Recap: Game of Thrones S04E07 Mockingbird

Game of Thrones. S04 E07 Mockingbird
by Nikole Gunn

OK, let’s get the bad news out of the way first.  This is the last episode for a couple of weeks, thanks to an HBO mid season break. But episode 7 gives us a lot to mull over as we head into the home stretch.

After the emotional peak that was Tyrion’s courtroom speech last week, the question was always whether Mockingbird would reach the same dizzying heights. It had a lot to live up to and in it’s own way, it measures up.

Tyrion’s ‘predicament’ is a driving force in Mockingbird and we’re teased with just bite sized pieces of his story, when we all desperately want to know how he’ll get out of this one. 

Episode 7 open almost immediately after events in the courtroom. Tyrion is arguing with Jaime over the futility of his demands for Trial by Combat, both knowing it was a desperate roll of the dice, designed more to irritate Father Dearest, than realistically offer any form of escape.

As much as Jaime would like to stand up for his brother, there’s only so much he can do with his faux hand.  And he’s not very good with his whole, left hand either.  The odds would be stacked against him as Cersei has called on a ‘new look’ Gregor Clegane aka The Mountain, who’s very good at killing as we’re shown in rather graphic detail.

Tyrion is dealt another blow when his sell-sword ally, Bronn, appears to have done a deal with Cersei not to fight for Tyrion against The Mountain – poor old Tyrion, betrayed again by someone he considered a ‘friend’. 

To the other Brother Clegane, the Hound and Arya are still wandering around the Seven Kingdoms, their bond growing into an almost father-daughter relationship.  She may revere, Ned, but she’s learning more ‘life-skills’ from The Hound.

This odd-couple relationship highlighted by a dying man found in front of his ruined home. He knows he’s not long for this world, but says its better than nothing. It touches off a King Lear discussion about ‘nothing’, before the Hound literally kills him with kindness. Or out of kindness 

Then they run into a couple of men who Arya encountered when she was fleeing King’s Landing after her father’s execution. The Hound gets bitten and then kills one, while Arya calmly dispatches the other.

Later, we see the Hound looking unwell with an infected bite wound.  Arya wants to use fire to kill the infection, but it understandably freaks him out, given his brother pressed his face into the fire when they were children and his father covered for him.  Then in one sentence, Rory McCann as the Hound reveals his humanity and pain “you think you’re alone”. 

Now to The Wall, where Jon Snow is in a power struggle with Alliser Thorne, who refuses to listen to Jon’s warnings about the Wildings and threatens to turn his dire wolf into stew.  And that’s it for Jon in this episode. See you in two weeks. Maybe.

In Mereen, Dany takes Daario as her lover, when all he wants to do is kill her enemies. She agrees to let him loose on Yunkaii, until Ser Jorah convinces her she can’t use violence to end violence.

We very briefly visit the Red Woman and Stannis’ Queen, where they talk a bit of religious hocus-pocus and fulfil the bum-boob episode quota.

Brienne and Podrick are still searching for Sansa and stop off for a bite to eat at a wayside inn, where they run into Arya’s mate, Hot Pie. He tells them Arya is very much alive and probably making for her Aunt Lyssa at The Eyrie.  They conclude there’s a good chance Sansa will be there too and off they trot.

We return to a darkened dungeon, where a man with a torch visits Tyrion – a bit like Ned Sark getting a visit from Varys on the eve of his execution.  But it’s not the Spider; it’s the Red Viper.

And even though he’s a judge in Tyrion’s trial, he offers to be his champion, wanting to take on the Mountain to avenge his sister and her children, whom Clegane killed. Pedro Pascal, I love you.

In keeping with previous episodes, where the bid dramatic moments are kept to the end, we return to the Eyrie, where Sansa is building a snow castle.  She’s getting on well with her cousin and soon to be husband, until he ruins her snow version of Winterfell. She slaps him as Littlefinger arrives on the scene.

He reveals his undying love for her mother, Catelyn and by extension, her.  Then he kisses her.  And crazy Aunt Lyssa is watching and that pushes her over the edge.  Well actually, Petry pushes her over the edge.

He stops Lyssa from pushing Sansa out the Moon Door, before telling her he never loved her, before giving her a shove.

And that’s where we leave things for two weeks.  Damn you HBO. You get us addicted and then deny us our fix.  Oh, by the way, the Mockingbird in the title is for the pin that Petry wears as he makes Lyssa ‘fly’.