Game of Thrones S4x04 “Oathkeeper”

Warning! Major Spoilers!

Following last week’s controversy concerning Jamie and Cersei, it was good to get back to a Game of Thrones episode that wasn’t full of big shock moments, especially given that they’ve been cropping up quite frequently in Season 4. If you were expecting a long, drawn out mystery to the Who Killed Joffrey plot then think again, because Oathkeeper answers that question pretty well, as well as dealing more with Tyrion’s predicament following his arrest from Cersei. It’s already been stated that Cersei will execute Tyrion even if somebody else admitted killing Joffrey and had evidence, so this was interesting to watch how the fallout is continuously dealt with.

This was more satisfying, less controversial and a bigger improvement on last week’s episode, Breaker of Chains, especially for book readers like myself. There’s several plot threads dealt with over the course of this episode, and whilst others, like Arya for example, don’t make an appearance – we get continued development with scenes featuring Dany, Jon, Jamie, Tyrion and more.

Starting with Dany, in the opening sequence. Following her siege that seemed a little too reminiscent of Season 3 in last week’s episode, it isn’t long before she has command of Meereen and is answering injustice with justice, as opposed to mercy as one of her advisors suggests. This wasn’t Dany’s most important scene this season, but could have ramifications for her future. It was a stronger moment for her than last week, and was great to see Grey Worm infiltrating the city to inspire a revolt.

The scene between Margaery and Tommen was also a strong moment, and the show also doesn’t stop us wanting to hate Joffrey following his death – with the comment about Ser Pounce, and also gave some decent screentime for Tommen who’s rarely featured in the entire series. He’s also turned out to be one of the few decent people in this series, which makes a nice change.

Another impressive scene this episode was between Brienne and Jamie. Whilst Brienne is now going to find Sansa on her own and these two are parting ways, it was a good moment between the characters especially as this wasn’t the only good scene with Jamie this episode. Whilst you may not like him as much as you did before Breaker of Chains – it was great to see his sparring with Bronn again and his moment with Tyrion also shined.

We also got to learn how new White Walkers were born this week, in quite an intriguing development. We haven’t seen that much of them so far, but it was nice to know that they haven’t been completely ignored, and there’s more to come from them yet.

In fact, the overall quality of this episode is very strong, and that shouldn’t be any surprise as it’s from Bryan Cogman, who’s one of the stronger writers of the series. He’s responsible for Season 1’s Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things as well as What is Dead May Never Die and Kissed by Fire from Season 3, all of which were strong episodes. It’s good to see that Cogman doesn’t disappoint, with some good moments for pretty much every character – there wasn’t really any weak section here, and hopefully this is a sign of stronger things to come. The fact that Cogman is writing Episode 6 – entitled The Laws of Gods and Men, does bode well for this so hopefully he will not disappoint.

So that was a well paced, intriguing episode that’s one of the better of Season 4 so far. Hopefully the trend can continue into next week’s episode, which once again, I can’t wait for.

What did you think of this episode? Keep Book Spoilers to a minimum, and let me know in the comments section below.