Game of Thrones S5x05 “Kill The Boy”

WARNING! SPOILERS!                           

It’s safe to say that Season 5 seems to be moving at a slower pace to what we’ve had in the previous seasons. We’re halfway through this one and we haven’t had any big, shocking events that made Season 4 so memorable such as the Purple Wedding. However, despite that, Kill the Boy was a pretty solid episode as it juggled the focus of the characters between Jon, Dany and Sansa’s storyline, as well as spending a brief amount of time with Jorah and Tyrion as they found themselves in another sticky situation.

We got to see the fate of both Grey Worm and Ser Barriston Selmy at the back-end of the battle from last week’s episode. Whilst Ser Barriston is in fact dead, Grey Worm survived, and we straight away got to see the fallout on Dany with her flipping out and burning the Grand Masters of Meereen. This was an interesting way to give Dany some material as we’re asked the question is she becoming more and more like the Mad King? Where will this end? Is this only the beginning of Dany spiralling out of control? Things certainly got interesting in her storyline this week especially as now it doesn’t look like she’s going to be welcoming Jorah back into receiving his counsel given the events at the end of the episode (even if was ever going to make it there in the first place), and that Ser Barriston Selmy can no longer offer his. The second half of the season will no doubt provide some interesting material for Dany to use for sure.

Sansa also got a lot of screentime this episode as we spent time with her introduced to Theon, now Reek, in a meeting that managed to humiliate both of them when Ramsay taunted Sansa by saying that Theon had killed off her younger brothers. Of course we know that the younger Starks are very much alive, but we haven’t had a word from Hodor or Bran this season primarily because their storyline has caught up to where it is in the books and it was already too far ahead of the rest of the show. It should be certainly interesting to see what they do get up to when they return presumably in Season 6. But back to Sansa here, this wasn’t the most positive of weeks for her. She’s ended up in with yet another abusive husband after leaving Joffrey, and where she goes from here will be no doubt interesting to watch again, especially with Brienne and Pod factoring into this. Brienne seems to be determined to retrieve Sansa even though she rejected her already, and her involvement with Ramsay might be what pushes Sansa into Brienne’s protection. However, that probably won’t be happening for a while if at all, but as with every storyline on Game of Thrones, there’s a lot of potential for more to come, even this far into the season.

Tyrion also got his first sight of a dragon this week with Drogon flying overhead, and when you spot something that can make Tyrion, even Tyrion speechless, you know you’ve done something impressive and that was certainly the case here. It’s the first time any of our main cast has seen a dragon and one can only speculate where Drogon is going. But we didn’t get long to catch our breath with Tyrion’s plot though because were immediately thrust into another situation with the Stone Men, in a short fight that wasn’t quite as good as I hoped  it would be, being one of the weaker parts of an otherwise strong episode. However, it did put Tyrion and Jorah in an interesting new situation that will leave us waiting until next week.

Jon Snow’s storyline was brief this week but provided us with more good material now that he’s High Commander of the Night’s Watch and has given his story a breath of fresh air in this Season. We’re continuing to see his advancement from a boy to a man, as was suggested by the episode’s title, “Kill the Boy,” and we also got to see an intriguing hint dropped about his true parentage that saw a Targaryen reference crop up, which will no doubt serve to increase fan theories for where we might see him going forward.

So that’s all from me this week. Now that we’ve reached the halfway point, what do you think of Game of Thrones Season 5 so far? Are you enjoying it? Or is it underwhelming compared to the previous seasons? Let me know in the comments below.