Game of Thrones ‘Dark Wings, Dark Words’ recap: It’s all about the Lannisters, baby

Oops, is it midweek already? Well, here’s a recap of Sunday’s episode, better late than never I suppose. This week’s episode picked up the pace from last week’s slow-burning season opener, but—as is the case with a show of 8000 characters—we had to leave some of our faves behind. This week, the focus was on the King’s Landing bunch. Will the Tyrells prove to be more adept at the game of thrones than the Lannisters? Let’s find out!

King’s Landing

Joffrey is clothes shopping for himself with Cersei’s supervision. Apparently he doesn’t like florals. Cersei suggests giving the cloth to Margaery for her wedding gown: “Should be more than enough fabric.” Solid burn, girl. Cersei wants to know what Joffrey thinks of his bride-to-be, but he just cares about her family’s army. With the Tyrells on their side they can easily crush the Northerners. While this conversation happens we watch Joffrey get changed. I guess the writers wanted to balance out the male-female nudity ratio, so here you go ladies! Some sweet shirtless Joffrey for you. Aw yeah. Cersei does not trust Margaery one bit, but Joffrey is too busy shopping for this conversation.

Meanwhile, Sansa and Shae discuss Littlefinger’s skeeziness, which Sansa is seriously underestimating. Shae makes it clear that she’s got Sansa’s back if (and when) he tries anything funny. A knock on the door announces Loras Tyrell’s arrival, and Sansa gets all fangirly when he asks to escort her out to the gardens to see his grandmother. On their walk she tries to remind Loras of the time he gave her a rose back in season one, but he’s like “LOL girl I don’t care about you.”

Margaery greets them and brings Sansa to Grandma Tyrell, otherwise known as Lady Olenna. There’s some Renly related smack talk, Loras bashing, and then “as for your fat-head father—” before Margaery interrupts embarrassedly. Apparently Olenna was never onboard with the Renly-Margaery marriage or Renly’s claim to “that ugly iron chair.” She seduces Sansa with lemon cakes before getting to her point: “I want you to tell me the truth about the royal boy, this Joffrey.” Oh no. Sansa sputters around with her usual “oh heart of a lion one true king so hunkadelic” spiel but everyone and their mothers knows she’s lying. Lady Olenna assures Sansa that they won’t betray her, and finally she admits, “He’s a monster.” Girl, that doesn’t even begin to cover it. Lady Olenna: “Ah. That’s a pity.” But the Joffrey-Margaery wedding will go on!

Shae is lounging in Tyrion’s room when he walks in, prompting him to freak out because, if you’ll recall, Tywin doesn’t want none of his whores around here no more. Shae’s still concerned about Sansa, since Littlefinger’s friend warned her about him, and by “friend” she means “that one prostitute who shows up everywhere”. Tyrion’s like, “ah yes, Ros.” The conversation gets majorly derailed by Shae, as she flails about the room accusing Tyrion of sleeping with all the whores and then, randomly, of wanting Sansa. And then things get sexy.

Margaery goes to visit Joffrey, who’s in his room lovingly cradling a crossbow. At first it seems like he just wants to chat like a normal human being, but within about .6 seconds he’s like, “hey remember when you married a traitor?” Margaery assures him she was just in it for the babies, but then there’s the question of where are these babies. Joffrey basically corners her into outing Renly, but it turns out he already knew. “I’ve considered making his perversion punishable by death,” Joffrey says, because who else but Joffrey! Does he know about Loras? That’s awkward. Margaery looks concerned but plays along anyway, getting all touchy with him and EW EW CUT THAT OUT IMMEDIATELY. She asks for a demonstration of his crossbow, because she knows the way to a man’s heart is through his love of dangerous weaponry. When she wields it herself, he’s instantly in love. Sadism! A love story for the ages.

The road goes ever on and on…

And here’s everyone’s favourite odd couple, Jaime and Brienne! Last we saw them, they were traipsing through the countryside with Jaime tied on a rope, babbling away. And he’s still in fine form here. Through his insults, we see that he is sneakily trying to piece Brienne’s story together. He asks if she was pledged to Stannis, and when she nearly barfs at that he figures out her attachment to Renly. Brienne waxes a bit too poetic about her late fabulous king, and Jaime’s like “you liiiiiiiiiiked hiiiiim.” He tells her not to worry about it, since Renly was more into “curly haired little girls like Loras Tyrell.” So that’s, what, everyone in Westeros now who knows about Loras and Renly? Did they leave their windows open or something?

After one smart-ass comment too many, Brienne grabs Jaime by the hair and it totally looks like they’re about to make out, which I am so down for. But alas, Jaime starts talking again: “I don’t blame him, and I don’t blame you either. We don’t get to choose who we love.” He’s talking about his twin sister, btw. Twin sister. They’re interrupted by an old dude with a horse, who chuckles at Brienne’s gigantitude and carries on his way. Jaime’s like, “so we’re going to kill him, right” but Brienne is not having it. Does he know who they are? We’ll see.

At a river crossing, Brienne deliberates on whether to cross the bridge or the water while Jaime provides running commentary on her thought process. She chooses the bridge, which Jaime decides is a good place to take a seat. Brienne tries to get him up, but he distracts her with talk of corns. He manages to cut himself free of her rope AND steal her sword. Luckily she’s got two. Jaime’s hands are still bound, but that doesn’t stop him from having a full-scale sword fight with Brienne. She KICKS HIS ASS, it’s awesome and she’s amazing.

The fight’s interrupted when Lord Bolton’s men ride up, with the old dude from before in tow. So he did squeal! See what happens when you don’t kill passersby, Brienne?

The King in the North

Over at wherever Team Stark is, Robb stares intensely into a fireplace, as one does, before his boring-ass wife walks over to talk about their boring-ass marriage. She calls him “King of the Grim Bearded Stinking Barbarians”. Hot! Put that on your banners, Robb. Lord Bolton comes in to deliver some bad news. It turns out Grandpa Tully has passed away, but on a lighter note the Greyjoy crew have burnt down Winterfell and massacred everyone, have a nice day! Robb informs a chained-up Catelyn that they’ll make their way to Riverrun for the funeral, and that Bran and Rickon may yet be Greyjoy hostages. Catelyn’s like, “Have you received any demands?” and Robb’s like, “…no.” Robb, you beautiful dummy, you.

Later, while the Stark troops move towards Riverrun, Robb and Lord Karstark argue about whether this is a good idea. Robb says they’ll grab some of his grandfather’s men while they’re there, but Captain Bringdown says it doesn’t matter, “I think you lost this war the day you married her.”

Talisa (Robb’s wife, in case you keep forgetting her name like I do) shows new facets of her uselessness when she can’t handle a horse. Catelyn smirks. We get to hear Cat’s background with Jon Snow, which basically goes “when he was a baby I prayed that he would die, but then he got the pox and I felt bad so I prayed that he would live, and I promised to be a good mother to him but LOL I lied.” You’re all over the place, Cat. She feels guilty that all of the horrible crap that’s happened to her family was because of her petty jealousy.

Theon’s dungeon of mystery

In case anyone was wondering what that traitorous bastard Theon was up to, he’s currently tied to some sort of medieval torture device, having water splashed all over him and KNIVES STUCK UNDERNEATH HIS NAILS OH GOD.

Later, some men drill a large corkscrew into Theon’s foot, wanting to know why he took Winterfell. First he says he was just going to hold it, but that just gets him more corkscrew. He changes his answer to “I wanted to bring glory to my house, to my father!” and “I hated the Starks!”, but that just results in a bag over his head and more torture. Jeez! Can’t win with these guys. After they all leave, one mopping fellow stays behind and tells Theon that Yara sent him, and that he’ll be back later. Hmm, intrigue.

Beyond the Wall

Jon, now dressed in Wildling gear, marches with Julius Caesar I MEAN Mance Rayder. Mance tells Jon how he got all these people—half of whom hate each other—to march together: “I told them we were all going to die if we don’t get south, because that’s the truth.” Well, that’s not so clever. Then Jon learns about wargs—people who can enter the minds of animals and see through their eyes. This one particular warg went to “the Fist of the First Men” and saw dead crows. I have no idea what any of this means.

The rest of the Night’s Watch boys are also marching through the snow. Sam Tarly is crying, because of course he is, and this one guy keeps tormenting him about “200 brothers killed by dead men and you’re still here…that seem fair to you?” Finally Sam falls down and just, like, waits for death until his pals Ginger Beard and Receding Hairline stop to help him. Jeor Mormont tries to get him up as well: “Tarly, I forbid you to die, do you hear me?” See Sam, you have friends!

The Stark babies

Dream Bran is busy hunting three-eyed ravens. In a sad call back to the very first episode, he imagines Jon and Robb standing by. Bran spins around to find that kid from Love Actually watching him. “You can’t kill it, you know,” he says cryptically, “Because the raven is you.” K.

Later, Bran wakes up to Osha and his direwolf on their guard, when out of the mist comes the Love Actually kid. He’s soon joined by his knife-wielding sister. “I’m Jojen Reed,” he says, “This is my sister Meera. We’ve come a long way to find you, Brandon. And we’ve got much farther to go.”

The group of them travel through the countryside, and Rickon just randomly takes off running down a hill. What is the deal with that kid, man. Bran and Jojen, meanwhile, bond over being wargs. It’s a voice-cracking good time! The three-eyed raven they always see apparently gives them sight into the future, past, or present like some sort of Christmas Carol ghost.

And Arya’s back! She, Gendry and Hot Pie trample loudly through some woods, arguing about who Arya should’ve gotten Jaqen to kill. “You could’ve picked King Joffrey.” “Shut up!” Aw, cuties. They soon come upon a singing guy and his group of merry men, and he spots them before they can properly hide. He is apparently part of a Brotherhood Without Banners, and figures out from their swords that they’ve recently escaped from Harrenhal. He wants to find out how over lunch.

The merry men’s leader—Thoros, I believe his name is—gets sloppy at an alehouse while interrogating Arya. She tries to prove her fightin’ skills, but she’s not nearly as good as Thoros, who bests her with one swing. Well, A for effort, anyway. He lets them finish up their food and leave. Wait, so he’s genuinely nice? What! That’s got to be a first. BUT, as the trio are about to make their getaway, in comes Gregor Clegane, the Hound, who has been taken prisoner by the Brotherhood. He recognizes Arya right away and asks Thoros what he’s doing “with a Stark bitch.” Uh oh!