Is <em>Game of Thrones</em> Just Killing Time?
Spencer Kornhaber, Christopher Orr, and Amy Sullivan discuss the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
Kornhaber: GAH! Go away, credits!
Game of Thrones doesn’t do many cliffhangers. Sudden calamity followed by slowly unfurled aftermath is more its style. So for the first time in a while, unlike you book readers, I’m now frantically theorizing about what happens after Tyrion's demand for a trial by combat.
Thinking back to previous kangaroo courtroom scenes, at the Eyrie in Season One and at Beric Dondarrion’s camp in Season Three … Tyrion gets to pick a champion, right? And it’s going to be Jaime, right? Surely that’s what all the bro-bond glances between them in this episode foreshadowed. Fighting whom? We just learned Tywin’s 67 years old—too old for combat, no? Is it going to be Ser Meryn, that worm? Or, wait, no, Jaime is going to have to fight on behalf of the crown, isn't he? Where’s Bronn?!
Must. Not. Google. Spoilers.
The moments immediately before the cut to black felt a little silly: shocked-just-shocked reaction shots of each prominent trialwatcher, with final stern-faced closeups of Tyrion and Tywin. I could have sworn I heard a duh-dun-DUN. But prior to that, Peter Dinklage’s full-body performance delivered just the right amount of drama. As he whispered, growled, cried, and shouted, he demonstrated the humanity that much of the rest of the world will always refuse to see in his character.
Tyrion’s right that he has long been on trial for being a dwarf. His dad almost threw him into the sea as a baby for that very reason—even if, as it appeared during the judicial snack-break, Tywin mostly went along with the bogus murder accusations to manipulate Jaime into extending his “dinnesty.” The laypeople gathered in the bleachers, the ones whom Tyrion now regrets saving from Stannis, surely attended to see the final humiliation of someone whose humiliation they’ve always relished.
But the Imp’s hot rage at the other betrayers in the room—Cersei, Varys, Shae—stems in part from
