Cliffs. They're a striking feature of any landscape. Impressive from just about any angle, daunting from the top ... and very frightening to hang from. In fact, if you were to find yourself hanging from a cliff, there's very little choice: climb up, or fall down.
As far back as 1914, The Perils of Pauline featured the titular character quite literally dangling from her fingertips at the end of an episode. Since then the term has been more broadly applied to any drama where characters are left in what appears to be a moment of CERTAIN DOOM before the camera fades to black. It's a technique also called "making sure the audience tunes in for the next episode." Or as my wife likes to say "just more evidence that all writers are bastards."
For the season five finale, Game of Thrones rented out enough cliffs to make a second Grand Canyon. Those characters not stomped, frozen, sliced in half, or broasted in previous episodes were left in moments of ... hmm, peril doesn't seem to cut it.
Jump over the orange Cliffe of Swirl and we'll talk about it.
This week on Game of Thrones, bad guys met DOOM, good guys met DOOM, middling guys met DOOM. And several characters met WTF? Let's run down the list.
Stannis
Ah, Stannis. Last week Stannis Baratheon, would be King of the Andals, King of This and Also That, Scowliest of Scowlers, took the sweetest character in all of Westeros, his young daughter Shireen, and burned her alive. He did so at the suggestion of red priestess Melisandre, on her assurance that the royal blood flowing through the veins of the little princess would be enough sacrifice to ensure Stannis' triumph against the man-flaying Boltons. So ... how did committing the single most heinous act in a season full of heinosity turn out?
Stannis, from the moment he walked ever-so-stiffly onto the stage, has been a study in hypocrisy. On the one hand, this is a man who has held himself up as a strict follower of the law and a rigid guardian of honor. His whole claim to the Iron Throne is based on Stannis being the next Baratheon in line after the pig-speared Robert. Even though the ever reliable Davos Seaworth saved Stannis and all his men from a siege, Stannis still felt compelled to chop off Davos' fingers to show him that smuggling was wrong. Tough but fair. Onlyn... no. In his run to get his tight ass-cheeks on the pointy chair, Stannis has used black magic to kill his younger brother, he's captured and tortured Robert's illegitimate son, he's hired sell-swords and made deals he has little chance of keeping, and he's burned people. His brother in law. "King Beyond the Wall" Mance Rayder. His daughter Shireen. And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few cheerful Lord of Light BBQs.
The way Stannis rationalized all his slaughter has been by pointing at Melisandre's ravings. According to her visions, Stannis is the "Lightbringer," a hero out of prophecy who is the only one who can stop the terrors of the coming night. With great justification comes a big body count. Stannis is like all those people who think that the threat of terrorism justifies torture, or that the first job of government is to ensure safety—even if that means a lot of people die. In some ways he'd be easier to take if he was an actual religious zealot (see Sparrow, High) but he's not. When Melisandre talks, Stannis hears "and then you get to be the king"; the rest of it is like the sound adults make in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
So ... how did burning a sweet little girl—a little girl crying out for him to save her—work out for Stannis? For about five seconds, it seems like there's something to Melisandre's blabbing. The storm that has held the army away from Winterfell has broken and all around them the snow is melting under a warm fall sky. However, as Stannis prepares to move on the Boltens, things turn decidedly bleaker. As it turns out, not even mercenaries like working for a guy who roasts his own daughter to further his aims. During the night half of Stannis' force has split, and they've taken the horses with them. Right on the heels of that bit of news, we discover that his wife Selyse has hanged herself in remorse over Shireen's murder. And while Stannis is coming to grips with that, he gets the news that Melisandre had just ridden out of camp. Apparently, the red priestess is more magical than we gave her credit, because we just got told all the horses were gone, but anyway, Stannis announces that that the reduced force is still going to attack Winterfell.
The remaining men stroll through the snowy woods and arrive on the broad plain surrounding Winterfell's none-too-welcoming walls. The force is in a loose jumble, as Stannis begins to give orders for how they are to arrange themselves. He's anticipating a siege of the castle. Only it's time for nasty surprise #4. The Boltons have come out to fight. Neatly mounted (and possibly assisted by some of the horsemen who just deserted Stannis) the much larger Bolton force sweeps around Stannis' small, dispirited, and unprepared army. Slaughter ensues.
Brienne of Tarth
For weeks now, Brienne and Podrick have been literally chilling just outside the walls of Winterfell, waiting for the signal that it's time to come rescue Sansa. While this seems a marginal improvement to the pointless wandering of Brienne in the books, it's still pretty high on the pointless scale, especially since when Sansa finally does light that candle, it's twenty seconds after Brienne has stopped watching.
Still, the Maid of Tarth gets a little personal satisfaction this week. Wandering onto the field of ... well, battle is too nice a word. Field of butchery, she finds Stannis wounded but still clinging to life. Brienne announces herself, and proclaims the death penalty for Stannis in repayment for what he did to his brother, Renly. If Brienne knew about Shireen, she might not be so proper.
In any case, Stannis gets some very Stannisy last words "do your duty" before Brienne lays into him with her very long sword. Though, pointedly, we don't see or hear Stannis decapitated, and this is not a show that's been squeamish about these things in the past. Did Brienne actually part jerkwad head from jerkwad body? Possibly. Call it a cliffette.
Sansa
Meanwhile on the other side of the stone walls ... Sansa has used that thing she picked up last week not to stab the neartest Bolton, but to open the not very delicate lock on her room. She doesn't so much sneak as just flip up her hood and hustle across the courtyard through all the men getting ready to go out and kill Stannis' ragtag remnant. She lights the candle and then apparently watches the battle from the window of the Broken Tower as the Bolton forces are returning by the time she decides to get back to her room. Along the way, she runs into Theon/Reek and Ramsay's insane playmate, Myranda. Myranda gives a chilling speech about the bastard's intentions for Sansa and prepares to put an arrow through Sansa to start the fun. This is finally enough to move Theon into action. He flings Myranda from the parapets and her body makes a nice wump on the stones below. I think we can assume Myranda is not coming back from that one.
With the Bolton army returning and nowhere to run, Sansa holds hands with the man who betrayed her brother's cause and certainly contributed to her own misery. Together Sansa and Theon leap from the high walls of Winterfell to ... a big pile of snow? A nice sloping roof? A big messy death? For now, just call it a cliff.
Jaime
Putting an end to a little side story in Dorne that hasn't done much to either build characters, foreshadow events, or move the plot, Jaime finally gets ready to sail back to King's Landing with niece/daughter Myrcella and her designated fiance. There's really not a lot to this scene. There's a bit of banter between Bronn and his favorite Sand Snake. There are a few words of good bye. And there's a rather lengthy kiss between Ellaria Sand and Myrcella before everyone climbs on the boat.
Once at sea, Jaime has one of those awkward father moments—the kind where you have to explain to your daughter that she's actually the produce of incest. But Myrcella takes it with a smile. This is shaping up to be Jaime's Best Day Ever ... right up until the point where blood starts to drip from his daughter's nose and she starts gasping for breath. The camera snaps away to a satisfied group of Sand Snakes back on the dock as Ellaria drinks a dose of antidote and saunters off.
Is Myrcella dead? Well, Bronn did get poisoned by what seemed to be the same slow-acting agent a couple of episodes back. Maybe his blood now has the cure. Maybe his bad girl slipped him some antidote back on the dock. In any case, the ship sails ... right off a cliff.
Cersei
Back in King's Landing, Cersei decides that the one way she's getting out of that water and food free cell is to fess up. So she tells the High Sparrow that, yep, she did sleep with Lancel. However, she denies any other crime. The High Sparrow agrees to let Cersei go, but only after a bit of penance. Penance in the form of getting a very rough scrub from the nuns who say "confess!" and then a haircut conducted with all the gentleness of a lawnmower. However, I'm putting in a second Cersei pic, because ...
Cersei totally rocks the short hair. If this was the limit of her abuse, she'd be back at the Red Keep ready to plot how many ways there are to pluck a sparrow in ten seconds. However, the rest of this nice little religious ceremony consists of stripping Cersei naked and forcing her to walk barefoot through the streets of King's Landing while the populace pelts her with garbage, shit, rocks, and at least one chamber pot. Cersei is one of television's least sympathetic characters, but watching as she attempts to hold onto a scrap of dignity while being smeared with feces and someone shouts "shame" behind her like some kind of awful crow, is horrifying. Anyone who could demean someone like this is a beast, no matter what kind of wrapping they put over their motivation. High Sparrow? Please join Stannis and Ramsay on the "we're just waiting to see you dismembered" shelf.
At the very end of the walk, bloody and filthy, Cersei stumbles the last steps toward the castle. Only then does her face twist in broken despair. That expression ... I vote Lena Headey for all the Emmys. Thank you.
Despite her uncle and all the guards looking on with a mixture of disgust and amusement, it's the pseudo-master Qyburn who rushes out to provide the queen with some covering. He then introduces the newest member of the King's Guard, a massive armored Frankenstein, created from the half-dead body of The Mountain. This monster lifts the wounded Cersei in his, no its, arms. Once again the queen's expression says it all—someone is about to go over a cliff.
Arya
It's nice to see someone accomplish a dream. This week, Arya does just that ... by stripping off a disguise, leaping up, and planting a knife right in the eye of Ser Meryn Trant. We get a last chance to see that Trant isn't just fond of very young girls, he's fond of beating them, before Arya gets revenge for herself and for everyone else that Trant has harmed. Like an enraged badger, Arya swarms over Trant, gouging eyes, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. And critically she proclaims "I'm Arya Stark!" to remind the twisted knight just who is making all those puncture wounds.
It's this that lands Arya in trouble back at the House of Black and White. She's killed someone not on the guild agenda, and the reason she's done it is that she's failed to give up being Arya Stark. We had a hint of this earlier when she failed to dispose of Needle and hid it instead. But the price for holding onto herself is that, after witnessing more Faceless Men weirdness, Arya's vision fades as her eyes go zombie-esque. Is Arya blind? Well, that answer would be right over this cliff.
Daenerys
Meanwhile, Dany has flown off with Drogon leaving the rest of her crew to tend to Meereen. After a bit of bickering, Ser Jorah and Daario decide to ride off to see if they can find the missing Mother of Dragons, though since she left on dragon back I'm not sure either how they think they can track her down or what they think they can do if they find her. This leaves Tyrion behind with Grey Worm and Missendei (why do so many secondary female characters have names that start with M?) to watch over the city. As Tyrion is thinking about how he might manage this, Varys shows up. Watching the two of them run a gigantic city with an unruly populace and a slate of unfamiliar problems promises to be one of the pleasures of season six. For the first time, I'm in no hurry to leave Meereen behind. In fact, Dany can stay missing for awhile.
Speaking of which, Dany is on an actual clifftop where Drogon has apparently been bringing back his meals to cook and consume. Now that he's brought mom home, Drogon seems in no hurry to get back to that place where people tossed pointy sticks his way. Instead there's a nice bit of physical comedy as Dany tries to get the dragon to do what she wants, and Drogon completely ignores her.
Then Dany, having somehow transported herself down a 500' sheer cliff in 10 seconds, strolls straight into a Dothraki horde—possibly the remains of the one that once centered on Khal Drogo. Will they capture Daenerys? Will Drogon feast on their bones? Cliff.
Jon
Finally, we get back to the Wall, where Jon Snow and Samwell are exchanging stories. Jon explains about how he witnessed an undead army overwhelm the last town in the North. Sam explains how he got beat up and laid in the same afternoon. Fair exchange. Sam requests that he and Gilly be sent off to Oldtown where Sam can study to become a Maester. Considering that they lost Aemon last episode, it seems like they need someone to fill that niche, but isn't this rather long term planning with doomsday on their doorstep?
In any case, Sam sets out. And it's probably a good thing, because Sam is barely over the horizon when adopted waif who happened to put an arrow in Jon's wildling girlfriend appears to tell Jon that someone among the wildlings knows the whereabouts of his Uncle Benjen, last seen in Season one. Jon goes out to see, and of course it's a ruse. Jon is led to a cross bearing the sign "traitor" and stabbed by just about everyone he ever showed kindness to at the Wall. In a very Caesar-style scene, they take turns shouting "for the watch" before delivering a fresh wound to the unarmed Snow. Et tu, Olly?
The season ends with Jon's body lying motionless in the snow and lots of blood spilling across the ground.
Of course, minutes before we did see Lady Melisandre arrive back at Castle Black. Does this mean that the red priestess is going to redeem all the assholery she's practiced over the last seasons by raising Jon? And hey, if Jon is a warg like all the other young Starks, can he live on in the body of Ghost? Or ... are we all just clutching at straws and Jon Snow is simply dead? That's the biggest cliff of all.