurred him onwards in his battle to become King, but a conviction that he was a long-promised hero: the only man who could save Westeros from internal collapse, and from the hordes of White Walkers waiting in the North.
Instead, he ended up losing his army, his battle, and his entire family: after witnessing Shireen's death in the previous episode, Stannis's wife, Selyse, hanged herself.
Surrounded by the corpses of his men, Stannis was eventually confronted by Brienne (Gwendoline Christie), who reminded him of yet another of his crimes – his murder of his brother, Renly – and prepared to exact justice. We didn't witness the final blow, but it's hard to see how Stannis could have escaped. The look of total resignation on his face as he accepted his fate – and tacitly acknowledged that he was no great king after all, and that all his sacrifices had been for nothing – was absolutely heartbreaking. Only Game of Thrones could make us feel sorry for a man who burnt his young daughter alive.
Overall, this was a gripping, but almost relentlessly dark episode: a fitting close to a season that has grown increasingly darker. As we watched Jon's blood seep into the snow, we were left with an overpowering sense that essentially well-motivated people will always end up doing bad things, that winter is coming and that, ultimately, there's probably no hope for anyone.