‘Game of Thrones’ Episode 4: Dany’s Battles Have Only Just Begun
Nothing on the show is ever simple, a reality that “The Spoils of War” highlights
Game of Thrones has spent six and a half seasons building up to the second conquest of Westeros. And while “The Spoils of War” marks Daenerys Targaryen’s official landfall on the mainland she wants to rule, it refuses to indulge the excitement of a conqueror uniting a fractious group of kingdoms as her ancestor once did. Instead, the episode forces both us and its characters to come to terms with what that conquest is going to entail.
“Your people can’t fight,” a Dothraki warrior remarks to Tyrion as they survey the wreckage of what used to be Randyll Tarly’s victorious host. The operative word in that statement, of course, is “your.” Before Tyrion ever joined up with Dany’s patchwork coalition, he was born and raised in the country he’s now attempting to take by force. Even before the episode’s final moments make Tyrion’s conflict tragically literal, that simple fact presents a challenge that had to be confronted sooner rather than later. After the battle pits the queen he chose against the brother fate chose for him, however, the consequences of the cause he’s taken up are at the front of Tyrion’s mind — and ours.
It’s no coincidence that Game of Thrones confronts us with this awkward, painful reality after spending much of the preceding hour hyping the noble, righteous alternative to the chaos that’s marked the Seven Kingdoms the entire time we’ve known them. This show has been beating the “Daenerys Targaryen is change we can believe in” drum since last season’s finale, and it was particularly loud during the first half of “The Spoils of War.” Missandei’s “I serve my queen because I want to serve my queen” speech is as lovely as it is genuine. But “The Spoils of War” uses it to set up a demonstration that while ideals make for great motivation, they’re not easy to take onto the battlefield — and all but impossible to take away from one.
This week’s conflagration, among the most impressive the show has ever done and certainly the most CGI-heavy, is neither as deadly nor as gruesome as it could have been. Writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss make sure we know that: Faced with the latest in a string of humiliating defeats, Daenerys’s first instinct is to head directly for King’s Landing on dragonback to take the Iron Throne with deliberate haste, collateral damage be damned. Talked down by her advisors, but especially by Jon Snow, Dany settles for a comparatively humane alternative: catch Tarly and Jaime Lannister off guard on their victory lap home from the Reach and flambé their vulnerable forces, now sitting ducks on open grasslands that look alarmingly like the Dothraki homeland. (That Dany is now turning to Jon for military advice is a promising development; she doesn’t see him as her equal just yet, but she does respect him enough to explicitly seek his input. Besides, Tyrion pulling double duty as political and military strategist hasn’t been working out so well.) There are still mass casualties, but at least they’re paid soldiers, not civilians trapped behind walls with nowhere to run.
That doesn’t make the devastation that follows any easier to watch. While the Starks reunite for some family therapy in relative peace and quiet, Dany leads Drogon and her khalasar to a fiery, decisive rout at the expense of some faces we’ve come to know and love. Last week, I wrote about how tough yet fascinating it was to see Jaime — a man infamous for his amorality who has now developed a sense of right and wrong — on the losing end of a confrontation. The wound Olenna inflicted, at least, was just emotional. This time, Jaime very nearly loses his life for hitching his wagon to the wrong star out of a misguided yet sincere sense of patriotism and loyalty. Not 20 minutes before, he smugly reassured a queasy Dickon Tarly that while his former Tyrell comrades didn’t deserve to die, they did pledge their allegiance to the wrong monarch. He didn’t realize he was talking about himself.
For all the talk of Daenerys Stormborn’s hard-won skill and judgement, this is still a woman whose ancestral house’s motto is “fire and blood.” This episode makes us see those words in action, and they’re fearsome to behold. The direction, by Thrones newcomer Matt Shakman, is suitably overwhelming and Dunkirk-level disorienting, and the giant-dragon special effects are surprisingly convincing. Mostly, though, there’s the knowledge that this is the merciful option for bringing Westeros back under Targaryen rule: thousands of people dying and spewing blood (and likely excrement — thanks for that one, Bronn!) for a side they were assigned to more than chose. And this clash is only the first of many in the weeks and months to come. “The Spoils of War” tips this shortened Thrones season past its halfway point. If the first half of this volume served to put some stumbling blocks in a prematurely confident Dany’s way, “Spoils” starts to do the same to an equally arrogant Cersei. And with neither side in possession of a clear path to victory, the two women’s fight for control is going to rage on — and continue to rack up its body count.
Soon enough, the climax of “The Spoils of War” will get its epic-sounding pseudonym within the Game of Thrones universe: Battle of the Bastards, Battle of the Blackwater, or some other name that sounds considerably more glamorous than “armies of scared, uncertain men being corralled toward their deaths.” It will take on the patina of lore, just as the War of the Five Kings already has and the first conquest of Westeros — Aegon’s — has had for centuries. It’s enough to make you think how miserable and violent that event must have been, even if it’s remembered generations later as an almost pre-destined act.
Thanks to the years we’ve spent with it, not to mention narration like Missandei’s, Daenerys’s story is already taking on a similarly epic cast: a naive young girl sold into marriage, now a fearsome woman ready to rule — and save — the world. This is Game of Thrones, where no outcome is less guaranteed than a neatly satisfying one. But even if a happy ending is what we’re heading toward, it’s going to come at a price.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.