Image: HBO
Love. Exciting and new. Or at least, that’s how it used to be on TV.
“What did I get for it?” Jon Snow snarls at Sam in a quiet moment before “The Watchers on the Wall” erupts into siege. “An arrow six inches from my heart.”
SEE ALSO: 'Game of Thrones' Recap: The Mountain and The Viper
Thus begins Episode 9 of Game of Thrones’ fourth season, which takes place entirely at the mammoth manmade cliff that separates Westeros from all manner of murderous chaos.
Including mammoths. Oh, and giants, it turns out.
Yes, the wildlings are ready for their attack on Castle Black, and as if it weren’t enough that they outnumber the Night’s Watch “a thousand to one,” they’ve brought some mythical friends.
Like the Season 2 penultimate epic “Blackwater,” “The Watchers on the Wall” is a showdown more than a season in the making. And in terms of scale, thrills — and heartbreak, of course — it overdelivered.
“Love is the death of duty,” Maester Aemon says to Sam in a quiet moment before the attack, but he’s got it backwards: Duty will be the death of love. On the wildling’s side of preparations, Ygritte makes it clear that she doesn’t want anyone else killing her former turncoat lover: Jon Snow is all hers, and this time she won’t be leaving six inches between his heart and her arrow.
Speeches are made, horns blow, and like with any battle plan, things go horribly awry once contact with the enemy is made. Mance Rayder’s 100,000 wildlings are moving in, and they have a wooly mammoth and a couple of giants to help tear down the Wall’s cold-rolled steel fortifications.
Ygritte’s forces are pouring into Castle Black in a fierce hand-to-hand contest below, while another horde approaches the face of the Wall, where Night’s Watch master-at-arms Alliser Thorne is commanding the action. Hearing of the force attacking the keep, he dispatches himself to the melee and later calls his ineffectual second-in-command away, leaving Jon Snow with an opportunity to seize control up top.
And the bastard son of Ned Stark wastes no time doing so: On his command, Crows are unleashing flaming arrows and barrels of oil — though they’re saving their biggest surprise for last.
At first it seems like Ygritte and Jon Snow are safely separated; but soon he must join the fighting down below, too, where his former wildling girlfriend has been sticking arrows in his Night’s Watch bretheren by the dozen. He first tangles with one of the cannibalistic Thenn — the first time his formidable swordsman’s skills are truly tested, and he’s masterful — before taking out his ugly, bald adversary with a handy smith’s hammer to the skull.
And that’s when Ygritte spots him across the castle yard. She knocks her arrow and draws a bead but cannot loose it; something makes her hesitate, and just as he sees that she's about to finish him once and for all, an arrow pierces her back.
It’s Olly — the newly appointed elevator boy orphaned in a recent wildling attack on his village — who’s stopped trembling and joined the battle, saving Jon Snow while dooming his first love to die in his arms.
“We should’ve stayed in the cave,” she tells Jon Snow, before repeating her lovers’ taunt through burbling blood: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”
But before Ygritte’s heart stopped beating for Jon Snow, there was plenty of other heart-stopping action: Grenn held off a giant’s tunnel assault with just a few men, though they paid the ultimate price; Jon Snow’s direwolf Ghost was released and turned the tide of the battle in the castle; Sam sacked up in a big way, fearlessly helping the Night’s Watch and making an impressive kill of his own; and oh — that surprise up on the wall!
With oil barrels, arrows and men running low, the Crows atop the wall are looking down at a climbing party that will surely overrun them when Ed, who Jon Snow left in charge, gives the order. Enormous chunks of ice break loose from the wall, and a giant anchor swinging from a chain comes sweeping across the cliff’s face, raking it clean of invaders.
“Host it up!” Ed yells triumphantly, as it’s clear their final blow has discouraged the attack — for the night, anyway. But this siege is far from over.
Sam and Jon Snow in Episode 9 of 'Game of Thrones.'
The next morning, Jon Snow is in no mood to celebrate. He tells Sam of his plan: He must go out by himself and face Mance Rayder. Without their leader, the wildlings will fall apart and retreat — the only way he sees that Castle Black can stand for long. Battle-tested and with his first love now shuffled off, Jon Snow is so enraptured of his cause that, before he ventures out, he hands his Valyrian steel sword to Sam “in case I don’t come back.”
“Come back,” Sam implores.
Indeed, Jon Snow. Come back aboard. We're expecting you.
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