'Game of Thrones': The calm before the storm

**NOTE: THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 8, EPISODE 2 OF ‘GAME OF THRONES’**

I’m a little bit torn about this episode.

On one hand, this is what “Game of Thrones” has always been great at: developing characters more deeply, paying off arcs that have run for multiple seasons, and capturing moments that might be small in terms of overall plot, but matter intensely for the characters we’ve come to know and love.

But dang, man, if you thought last week involved a lot of table-setting, consider this: in terms of the overarching narrative of this final season — the Great War Between the Living and the Army of the Dead — basically nothing happened.

That isn’t to say I’m dissatisfied. The second episode, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was a great hour of TV in a lot of ways, and seeing how the main characters spend what many feel might be their last night on earth is compelling.

But with four episodes remaining in the entire series, it’s hard not to get impatient watching an evening of drinking and chit-chat among our favorite characters, even if it led to the high point of “Ser” Lady Brienne’s series arc (we’ll get to that later).

Not everyone is biding their time: the grunts of Winterfell are hard at work creating weapons or learning how to use them for the first time. The poor man in the soup line, worrying that he’d never been a soldier before, was an effective way to show the stress everyday people are under right now: there are two giant dragons flying around, strange soldiers are camped outside the castle walls, and now every able body is being tasked with fighting what they’ve been told is an army of dead men.

Gendry is among those grunts, making weapons for everyone including Arya…. (we’ll get to that later).

Now that I think about it, “We’ll Get To That Later” would be a great title for this episode: Sansa and Dany nearly come to an understanding, or at the very least they’re about to hash out what may happen with the North if they win The Great War BUT WHOA WHOA GUYS HOLD UP A SEC, they can’t finish that talk because Theon just showed up.

Jon finally musters the courage to tell Dany the secret of his parentage and she’s not taking it super-great but it looks like Jon might be about to say he doesn’t care about the Iron Throne and HEY NOW YOU BETTER PUT THAT MESS ON THE BACK-BURNER BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT TO GET EXTRA-FROSTY OUTSIDE.

Everything is set aside because death is literally about to be on their doorstep. One of the most unsettling things about the White Walkers has always been the dead horses they ride, with hunks of skeleton peeking out as they saunter along in the snow. Seeing those two dead hooves hit the ground outside Winterfell sent a little chill up my spine, even though we all saw that shot in the trailer.

Before the dead ring the doorbell, though, Jaime’s presence is dealt with rather quickly. Brienne vouches for him, Sansa’s down, Jon will take anyone who can handle a sword, and Bran is willing to let the truth lie like a bad pierogie on the plate (shout-out to “The Wire” fans) because he clearly knows Jaime has a role to play in The Great War.

Speaking of roles, Bran’s will be to serve as bait for the Night King, with, uh… Theon… guarding him…?

Look, I’m here for Alfie Allen. Theon has had a great character arc, redemption and all that. But I’m not sure I want him guarding maybe the most important character on the show. Jon claims he’ll stay close by to pursue the Night King, but Jon’s game-time decision-making is not always the best.

And what will the dragons’ roles be in all of this? Jon showed he could at least halfway handle a dragon last week, and he’s just the the type of guy to try and take matters in to his own hands, a character trait that hasn’t always served him well in the past.

It would be interesting to see Jon go down in the Big Battle we have coming next week. That would leave the series’ most powerful ladies — Dany, Cersei and Sansa — to hash things out if the Army of the Dead can be defeated.

Bran thinks the Night King will try and come for him as he’s done in the past, and we’ve already seen the White Walkers’ leader kill one Three-Eyed Raven. I really hope the writers choose to shed a little more light on the Night King’s motives. Such a one-dimensional villain is not like George R.R. Martin. Even Ramsay Bolton had a little bit of pathos to his back story.

We know that once upon a time the Night King was a man, and the Children of the Forest created him in their desperation to win a war against the First Men. We’ve been led to believe that whatever the Children intended to create, it grew beyond their control and they had to join with the First Men to drive the White Walkers north and build The Wall to keep them out.

But we don’t know for sure. I certainly hope one of the things this upcoming extra-long episode does is throw the Night King’s machinations into a little sharper relief.

But I don’t want to get into too many predictions about the battle for Winterfell. Next week’s preview certainly doesn’t give much away:

Anyway, there’s too much additional stuff from this episode to get into…

A FEW STRAY RAVENS

• …starting with Arya wearing the pants, the belt and the whole outfit in her relationship with Gendry.

Last week, he still thought of her as this little girl who needed protecting. This week she showed him she was a woman who knows how to kill, knows what she wants and knows how to take it.

Alright… look… she’s one of the best characters on the show, and her series arc has been pretty amazing. But that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable to see her strip down as the camera lingers juuuust a little bit longer in the way that “Game of Thrones” scenes of that nature tend to do.

Maisie Williams was 11 years old when she joined the “Thrones” cast, and we all fell in love with the cute, precocious tomboy who could shoot an arrow better than her brother. She’s 22 years old now, she’s obviously comfortable with a scene like this, and more power to her.

I also realize that I could be accused of tacitly endorsing male misogyny and possibly denying Arya agency by saying this. Maybe I’m just being a prude. But we all watched her basically grow up on TV, and I guess I just wasn’t quite prepared for this step in her growth.

• I also wasn’t sure I was comfortable with the whole knighting of Lady Brienne, but I changed my mind about halfway through Jaime’s administration of the oath.

In a lot of ways, the most plot advancement in this episode had to with Brienne. We find out that she’s commanding an entire flank of the Winterfell army; we find out Jaime wants to serve under her and would feel proud to do so. And she earned the respect of her fellow fighters, which is something she’s been yearning for since she was introduced, whooping Loras Tyrell way back in season two.

At first, I thought, “This is a nice gesture, but does Brienne really need this validation?” I still don’t think they needed to call her “Ser.” (Jaime didn’t do it, but Tyrion did. He’s better than that, even when he’s drunk.) I think “Lady” would have done just fine. But like I said, once Jaime was part-way through the oath, I was good with it. This is what Brienne has wanted all along: to be recognized as worthy, to have her natural talent seen as a strength and a source of pride.

Oh, and I almost forgot — good on her for stepping up on Jaime’s behalf when Dany wanted to take him out back and have Drogon spit-roast him!

• Yohn Royce’s only function in this final season is to nod at Sansa Stark and leave the room.

• Of note: Jaime is pretty sure Cersei is actually pregnant. Which means he either doesn’t care about his unborn child, or doesn’t think it’s his.

• Tyrion, in his first real brotherly conversation with Jaime in at least three seasons: “So… we’re going to die. At Winterfell.”

Tyrion, summarizing his time nearly being executed by his dad, being sold into slavery, surviving a conquest in Essos, and Jaime’s loss of his sword hand, loss of all three children and his estrangement from his sister-lover: “The perils of self-betterment.”

So matter-of-fact. I missed Season-Two Tyrion, and he was back in this episode, full of dry wit and dry wine. Season-Two Tyrion might be Peak Tyrion.

• Speaking of Jaime and Tyrion, there was some real inward reflection and honesty for both Lannisters tonight.

Jaime humbles himself before Brienne, admitting he’s not the fighter he used to be and asking to serve with her as his commander. (“Do you want me to insult you?” There was a lot of great humor in this episode.)

And once Jaime confirms Sansa’s suspicion that Cersei isn’t sending any soldiers, Tyrion is able to admit that he hasn’t been the greatest Hand. I wonder why he was so good at playing the Lannisters’ politics in King’s Landing, but not nearly as effective trying to shepherd Dany’s transition from Queen of Slaver’s Bay to Queen of the Seven Kingdoms?

The stakes were much lower, of course, when Tyrion was strutting around the Red Keep playing friends and enemies off of one another and consolidating his own power. His lack of knowledge about the larger world has limited his usefulness to the point where he tells Jorah and Varys he expects one of them to have his Hand of the Queen badge sooner than later.

• Davos seeing the scar-faced Northern girl who wants to fight?

Look… there are several scenes in the Wayans brothers’ hilarious 1996 comedy “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” where a particularly overwrought poignant moment will be interrupted by Keenan Ivory-Wayans, who pops in as a different character each time to scream, “MESSAGE!”

That’s kind of how I felt when Davos saw the girl-who-obviously-looks-like-his-adopted-daughter-Shireen with the same facial scar.

• Dear Tormund: Slopping giant’s breast milk all over your beard is not a good pick-up technique. At least not in Westeros.

• Grey Worm to Missandei: the North sucks. After this, let’s go get a tan.

• “Everyone seems to forget I was the first man to kill a White Walker.” — Give ‘em the resumé, Sam! They don’t want that Tarly smoke!

• I really don’t think Jon cares about the Iron Throne, and he certainly doesn’t want to sit on it. He should probably talk to Bran about it. Bran showed in this episode that he’s willing to conceal the truth about Jaime for the greater good. I have to believe the greater good would be served with Dany as queen and Jon as her husband and maybe her Hand.

• Just something I was thinking about: Jon basically told Arya last week that he came back from death. I wonder what Arya would say if she found out it was Melisandre that brought him back…? Melisandre did say she would see Arya again before the end, and she told Varys last year that she would die in Westeros. She still has a role to play in the story, I think.

• Finally, how about the pipes on Podrick Payne? This show’s source material has always been about blowing up the traditional tropes of medieval fantasy, but the longtime squire knowing a good song — “Jenny’s Song,” in this case, a little Easter egg reference for book readers — was a perfect way to score the calm-before-the-storm montage.

ON TO THE BATTLE FOR WINTERFELL!