Game of Thrones:S6E9 Battle of the Bastards Review

It’s here! It’s finally here!
 
We’ve finally gotten to the highly anticipated, long awaited Snowbowl/Bastardbowl! I’m so excited, this is what I’ve been waiting for since Jon and Sansa reunited and decided to fight for Winterfell, finally, after what felt like years (and you know what they say about waiting, the more you want something, the longer it feels)...it's finally here!  

Remember last year when everyone thought Hardhome was the best episode of a lacklustre season? I think this is the Hardhome of season 6 (except season 6 beats 5 any day), unless something even more amazing happens next week.

Warning: spoilers ahead.



But before I can talk about the Snowbowl/Bastardbowl, I gotta talk about the opening scene in Meereen. Turns out I was wrong in my previous review about Dany and Drogon obliterating the slave masters' ships offscreen. It's one of the few times I'm glad to be wrong, because this surprise scene was...how should I put it? Oh yes, balls to the wall awesome, and the fact I didn't expect it made it all the more sweeter.

The slave masters' soldiers are launching flaming rocks into the pyramid Dany lives in, and Dany's...less than pleased. All right that's an understatement, because her reaction to the attack is fly to the slave cities, burn them to the ground and crucify the masters, but Tyrion talks her out of it, since that's waaay to much like the Mad King. He explains the Jaime told him (probably offscreen) told him the Mad King having stashes of wildfire hidden everywhere in King's Landing, and he was prepared to burn everyone, no matter who the supported. Dany argues it's not the same, but Tyrion easily convinces her it's not so different, they're both talking about burning entire cities to the ground, along with all their people, even if some them didn't agree at all with the masters but they couldn't do anything about it.

And so, they try his plan--talking with the masters for surrender terms. The masters want Dany to leave Meereen on foot, without the Unsullied and Missandei (both of whom will be sold at the next slave auction) and her dragons (which they assume will be killed, like the stupid summer children they are). Dany corrects them, saying they'll be discussing their terms for surrender. She has this smirk on her face, and I'm surprised by how Cersei-like she looks. I thinks it's the eyebrows (Cersei also has some very expressive eyebrows, dark ones that really contrast her blonde hair).

Then as if on cue, Drogon flies to her, and holy shit...he's gotten so much bigger since the last time I saw him in episode 6 I believe. Dany climbs on top of him, and they fly off. The flying scenes are just fucking amazing, it was money well spent on all that CGI. Dragons look fantastic, scenery too. Everything looks so...cinematic, it's like you're watching a rerun of a movie that was originally released in theatres as opposed to a TV show. Seriously, CGI this good is usually reserved for the big screen, and to see it on a TV show, well...not only does it exceed your expectations, it makes you speechless at how jaw-droppingly awesome it is.

Rhaegal and Viserion bust out of the pyramid. I'm always glad to see them, especially Rhaegal (he's my favourite dragon, because he's more dangerous than he looks, he appears seemingly out of nowhere; you think you're safe, and that's when he attacks, his mannerisms are of raptor-ish to me, so of course I like him best). Besides, Drogon's got so much screen time, it's gotten to the point where I wonder if Rhaegal and Viserion have been demoted to mere extras. Anyways, they fly beside him, and neither of them are as big as Drogon (well, being chained up does stunt a dragon's growth) but they're not looking too shabby. They fly to the Meereen ports, and Dany gives the ultimate command--Dracarys.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist for anyone to guess what happens next. While the slave masters' ships burn, the Sons of the Harpyare killing civilians at the outskirts of the city. Their fun's cut short when Daario and the Dothraki army arrive. Wow...these guys showed up much sooner than I expected, they must have the fastest horses ever, to be able to keep up with a dragon. That or they learned to teleport like Littlefinger. Never mind, I'm just glad to see them kill the Harpies, I hate the Harpies and I'm really glad to see that their plot armour (like how they managed to kill Ser Barristan Selmy, one of the strongest knights that ever lived) can't save them anymore.

Grey Worm tells the masters' soldiers they can either die for people that don't give two shits about them, or leave and live another day. They pick the latter. Tyrion tells them one of them must die as punishment, so the other two can go back to Yunkai and Volantis and tell everyone what happened, should they try to rebel again (it's kind of like the Meereen version of the Reynes of Castamere, fuck with the Mother of Dragons, and your fleet will get burnt and you'll die, and your soldiers will desert you). The masters say Yezzan zo Qaggaz (this guy, the one that bought Jorah and Tyrion in season 5) should go, because he's more lowborn than the others, so Grey Worm decides to kill the other two, and Yezzan gets to tell the tale.



In the North, Jon, Sansa, Davos and Tormund have a pre-battle meeting with Ramsay and his guys. Ramsay gives Jon a chance to give Sansa over, kneel and proclaim him as the Lord of Winterfell, he says he'd be merciful (just as merciful he was with the Ironborn I bet). Jon tries to goad Ramsay to fight him one on one, and Ramsay in return tries to get him to surrender for Rickon's sake, he even throws Shaggydog's head to prove it's really Rickon. I was legitimately surprised that Jon didn't go "how do we know it's really Rickon's direwolf, as opposed to some random other black wolf you beheaded?" (Sansa wouldn't know the proper size of a direwolf, hers was killed too soon). Seriously...he should've said that, even if the chances of Shaggydog being alive are slim and none (I've realised now that when it comes to D&D, it's what it looks like most of the time, there's no twist, just look at what happened when we expected twists, we've always been disappointed and I've had enough of that). Sansa tells Ramsay to sleep well, for he'll die tomorrow, and rides off. Before Jon and the others do so too, Ramsay wonder out loud which parts his dogs (he's starved them for a week for this) would go for first.

That night, Sansa warns Jon that Ramsay likes to play mind games with other people, and she tells him not to fall for his bait. She also tells him something we all know already--that Rickon is a dead man, but she doesn't let him know about the Vale soldiers in Moat Cailin. Outside their tent, Davos takes a walk because he has trouble sleeping the night before a battle, and he finds the place where they burned Shireen, and he even fishes out the wooden stag he carved for her from the burnt wooden twigs. He's angry, enraged even...but he'll confront Melisandre in the finale, otherwise that'd take screen time away from the Snowbowl.



In Meereen, Yara and Theon are standing in front of Dany, who's looking lovely in black. Finally she's wearing one of the colours of her House. In my opinion, she should wear her House colours more often, I feel it's inappropriate that the last Targaryen doesn't wear the colours of House Targaryen. Besides she looks much better in black than blue or white. They try to make a deal with her, they'd support her claim and give her the ships they stole, and she'd give the Iron Islands their independance. Yara convinces her to take their deal over Euron's 'cause Euron wants to marry her and he'd kill her once he has Westeros. Yara doesn't demand that Dany marry her, but she's up for anything. :wink Dany tells Yara they have a lot in common, both are queens and both have fathers who are horrible kings killed by usurpers. She tells them all their fathers made the world a shithole, but they're going to make it great again. However, Dany did have one condition for a Yara/Dany alliance--no more raiding, pillaging and raping from the Ironborn. Uh...Dany? I don't think that'd work. For one, this isn't like forcing Slaver's Bay to give up slavery. Tyrion's right, those guys can give up slavery and still be rich (like the Lannisters and the Tyrells) but the Ironborn literally has no other way of life. The Iron Islands are not exactly well-known for having the richest, most fertile land, even the Greyjoy house motto "we do not sow" reflects that. The only way I can ever see this working is if Dany gives them some land on the mainland to farm. Yara agrees to this, but she's got this smile on her face that tells me she might not stay true to her word. And instead of shaking their hands, they do this weird, elbow holding thing.

However, I do have one problem with this scene. When Dany speaks to Yara, she asks them if "the Iron Islands ever had a queen" and Yara replies "no more than Westeros." Then Yara asks Dany to "help [her] kill an uncle who thinks a queen isn't fit to rule," as opposed to "kill an usurper." Maybe I've spent too much time on anti-SJW subreddits and I should take a break, but what I got from this scene was "look! girl power! " The "muh gurl power" vibes were pretty strong with this one. The scene just reeked (heh...Reek...) of shoving "muh gurl power" in there so the guys behind the show can come out looking progressive and totally not sexist, the line about killing Euron because "herp derp muh soggy knees" spelled it out for me, it would've made more sense to have Yara to appeal to Dany's hatred of usurpers but they had to go with "muh gurl power," and I have a pretty good idea they only did this "muh gurl power" thing to clean up the shitstorm that followed the season 5 offscreen (and even arguably tasteful) rape of Sansa by Ramsay. It's pretty annoying to have "muh gurl power" shoved in my face. I get it D&D, you're sorry for triggering all the SJWs out there, and you wanna make amends to a group of people that can never be truly satisfied, but shoving "muh gurl power" where it doesn't belong is just plain fucking annoying. You're not helping anyone; you're making guys like me roll their eyes, and you're pushing people away from this very concept.



Back in the North, Ramsay decides to play a game with Rickon before the fight starts. Rickon has to run to Jon, while Ramsay shoots arrows at him, if he can do so without being shot, he wins, if Ramsay shoots him, Ramsay wins. As Rickon runs in a straight line (as opposed to zigzagging), Jon rides out, but just as Rickon gets shot in the heart.

Bye bye, Rickon. No tears were shed for him, even though he's a Stark. He's the least developed Stark, he hardly appears, and if it wasn't for season 6, most people would've forgotten about his existence. It's hard to care about a guy that 90% of people forget about.

That pisses off Jon so much, he ignores all the plans and formations, they made the night before, and he rides out on his own. Ramsay orders his archers to shoot at him, and it's a good thing that Jon is such an important main character in this show, otherwise I'd be worried (there's no way in hell they'll kill him just yet, not before confirming R+L=J).

Sure enough, Jon's horse gets hit, but he doesn't. He keeps on running, and the Boltons ride out to run him down, but Davos orders the Stark cavalry to ride out. Ramsay then orders his archers to shoot, it doesn't matter if they hit their own men, they still have more, tons more than the Starks so he can afford to sacrifice some of them for victory. Some of the guys get hit, others fall off their horses, either way Jon kills them all. But the arrows keep coming, more soldiers keep getting hit, until Jon gets buried under a mountain of corpses. It's a beautiful scene; if you're claustrophobic, you're going to feel uncomfortable at how Jon was nearly smothered to death, I'm not even claustrophobic, and that scene made me wince. Jon manages to make it out just in time to see Bolton soldiers surrounding them. They have shields out, (unlike the Stark soldiers, those guys don't have them) and they have spears out too.



Hmm...reminds me a bit of 300, expect the guys with spears and shields are the bad guys.

But then he looks to the east, and sees Gandalf arriving with the Rohirrim Littlefinger arriving with the Vale soldiers. The Vale soldiers easily break through the barricade of Bolton soldiers. It really does remind me of Lord of the rings, especially with the triumphant music appearing the moment they arrive, and the way they break through the Boltons remind me of of the ride of the Rohirrim, even though Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are as different as night and day (the only thing they have in common is that they're both popular, well-known medieval fantasy books). Game of Thrones is so much more gritty, and it captures just how shitty medieval warfare can be (especially with the scenes where Jon nearly gets smothered), whereas Lord of the Rings is on the lighter side of the spectrum (of course, this can't be said for all works set in Middle Earth, the Silmarillion was pretty dark).

Oh, and Tormund kills Smalljon Umber. Good job, there. That betrayal of the Starks turned out genuine after all; the Umbers here are about as loyal as the Freys. They really did hand Rickon over to Ramsay, it was what it looked like, and for that the Umbers can go get flayed. Seriously, their excuse for switching sides was stupid--"herp derp, Jon let wildlings in, we had to fight them for decades, and now their bastard just lets them in, that's unforgivable!" You know, people from House Umber are supposed to be super badass (and I mean super, these guys take badass and basically amplify that trait), the Greatjon had his fingers bitten off by Grey Wind, and he laughed it off. What's a couple of wildlings next to that?

When Ramsay sees he's losing, he high tails it out of there. When he gets back to Winterfell, he bolts the castle door shut, since they don't have any siege gear. But he forgot Wun Wun, the giant that rips the door open (as opposed to holding it shut). Jon and the Stark army come with him, Wun Wun dies from an arrow to the eye (and no, I wouldn't say that's a stupid way to kill him off, he was already full of arrows from the battle and from being shot at when he tried to break in, he might as well be a pincushion). Ramsay decides to accept Jon's offer of one on one PvP after all, except he's not gonna fight up close, he's gonna use ranged combat. Ramsay shoots at Jon, but it's not very effective, as Jon immediately grabs a dead soldier's shield and blocks it. He keeps going forward and blocking until he knocks the bow out of Ramsay's hands and he starts beating the shit out of him.



After everything he did, it is absolutely glorious to see him getting beat up. Still, I think Ramsay deserves worse than a beating, I think slow torture is the way to go, start with ripping his fingernails off, then flay his fingers (that's where it hurts the most, fingers have so much nerve endings), then toes, starve him and feed bits of his own skin to him, whip him with a flagrum (which has metal shards attached to its ends and its designed to tear off bits of skin during the whipping), heal him, torture him, heal him, torture him again, heal him, torture him, and so on and so on till he becomes a shadow of his former self, and then end with gouging out one eye (not both, sensory deprivement is good, but I still want him to be able to see what he's become), making him eat said eye (after it's been chopped to small pieces so he can't deliberately choke on it to mercy kill himself), before impaling him with a roughly sharpened wooden stake that goes in through the arsehole and out the mouth (and I insist it must be roughly sharpened, it'd take him longer to die that way).

Jon only stops when Sansa appears. Ramsay gets taken captive offscreen, and then the Bolton banners go down, and the Stark ones go up.
Awwwww yeeeeeeaaaaah! :bademoticon: 

It's so great, so satisfying to see Starks in Winterfell, and actually owning Winterfell once again! Hey, this means that in the finale, we're gonna see the wolf in the opening sequence, not the flayed man!

Turns out, Ramsay's tied up in the kennels. Sansa goes to see him and he tells her "I'm a part of you now". Some people think this means she's pregnant, and if she is, that's no problem. Give her some moon tea and that would solve everything. No, I'm with the camp that says Sansa won't ever forget what he's done, to her and to everyone else he's tortured, a part of his personality, the sadistic part, with a penchant for cruel and unusual deaths is now a part of her too, and it will stay with her forever. It's proven when Sansa lets his dogs out and after being starved for a week, they're so desperate for food they don't care what it is. He gets eaten alive by his own bitches and Sansa walks off with a smirk on her face.

Well, it's not slow torture, but I suppose it's not a terrible way to kill Ramsay, it's so much better than having him die in battle, to say...a stab wound or some arrows. That'd be too quick and easy. One question though, why use his hounds? Why not have Ghost tear him to pieces? Where is Ghost anyways?

Don't answer that. In a way, I'm glad he's not in this episode. I have a feeling that if he had been, he would've died, since D&D have a habit of killing off direwolves that are still alive in the books.

Overall, this episode was fucking epic! All my complaints are minor ones, like the "muh gurl power" lines and why Ramsay's death had to be offscreen (if we can see Oberyn getting his eyes crushed in, we can see Ramsay getting eaten alive). It makes up for episode 8. Sure, it got predictable at times, like when the Vale army arrived just when the Starks are trapped with no way out (who didn't see that one coming?), and when Jon gets shot at by a rain of arrows, but everyone knew he's not gonna be killed off that way; still...that didn't make it any less enjoyable. There's nothing like the sweet, sweet catharsis of seeing Ramsay get what he deserves after several seasons of being a piece of shit and a Sue that's protected by layers and layers of plot armour.

Good fucking riddance, you fucking stupid bastard.