Game of Thrones 6.01 “The Red Woman” – Review!

Spoiler Warning!

So it looks as though we’re going to have to wait a little while longer to answer the question of how Jon Snow is brought back to life. At least this series handled the topic a lot better than Glenn’s fakeout death in Season 6 of The Walking Dead for sure, as the pace remained strong and there was plenty of tense scenes that on the whole. It all worked pretty well as for the first time we treaded into unknown territory for the readers as we’ve now reached the point where the show has finally caught up and overtaken the books. Will we ever seen George RR Martin’s completed vision? How different will it be to the show? We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, based on The Red Woman, things look as though we’re heading on the right track.

There were, as usual, plenty of things going on this episode for us to ponder and discuss. Sansa and Reek/Theon had obviously survived the fall and had managed to escape from Ramsay, leaving him with a problem that’s made matters worse by the fact that Roose now has a potential heir to the bloodline, which would mean that Ramsay would no longer get any inheritance. So, this is something that he’s not going to take well. The scene where he referred to Myranda’s corpse as “She’s good meat, feed it to the hounds,” was chilling, and reminded us, in case we haven’t forgotten, of how much of a bastard Ramsay can be.

Sansa and Reek didn’t last long before they ran into trouble again, and were quickly surrounded by guards with Reek willing to sacrifice himself to allow Sansa time to escape. That didn’t work and it required an intervention from Brienne, who made an interesting impression for sure, managing to take care of the Ramsay’s soldiers with the aid of Pod. This allowed Brienne to finally do the job that she’s been trying to do for a while and protect Sansa, in a bid to make up for lost time. She’s finally free of both Littlefinger and Ramsay, with Reek, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes next for her. After so much trouble could this be the time where she finally gets something in her favour? I doubt it, because it’s Game of Thrones, but we’ll see.

This Sansa scene was one of the many brief instances where we got to meet other characters, as nobody really dominated the storyline. We spent some time in Dorne which I wasn’t too keen on as I still don’t find the whole storyline interesting myself, and Trystane was taken care of by the Sand Snakes, but that was about it. Hopefully we don’t see the Dorne stuff come into play in a big way this season, and ideally it’ll be kept to the background.

We also got a good exchange between Tyrion and Varys who are among the best pairings of characters on the show, as their interactions about what to do with everyone that Dany had left behind was handled well. Dany herself of course is in big trouble, because despite both Jonah and Daario looking for her, she’s wound up with another Khal. The episode could have been a whole lot worse for her had she not revealed her connection to Khal Drogo, but things aren’t exactly looking up for her either.

Cersei’s discovery of the death of her daughter Mycrella was also handled pretty well. Lena Headey impressed in the scene where we watched Jamie return, with her realization slowly growing overtime. It meant that she’d now lost the only good thing that she’d ever created, and it will be interesting to see how this defines her over the course of the season. One thing’s for sure, knowing Cersei, she’s not going to sit around and do nothing.

Whilst things may be looking up for Sansa, Arya has reached her lowest point, because not only is she essentially a blind beggar, but she’s also being routinely beaten by The House of Black and White. If only she had someone like Stick to train her like Matt Murdock did. Or maybe she’ll end up returning to the House that she was exiled from? Again, it’s too early days to tell.

And finally we come to the biggest part of the episode which was the time spent in the North, that gave us a major gamechanging episode. The coup of the Night’s Watch is now in full effect and Jon Snow’s corpse has been collected by Davos. He and the few men loyal to him now have to somehow work their way out of Castle Black, where an entire group of guards are waiting for them. It’s going to be pretty tough, especially given that apparent revelation of the final few minutes where we learned Melisandre’s true form in the biggest surprise of the episode. Will this have some role in bringing Jon Snow back from the dead? She seems the most likely person to resurrect him at this point, if he gets brought back at all. One thing’s for sure, it will be pretty interesting going forward, and it’s going to be even more interesting to see how long the events at Castle Black last.

Catch the next episode of Game of Thrones this Sunday at 9pm on HBO.