RECAP: The Biggest Winners And Losers Of ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 5 Episode 5’s ‘Kill The Boy’

Last week’s ‘Game of Thrones’ recap was a barn burner, so much happened it was hard to fit it all in. In the ‘Sons of the Harpy’ we concluded with what appeared to be the death of Ser Barristan the Bold and Grey Worm, two of Daenerys’ most crucial protectors. This week ‘Game of Thrones’ S05E05 ‘Kill the Boy’ opened up and we were reassured that Grey Worm will survive his wounds, but Ser Barristan has passed away. I guess it’s a slight testament to the strength of The Unsullied that Grey Worm would live through an attack like that, but until one of those dudes takes out 100 men on his own I won’t be convinced that The Unsullied have lived up to their name.

Game of Thrones Recap: Kill the Boy

This week’s Game of Thrones recap for ‘Kill the Boy’ marks the first episode this season that I wasn’t provided screeners by HBO beforehand to get you the recap the moment the episode ends, so apologies for these taking a bit longer now, but I’ll shorten them up by only brining you the biggest winners and losers of each episode, instead of 3,000 words on every minute detail that took place in the episode. If you don’t like this new format feel free to let me know down below in the comments and I can move back to the long form recap again. So without further ado, here are the biggest winners and losers in ‘Kill the Boy’!

Biggest Losers: Ser Jorah Mormont, Sansa Stark, and Jon Snow

The knight from Bear Island, Ser Jorah Mormont, the man who once conspired to have Daeners Targaryen killed only to later fall in love with her, he’s pretty much fuuuuuuucked at this point. His big plan to win back the favor of his Queen was to present her Tyrion Lannister as a captive, and he’s still on his way to do just that only now he’s dealing with a typically incurable disease: dragonscale (or greyscale).

The same disease that Princess Shireen was afflicted with as a child is now crawling up the arm of Ser Jorah Mormont. Just last week we saw that wonderfully heartfelt scene between Stannis and his daughter, where he regaled her with the tale of bringing in every maester in the known world to stave off her disease and save his daughter from turning into a ‘stone man’ and eventually dying. Well, I’m going to tell it like it is: Jorah Mormont has zero chance of summoning the most powerful maesters in the world, so he will turn into a stone man and die of dragonscale (or greyscale).

Always the knight at heart, when Tyrion and Jorah were accosted by the stone men and Tyrion was pulled into the depths by one of the river he jumped in and saved him. A few things were going on here: 1) they both came in contact with the stone men, so while we know Jorah already has the disease we still need to look out for it in Tyrion, 2) this is a HUUUUGGGGEEE deviation from the books, as it was a character in the books that doesn’t even exist on the tv show that got the disease saving Tyrion, 3) Jorah’s days are numbered, and now it’s a race for him to get to Daenerys before the disease is visible outside of his clothing. I think it’s safe to say he’s the biggest loser of the episode.

Poor little bird. She’s betrothed to another horrific human being, a man who tortures at will for fun. Only this one is a member of the family responsible for killing her mama bear and big bro. On top of that she’s just found out that Theon Greyjoy is still alive, the man who she (and everyone else in the world) believes killed her two little brothers, Bran and Rickon.

It’s easy to forget that plot point, because we still see Bran alive and well (Rickon an afterthought), but that scene where Theon’s serving them wine and Ramsay’s decided that Theon will give her away in the wedding, at that moment Sansa was standing next to people who she believes have contributed to the deaths of 4 of her immediate family members, 3 brothers and a mother.

So she’s being forced to marry a man who gets his jollies off on skinning people alive, watching their bare flesh harden and crack (which is supposed to be unimaginably excruciating), and she’s just stuck there at Winterfell. A lot seems to be building around ‘The North remembers’, and Stannis is soon marching on Winterfell so there’s certainly something bound to happen there, but will it happen before she’s been bedded by Ramsay Bolton? Given how dark the show can be at times, I’m not so sure it will. If they get married and sleep together that union is official, but if Stannis bursts in mid-wedding before they’ve consummated the marriage then it can be broken again, so that’ll be fun to see how it plays out.

If you’ve ready my Game of Thrones recaps from seasons past, you’ll recall that I constantly harp on this one crucial plot point: bad things happen to Starks when they don’t keep their direwolves by their sides. Where the hell has Ghost been all season, and why hasn’t he been side-by-side with Jon Snow ever since Jon was named Lord Commander and had a target painted on his back?

Already the SERIOUS dissent is brewing. Jon Snow is essentially giving any and every wildling a free pass to come south of The Wall, and he’s all but named their new leader and agreed to help him in any way possible. The ENTIRE point of the Night’s Watch is to protect the wall. In days past they’ve had to protect it from white walkers and wights, but until the recent events that’s all but legend and folk tales. One thing the Night’s Watch know for sure is this: wildlings are dangerous, and they should never be south of The Wall.

Jon Snow’s already alienated some of his closest allies in Castle Black by announcing his plans for The Wildlings. He’s losing any and every brother he can trust within the Castle, so it’s only a matter of time until there’s an attempt to impeach him. And as I’m not familiar with the ‘impeachment laws’ of Castle Black, I assume it doesn’t just involve a demerit, and leans closer towards a man getting his balls chopped off and hung on the wall as a message. This is why Jon Snow needs to keep Snow with him at all times….that, and I want to see more direwolf action.

Biggest Winners: Daenerys Targaryen, Hizdahr zo Loraq, Tyrion Lannister, and Grey Worm

She took swift revenge for the death of her brave knight, Ser Barristan the Bold. She rounded up the heads of the great pyramids, let her dragon burn and eat one of them alive, and gave us all that moment of catharsis we needed. Seeing dragons do dragon stuff is one of the main reasons we tune in each week, and this week we got that.

On top of that she also came to her senses. After scaring the piss out of Hizdahr zo Loraq with the prospect of allowing one of her dragons to kill and eat him, she later went back on her word and decided to work with him and reopen the fighting pits that he’s so desperately wanted reopened.

The reopening of the fighting pits will please the citizens of Mereen. Imagine living in the USA and we were conquered by some woman from Canada who then shut down the NFL, think about how we’d react to that! So this will be a crowd pleaser fo shizzle. Hizdahr zo Loraq’s coffers will again flow full of coin from gambling on the pits, and Daenerys will win back the favor of the citizens. These two couldn’t have ended the episode in a better place.

Tryion Lannister always seems to scrape by. No matter the circumstances he gets through. Often he ends up with some emotional or physical scars (losing his nose, killing his love), but he keeps on keeping on like a badass. This time around death seemed certain. He was attacked by one of the stone men, touched by the disease, pulled down in a river flowing with the disease, he drowned, then was miraculously rescued by Ser Jorah Mormont who somehow contracted the dragonscale in place of Tyrion.

The halfman couldn’t have gotten any luckier here. The reality of his situation is now he’s on his way to see the queen, but his captor very well might succumb to his disease before they get there and Tryion could just walk free.

Last but not least in the winner’s column is Grey Worm. He’s the leader of The Unsullied army, and one of Daenery’s most trusted advisors. He nearly died last week trying to take out the Sons of the Harpy, and defending Ser Barristan the Bold. When last week’s episode ended we thought he just might be dead, but he’s not. He’s lived to fight another day.

On top of that he’s managed to profess his love for Missandei. Even though he doesn’t have his wedding tackle (he’s a eunuch), he still feels those feels, bro, and he knows what love feels like. He’s like a dong-less Forrest Gump, and Missandei is his Jenny Gump. He got them feels off his chest and she planted a kiss on him. Also, he’s not dead. So all-in-all I’d have to name Grey Worm as this week’s biggest winner.

That about wraps it up for the winners and losers in this week’s Game of Thrones recap for ‘Kill the Boy’. Like I said before, without screeners it takes a bit longer to get these together, but if you bros prefer the old format where each scene is recapped in full and I name a winner and/or loser for each, I can do that, just let me know down below in the comments!