LOSER: All Of Us
(Ser?) Brienne of Tarth and her squire Podrick are so goddamn boring I can barely take them on the screen. They ride near and far, occasionally kill some people after it looks like they were going to be killed, and then escape by the skin of their lucky ass bones. In just about every scene they appear in together they miraculously strike gold. But there’s no telling what lottery they will hit this time around, all we know is that they’re now after Sansa Stark because Arya told them to piss off.
LOSER: Cersei Lannister
Her grasp on power is slipping. At what seems to be a wake for her deceased father, Cersei witnesses Margery Tyrell pouring honey in the ears of her youngest son Tommen. This all but confirms her spot in the limelight is all but over. After that she has a private audience with Lancel Lannister, which if you think back he was the Lannister cousin who got Robert Baratheon hammered on wine in Season 1 and which ultimately led to him being gored by a wild boar. After that in Season 2 he was banging his cousin Cersei because he and Jamie look similar, but Jamie was off fighting Robb Stark and Cersei needed someone to screw that looked like her twin brother. He was then grievously wounded in the Battle of Blackwater Bay, and retreated off to religion.
Enter present day and he doesn’t give two shits about Cersei’s creepy games. He’s a man of religion, and she’s just some evil temptress. Lancel is another person who she once held A LOT of sway over, and now that power is gone.
WINNER: Margaery Tyrell
This chick’s got everything on LOCKDOWN. She was once just a girl batting pretty eyes in the King’s Court, but now she’s moving around people like pawns, and knows everything that happens behind closed doors. She walks in on her brother banging some dude named Oliver, isn’t the least bit shocked, and then demands her bro gets his shit together and up to the King’s side before he meddles with her plans.
The Tyrell’s have all the power right now. They’re betrothed to the right people, living in the right castles, and everything’s coming up Roses! And to that I say: GOOD FOR THEM. The Lannister’s have held all the power for far too long, it’s refreshing to see things shook up a bit.
WINNER: Daenerys Targaryen
She has NO IDEA, but Daenerys Targaryen just made two of the biggest allies in the known world. Tyrion Lannister and Varys are headed to her side, to counsel and aid her as she makes her way back to her rightful throne in Westeros (albeit at a snail’s pace).
LOSERS: The Meerenese
Mereen is the city in which Daenerys Targaryen is currently ruling. The one with all the pyramids and brothels and what not. A HUGE part of their culture before she arrived was the fighting pits, where slave gladiators would fight each other to death in the name of glory and riches. The people want their pits open, the Mother of Dragons is all ‘ooooo, na, na, nah, nah, naahhhh. I aint doing that, not now, not ever.’ After that scene of her trying to impose her own beliefs and values on the people of Mereen they flash to a scene of her having just got banged out by Daario Naharis, the apple of her eye.
So not only is she getting laid, getting pleasured by the one living man she wants to get pleasured by, but she’s also screwing over her loyal subjects by not giving them the things they want. There is one good thing to come out of this exchange though. Daario drops the best line of the entire episode: “A dragon queen without dragons, that is not a queen.” Which prompts her to go check on her dragons, ipso facto we the viewers get to see some damn dragon action. And THEY’RE HUGE!!!
She gets panicked and leaves the dungeons in a hurry because she thinks her dragons are trying to kill her, but all that’s really happening is her babies want some tender loving care from their mama bear. She’s just too thickheaded to see that.
LOSER: The Wildlings
Just days after Stannis defeated The Wildlings in battle, and forced Mance Rayder to surrender, Mance is burned alive in front of the Night’s Watch in order to set some sort of an example. All Mance had to do was bend the knee and kneel in front of Stannis and his life would’ve been spared, instead he’s burned at the stake and tortured into screaming in front of his own men. Being the big softy he is, Jon Snow shoots Mance in the heart and gives him a quickened death.
So there we have it, the Game of Thrones Season 5 premiere ‘The Wars to Come’ is officially in the books! What did I miss? What would you like to see more in my weekly ‘Winners and Losers’ format? For the first four episodes of Game of Thrones Season 5 I’ll be putting up these recaps the moment the episode ends, but starting with Episode 5 they’ll be going live the next morning.