Game of Thrones S5x03 “High Sparrow”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

High Sparrow, whilst not a groundbreaking episode of Game of Thrones, certainly proved to be a pretty solid one that continued to develop the vast, epic storyline that the series has been giving us. There were some good moments here as Dany was pretty much absent for this week’s episode, with the focus on both Arya and Sansa thrust into the spotlight. This was something that was quieter than your average episode of GOT, which was probably evident when we were actually able to get through a wedding without any deaths happening. Maybe we’ll now see the start of a new trend.

We learnt why Sansa was being taken away from her home with Littlefinger this week as she was put into an arranged marriage with Ramsey. Naturally, Littlefinger is unaware of Ramsey’s reputation and with him departing to head down to King’s Landing, this could potentially see Sansa put through another round of bad stuff happening to her, but hopefully, it’s time that we got to see her playing the game a bit more and manipulating Ramsey this time around, rather than the other way. Still, this once again puts two stories that were separate before on a collision course and will be very interesting to see where this goes moving forward. It seems like both Stark girls had a depressing time this week with Sansa clearly not happy about the arranged marriage, but again, we’re still at the stage where the foundations are getting laid for more interesting stuff to happen further down the line.

The story with Arya, whilst not the most important part of this week’s episode, was still interesting. We saw how she was coping with her transition into becoming a Faceless Man, and one of the more touching moments of this week’s episode was when we got to see her throw away all her belongings (apart from Needle). It doesn’t look likely that we’re going to see her cross paths with any other characters’ stories just yet, so it looks like this is another story that should take a while to unfold. Much like Sansa’s, we’re still in early stages here.

One plot that’s working very well this season is the interactions between Jon and Stannis. Jon refused to become Jon Stark earlier this season, which is something that he’d always wanted, and we’re continuing to see the fallout from this decision now that he’s Lord Commander. The execution of Janos Slynt was another time that a public beheading had happened in this season of the show (any takers for guessing how many more there’ll before it ends?), and offered some interesting material for this week’s episode. The Stannis/Jon interactions were good and it’s nice to see that more and more characters are continuing to cross paths with one another

Speaking of characters that are crossing paths with one another we got Jorah introduced this week, and it was good to have him back on the show even however briefly at the end of the episode when he captured Tyrion doing something that was so typical of what Tyrion does. This is something that’s no doubt going to be a fun dynamic to watch going forward as it’s the first real time that Tyrion has come into conflict with Jorah, and the show excels at putting two characters together and watching their storylines develop. This is going to be a plot to pay attention going forward for sure

Back in King’s Landing, we get to the wedding that didn’t have anybody killed. Tommen and Margery are now King and Queen, and Cersei’s slowly finding herself pushed into a corner, a far cry from the position of power that the character had earlier in the show. You’ve almost got to feel sorry for her, in a way, but then again, we know what Cersei’s capable of so this certainly should mean for some interesting developments on this plot in the weeks ahead

High Sparrow was a quieter episode of the show then that saw the focus switch more to the strategy than the all out action. We’re still in the setting-up stages of this season and the renewed investment in the Stark’s revenge seems to be increasing, and it might not be long before the Boltons find themselves in trouble.