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Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

So far, this is Game of Thrones’ best season—and last night’s episode, “The Spoils of War,” was fantastic. Let’s get into it. Spoilers, obviously.

WE BEGIN IN HIGHGARDEN…
… where Jaime and Bronn are packing up the Tyrells’ gold. Bronn’s all sassy because he doesn’t have a castle yet—which seems weird, since he just saw a battle where a bunch of people who had a castle died.

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Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

MEANWHILE, AT KING’S LANDING...
Cersei meets with the Iron Bank’s Tycho Nestoris (played by Mark Gattis, whose appearances always make me think the TARDIS is going to VWORP into the Red Keep), assuring him that Jaime’s on the way with gold, and asking for help expanding her army and navy.

They have this conversation while standing over Cersei’s massive new map, which—combined with the opening credits and the table at Dragonstone—is now this seasons’ third massive map that’s clearly designed to hand-hold viewers through the various locations of Westeros. (We’re maybe two episodes away from meeting Maester Ptolemy, who will appear in the background of each scene, silently presenting Westerosi geography PowerPoints.) The weird thing is, while geography matters a lot in George R.R. Martin’s books—it takes a while for things to happen and for people to move—in HBO’s streamlined, fast-paced adaptation, geography doesn’t matter at all. On TV, it only takes Jon like half an hour to journey from the Wall to Dragonstone; later on, we’ll see that Dany and Drogon can fly from Dragonstone to the Riverlands in about five minutes. Game of Thrones takes great pains to make sure we see a lot of maps and know how big and complex its world is—and then it packs plot beats and characters together so tightly that it feels like everyone in Westeros exists in a one-mile radius.

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Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

MEANWHILE, IN WINTERFELL...
Okay, so Bran’s just a dick now, apparently? Ever since he became the Three-Eyed Raven, he’s acting like a surly teenager who thinks he knows everything—which is made worse by the fact he does know everything. Now he’s staring straight into the camera to say bullshit like “Chaos is a ladder,” and he’s a total jerk to sweet, departing Meera—to the point where Meera has to remind him that maybe he should chill, since his dumb ass has gotten a whole lot of people killed.

Later, Arya returns to Winterfell (!), and, in a bold moment of character growth, decides to talk her way past a couple of guards rather than just murdering them. Sansa and Arya, truly their father’s daughters, promptly go mope in the crypt, and then meet up with Bran, who’s less interested in seeing his long-lost sister than he is in monotoning bullshit like “I remember what it felt like to be Brandon Stark, but I remember so much else now.”

*Bran stares into middle distance*

*Bran carves “CHAOS IS A LADDER” into his desk in fourth-period math*

Arya also spars with Brienne, dancing with Needle to avoid Brienne’s slow sword swings. Of course these two are instant BFFs, and of course this brings me an inordinate amount of joy. Maisie Williams is great in this scene, just as she’s great in every scene; despite being back in Winterfell for all of 30 seconds, Arya’s already the most interesting character here. Far more than Sansa or Bran, it’s Arya’s world-weary eyes that carry the doomed history of the Starks.

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Macall B. Polay/courtesy of HBO

MEANWHILE, ON DRAGONSTONE...
Dany’s trying to get some juicy Gray Worm sex deets from Missandei when Jon interrupts her to show off a cave that’s conveniently located under Dragonstone that he conveniently found that conveniently has a bunch of dragonglass in it (so much dragon poop). It also conveniently features old graffiti from the Children of the Forest! Jon, who is now, conveniently, an archeologist, shows the graffiti to Dany—particularly the stuff that shows the Children teaming up with the First Men to fight the White Walkers, “despite their differences, despite their suspicions." Jon adds, “We need to do the same if we’re going to survive.” Dany says she’s happy to help—if Jon will bend the knee. Rather than bending the knee, Jon stares sullenly, probably thinking about the last time he convinced a hot chick to go into a cave.

Outside Sexless Cave, Tyrion and Varys break the news to Dany about the debacle at Casterly Rock—which leads to Dany accusing Tyrion of secretly helping the Lannisters. (Big if true.) Dany says “Fuck it, I’m going to use my sweet dragons to explode King’s Landing” (I'm paraphrasing), before asking Jon’s advice. Jon says that using dragons to explode King’s Landing would make her “more of the same” in Westeros’ history of shitty rulers.

Later, Missandei tells Jon and Davos how great Dany is, carrying on the show’s tradition of having characters repeatedly tell the audience that Dany is super charismatic, despite the fact she’s played by the charisma-less Emilia Clarke. We’re seven seasons into this tactic; maybe it will start working in the eighth.

Later, spineless Theon crawls ashore up to ask for Dany’s help in getting Yara back from Euron. This doesn’t really go anywhere, though, because...

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Macall B. Polay/courtesy of HBO

MEANWHI—HOLY SHIT! GIANT DRAGON BATTLE!
The Lannisters and Tarlys are moving their armies across the Blackwater when two things happen: 1) Ever-quotable Bronn, after hearing Dickon Tarly whine about the smell of battle, says, “Men shit themselves when they die. Didn’t they teach you that at fancy lad school?” and 2) Hoofbeats sound in the distance. Like, a lot of them.

Is it the fucking Dothraki?

It is the fucking Dothraki, and they annihilate the Lannister and Tarly lines. And then Drogon shows up, ridden by Dany and ready for Lannister barbecue. Luckily for Dragon, the Lannisters and Tarlys have lined up all their highly flammable men, horses, and carts, making it a breeze for Drogon to light that shit up. Getting a dragon involved in a battle is Game of Thrones’ version of asymmetrical warfare—and here it’s chaotic and terrifying and great, with men burning to ash, Lannister armies falling, and Daenerys Stormborn in the goddamn Riverlands, taking back Westeros on the back of a dragon, just like we’ve been promised—

Until Bronn pulls some Reign of Fire shit and gets behind that giant crossbow, taking shots at Drogon. One of the bolts hits; after burning the crossbow to ashes, Dany and Drogon land near the Blackwater. Seizing his opportunity, Jaime charges forward with a lance (one might even say… a dragonlance). Watching the battle from afar, Tyrion sees the only family member he’s ever loved run toward certain death. “Flee, you idiot,” Tyrion mutters. “You fucking idiot.”

Drogon doesn’t roast Jaime alive—but only because someone (it’s unclear who, but I’m guessing Dickon, based on he and Jaime’s earlier camaraderie) shoves Jaime out of the way… and into the Blackwater, where Jaime, wearing his armor, sinks.

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Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

MEANWHILE, IN MY APARTMENT…
As Ned wrote a few weeks ago, there’s not much in the way of downtime this season. So far, season seven is crammed with long-awaited meetings, big battles, and expensive spectacle—all the things we’ve been promised for the past six seasons. And while those moments haven’t disapointed (no small feat, given how long the show’s fans, let alone the books’ readers, have waited to see them), it’s worth pointing out that the character beats have been just as rewarding.

Sure, there have been major moments like Arya’s ruthless revenge for the Red Wedding, or Cersei’s fiendish scheme to torture Ellaria Sand, or Olenna Tyrell going out like a boss. And there’s cool stuff to look forward to: The fact Arya now has a Valyrian steel dagger makes it likely she’ll face off against a White Walker at some point (RIP, White Walker), just as it’s likely that the poor horse who got its leg cut off in this week’s episode will get a replacement leg in next week's episode, hopefully a really pretty one made by the same craftsman who made Jaime's golden hand.

But even better than those things are the smaller, sneakier moments that Game of Thrones rarely gets credit for—moments like the ones in this episode, when we got things like that beautiful, melancholy shot of Arya on horseback, looking at the home she left long ago. Or the wounded, vulnerable look in Tyrion’s eyes after being accused of treachery by Dany—and the fear in those same eyes as he watched his brother charge toward a dragon. Arya and Brienne, sparring. That seemingly simple shot of three surviving Stark children, together again, back in Winterfell’s frozen courtyard.

I know I’m supposed to be all concerned for Jaime after that cliffhanger, but I’m not too worried. (Who else suspects the Kingslayer is going to add “Queenslayer” to his list of nicknames by the time this is all over?) And now that we’ve seen something the series has been building to since the start—a major battle, on Westerosi soil, featuring a dragon, with opposing armies commanded by characters we’ve come to know and care about over the course of years—I’m not even looking forward to more crazy dragon battles. (I mean, I’ll take them. I will definitely take them.) What I am looking forward to are more moments like those above—the ones that remind us that when you boil down Game of Thrones—when you take out the dragons and the zombies and the pretend continents, when you look past the castles and the retro-babble—it works for the same reasons the books do. Game of Thrones works because it’s about the characters. And seeing those characters come to the ends of their long, sad journeys—seeing them reunite with each other, seeing them meet others for the first time, seeing them finally confront the fates they’ve both longed for and feared—is pretty remarkable.


Check out our past recaps of Game of Thrones' seventh season!
Episode 1: Hitting the Home Stretch in "Dragonstone"
Episode 2: Valyrian Grammar and a Boat Fight in “Stormborn”
Episode 3: Meting Out "The Queen’s Justice"