Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 7 The Broken Man Recap
The Hound lives and returns to “Game of Thrones” The Broken Man episode!
Not sure that surprise can count as a happy event judging by what happened before the credits rolled.
I sure don’t want Game of Thrones to turn into a show that has unlimited returns for characters that should be dead. We’ve had two this season with Jon Snow’s revival and now Sandor Clegane back on the scene after Arya left him for dead.
Yet both these returns fit the story. The Hound wasn’t mortally wounded by Brienne. He was badly hurt in the middle of nowhere, so it’s believable that he survived due to the arrival of a good samaritan.
Of course, this good samaritan tries to mentor Sandor into being a good man as he talks about having been a killer himself. All that talk seemed to be sinking in….right up until he and his followers were slaughtered by three men who raided the camp.
Those three men are not long for this world with The Hound on their trail with a sharp looking axe.
Did we find out what Margaery’s game was this week? Not really. We do know she’s playing along to get along though. And she’s not letting Tommen tap that, even though the High Sparrow encourages her to lay with the king so he can produce an heir. Yet another sign this “pure” leader is no better than any king we’ve seen in the show’s six seasons.
Margaery does warn her grandmother to leave the city as she passed her a note with a simple rose drawn on it. I can’t break the code on the note, but a drawing was a good idea in case her abusive nun (now tagging along with her) found the note.
Granny Tyrell drops her sharp tongue on Cersei before she leaves King’s Landing, reminding her this is all her fault.
“I can’t decide if you’re the worst person I ever met,” she tells Cersei and paints a dark picture of the corner Cersei has placed herself.
Sansa and Jon have the full support of the Wildlings. Great news, but there was little else to get excited about as their search for old allies went poorly. Davos had to make a rousing argument just to get 62 men from House Mormont.
Talk of this Night King put a good scare into the little girl running the show there.
No speech could have helped as they stopped at the Glover territory. The leader there scolded Sansa after she reminded him of his pledge to help the Starks long ago. Sansa got an earful about how his family had suffered for trying to assist the Starks for so long.
He made it clear Robb screwed it all up by taking on a “foreign whore” instead of honoring his marriage arrangement.
Jon is ready to battle the Boltons with the army he has, but Sansa is sending a desperation letter to….? Petyr possibly. But she made it clear she was done with him weeks ago.
The title of this episode fit several characters, and Jaime was no exception as he was mocked by the Blackfish during their conversation before a looming siege.
The hostage was of no use since the Blackfish had little concern for his welfare. So it looks like there will be a long battle, maybe two years, in order to take this castle back. Unless Jaime, and Bronn who returned to the show after a long hiatus can think of another way to take the castle without thousands of deaths.
There wasn’t much time for Theon’s story or Arya.
Theon is shown in a brothel where even his sister is getting more ass than he can. Another in a long line of insults to injuries for this broken man. We do learn that Yara intends to head immediately to Meereen to offer her fleet to Daenerys in order to join forces.
Arya ended up like we all guessed….on the wrong end of an assassination attempt by her trainer, the Waif. Arya was shanked pretty badly, so I don’t see her surviving, but who knows. The fact that she wasn’t instantly killed leaves some hope for her. But if she is constantly being stalked by faceless men, she’d have to live as a hermit in order to stay alive.
Everyone she encounters could be “no one,” which was just what that nice old lady turned out to be.
With just three episodes left, things will move pretty fast the rest of season six. All the pieces are in place after two set-up weeks.
I can see Dany meeting Yara as early as next week.
Cersei’s trial has to be really close at this point, and I’ve got a feeling the trial by combat is not going to go the way she plans.
The thing I fear most is Jon and Sansa’s army getting slaughtered by Ramsay and his crowd. As we saw with The Hound’s new tribe, evil usually has its way in the GOT universe.
One theory of Game of Thrones Arya Stark’s Fate
One of the biggest surprises of the seventh episode of Game of Thrones‘ sixth season came whenArya Stark (Maisie Williams) was brutally stabbed by the Waif after the nameless girl snuck up on her disguised as an old woman. After receiving multiple wounds, Arya was able to escape her attacker’s hold long enough to jump over the side of the bridge on which they were standing. She then stayed underwater long enough for the Waif to presume she was dead before emerging to straggle through the streets of Braavos.
While this scene seemed to bode extremely ill for the young Stark, many fans believe that not all was as it appeared. Specifically, some are speculating that Arya’s behavior before the attack indicates her actions were all part of an elaborate ruse. “We are led to believe Arya got stabbed, however, there are some problems with what happened this episode,” Reddit user iPlayNL wrote. “First off, Arya seemed different from the start. Her scene with the merchant, her walk all seemed very confident, which is unusual after the events this season. … Also, where did she get the money from? Why was she not carrying Needle [her sword] with her? How come after all she knew about the faceless man she just stood there on a bridge not paying any attention?”
Another Redditor expanded upon the same basic theory, positing that Arya’s interaction with actress Lady Crane in the sixth episode was integral to her plan. “We can assume she knows enough from training to figure the waif will attach to the body,” passingwisdom wrote. “So I believe she has 1 or more pigs blood pouches around her body. She knows where and how to do this because last episode… she saved the actress. The actress then provided her help to make the scene on the bridge large and realistic. … She then leaves the water and leaves a trail of blood…. to lead her [enemies] to her. Expecting an unarmed (because she choose not to show needle during the fight scene) and injured girl; they will instead walk down a dark alley and be met with an uninjured girl who knows how to fight in the dark and carrying a sword.”
Others believe the person stabbed on the bridge wasn’t Arya at all, but rather Jaqen H’ghar disguised as her. “That wasn’t [A]rya. She would have been carrying a needle,” froschkonig wrote. “She wasn’t aware that [Jaqen] said not to make her suffer, so making a big show of her suffering doesn’t make sense. It was [Jaqen] testing the waif, and by stabbing her in the stomach and not just slashing the throat, she disobeyed orders just like arya did. [Jaqen] is gonna lay some faceless justice down.”
Whatever the truth, the consensus remains that Arya will live to see another day — and hopefully finally make it back to Westeros.
So, that’s what is the strongest “Game of Thrones” theory.