Unlike previous Game of Thrones recaps, this week’s won’t be jumping from city to city like a fugitive identity thief. That’s because HBO’s Battle of the Bastards extravaganza is primarily set in one location, where two armies fight until the obvious thing happens.
The only other place we do visit is Meereen, because Daenerys Targaryen’s sitcom-like arrival in the previous episode needs following up. She’s returned to discover the Masters shooting their fiery balls all over the place and is quite perturbed about it. As it turns out, having three fuck-off dragons is quite handy when you want to desecrate your enemies. They’re all barbequed so fast she even has time for a little flirt with Yara Greyjoy. While they discuss the lizard tongue technique, Theon stares blankly at where his appendage used to be.
Then it’s back to the main event.
Jon meets with Ramsay to discuss how they’re going to make the battle as dramatic as possible. They agree that Jon’s army should be significantly outnumbered and look certain to lose until Littlefinger’s cavalry comes to the rescue, causing Ramsay to pull an expression that can only be described as an ‘ah fuck’ face. It’s a far better look than Rickon Stark’s, anyway, whose head is slightly incapacitated by the massive arrow going through it.
The battle itself would work well as an advert for medieval rugby: thousands of brutish men wrestling in the mud, repressing their blatant homosexual feelings by beheading each other. Jon finds himself right in the middle of the action, completely surrounded by swinging swords and other unidentifiable objects, yet miraculously evading every single one. He does almost get trampled to death at one point, but then remembers he’s quite fond of oxygen and emerges from a sea of men like that shadow spirit from Melisandre’s twat. The cinematography is lovely.
When Littlefinger arrives with Sansa and the reinforcements, he sits on his horse smirking in the only way a marauding pervert with a strong game plan can smirk, further enforcing my fondness for the bastards of the show, and I don’t mean the ones spunked into existence out of wedlock. It’s thanks to him that Jon and Sansa are able to reclaim Winterfell and let Ramsay’s starving dogs chew on his face. The psychotic, phallus-amputating rapist is dead – a tragic loss for the show.
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