The Nights Watch..Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 2, 22 April UK 2AM / US 9pm Spoilers after 2AM

[TheLazyDuchess]

Ep 2 "A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms"

I loved the Danny and Sansa scene, and cried at the Brienne scene. I thought Danny would take Jons news better, oh dear...

And Arya and Gendry! I predicted it and yet was still surprised.
I loved the Danny and Sansa scene, and cried at the Brienne scene. I thought Danny would take Jons news better, oh dear...

And Arya and Gendry! I predicted it and yet was still surprised.

I meant that Jon probably carries himself in a way or has the build or a facial expression like Rhaegar. E.g. DS looks nothing like my Mom at all, but sometimes I look at him and I have the impression that my Mom is looking back at me. It is more in the eyes than anywhere else.

I'm wondering if something is going to happen to raise an undead army against the Night King, with all the old Starks fighting for the living.

While I'm not sure that this will happen, you have just reminded me of Uncle Benjen - he was undead when he rescued Jon from the Walkers/wights, wasn't he? Kind of blue with his face all falling off. He was stabbed by Walkers and then saved by the Children of the Forest who put dragonglass in his chest to stop him turning. Could that not be replicated?

And if the Night King was made by the Children of the Forest putting dragonglass in his heart, could it be taken out again? And why did he turn bad if it kept Benjen on Team Good?

I feel like I could talk about this show forever. There's so many loose threads and red herrings to analyse in extreme detail.

I wanted Gendry/Arya to happen but it did feel a little disconnected - especially the shot afterwards with him asleep and her awake, looking perturbed. Glad they haven't rushed Brienne/Jaime to the same place.

Excellent, thanks for answering my questions about Lyanna. I've never read the books and couldn't remember if it was mentioned on the show.

And yes, I remember Varys being in the background now. He was notable by absence in the emotional 'potential goodbye' scenes though I think.

@Sweetsummerchild that quote about Jon is highly ironic. His mother seems to have left everything of herself in his face, and nothing of Rhaegar, it's just people don't know it!

Re: the Gendry/Arya coupling: even normally conservative people when facing certain death (think about illegitimate babies conceived during WWII after air raids) may decide to have sex for sometimes the first and possibly last time. It is perhaps not surprising that there was little passion but rather more urgency and desperation.

Gendry, who said he had had 3 relationships, is still an amateur (no foreplay that I could see [waggle eyebrows emoticon]) and Arya didn't have a clue what to do. Hopefully, if either survive reasonably intact, they can meet again and do a better job.

Good point Golden.

Gendry needs to talk to Pod!

I was thinking - wouldn’t it be ironic if the knight king is on his way to kings landing to raise the dead there and the little brother who kills Cersei is a reanimated tommen?

I’m just pleased that Arya learned to play the ‘game of lies’ so well in Braavos. She really needed it to establish that Gendry isn’t carrying some strain of super gonorrhea picked up while shagging his way through the female population of Flea Botom.

One thing that bothers me slightly (and probably because I've forgotten some small but crucial fact...)

Jon Arryn and then Ned Stark discovered that Joff and Co were the product of incest based on their golden locks as opposed to King Robert's black haired bastards.

Yet Jon is the Starkiest looking Stark, bar Arya. And they make a big thing (in the books, at least) about the Targaryens silver hair and lilac eyes. Yet not a hint of Targaryen in him!

they make a big thing (in the books, at least) about the Targaryens silver hair and lilac eyes.

They do, but then again most Targaryans marry other Targaryans (siblings or cousins). There are plenty of Targaryan bastards who had dark hair. Bittersteel (founder of the Golden Company in the books) springs to mind. Also, Robert Baratheon’s grandmother was a Targaryan, and the Baratheon’s are famous for their black hair.

I guess silver hair is not dominant.

From a ‘storytelling’ perspective, it would be pretty damn obvious that R+L=J if Jon had white-blond hair and looked nothing like Ned.

I think Targaryen genes are regressive. So Jon doesn't look like a Targaryen because of the dominant Stark genes from Lyanna.

Targaryen's rarely marry outside of their own so most do have the typical Targaryen look because they are 'pure Targaryen'.

Similarly Baratheon genes are dominant. So there are no cases of blonde Baratheons. Until Robert & Cersei's children - this is what made Jon Arryn suspicious. And, of course, they're not Baratheons.

Cersei had another child who died (I think in the books if was 3 children and Cersei had abortions) who had dark hair. Proving that Baratheon + Lannister = Baratheon looks.

I would have expected Dany to be delighted by Jon's ancestry. If Aerys was alive, Dany and Jon would have long been married. The lengths Aerys went into to find Rhaegar a Targ bride was astonishing.

The lengths Aerys went into to find Rhaegar a Targ bride was astonishing.

I can’t remember that. Was it something to do with Steffon Baratheon on the mission where he found Patchface? I can’t remember who went on what missions for Aerys.

I have a feeling that the whole Dany vs Jon thing is going to end up a bit like Arya vs Sansa last season in that it will end up being faux tension over nothing. If Dany has any real concerns at the moment it would be that if her Dothraki and Unsullied get decimated in the upcoming battle then she has very few troops that are ‘loyal’ to her. The fact that Theon declared he wanted to fight for Winterfell and not for her seemed to make her worried. At the moment her authority in Westeros is dependent on the fear of dragons, and that’s no good thing.

Either way, the obvious thing is for the two of them to marry. However, there is no fAegon in the show, so they have to do the Dance of the Dragons somehow - even if it’s just for half an episode and amounts to nothing.

@SweetSummerchild Yes. Viserys was meant to be a girl, huge disappointment there.
Then Rhaella could not get pregnant again, because Aerys needed huge fires and suffering to perform, and you cannot burn down the Red Keep every couple of years.
Then Aerys's only cousin, Steffon Baratheon, only had boys while Rhaegar was getting older.
Then the Baratheons went away, as you said, to find a Valyrian / Blackfyre / Brightflame bride in Essos. They were unsuccessful.
In the end Rheagar could only marry Elia of Dorne with Targaryen blood, but Aerys could not stand the non-white kids.

@ElenadeClermont thanks for cleaning that up. I did read the World of Ice and Fire some time ago, but have forgotten most of it now. The only bits I remember about Aerys were the defiance of Duskendale and the Tourney of Harrenhal.

I do not remember much of that at all. It is just the image of the Baratheon boys watching their parents drown at Storm's End stayed with me.

Do we know anything about Gendry’s mother? The thing about Cersei having a dark-haired baby to Robert that died made me wonder if somehow that child could have survived and been Gendry, making him a true born Baratheon heir to the throne? Or is that not possible? There are so many callbacks to Season One that I wondered if the Arya-Gendry coupling could be the fulfilment of bringing the Stark and Baratheon households together that Robert planned in the first episode when he suggested Sansa marrying Joffrey.

Given gendry is so much older than Joffrey I suppose there’s also potential of Robert having a pre ious deceased wife...

But I think introducing another surprise legitimate child might be a bit crap at this stage

I can't see them making Gendry legitimate now. It would fly in the face of too many established storylines, and add nothing I can see to the plot.

I think Gendry and Arya is the full circle on the opening idea of a Stark and a Baratheon and linking the households but like with everything else it didn't happen the way we or they expected at the beginning.

I don’t believe that Gendry will be the product of a secret marriage. But if he’s shagging a leading member of House Stark, and there are no other contenders for head of House Baratheon, and he distinguishes himself (even more) in battle then Queen Danaerys/King Aegon could legitimate him retrospectively at the stroke of a pen.

To suddenly legitimise Gendry and make him an ‘heir’ to anyting would fly in the face of the narrative that they are trying to tell. The story is about how the petty squabbles and rivalries caused by inherited succession to the throne in a feudal society rip them apart in hte face of a looming threat to humanity. In the end, leadership must be earned as successful conquerors (in this story) rarely translate to good leaders.

It’s a rather simplistic model of a very complicated situation, but I don’t think suddenly making someone the ruler of the Stormlands/Westeros just because they share half of a crap ruler’s DNA would be a particularly good outcome.

Gendry has been brave and loyal, but so have Davos, Pod and Tormund.

@SweetSummerchild That was a fantastic summary of philosophy of the World of Ice and Fire.

If Tormund survives, he will definitely get lands and title. He is meant to represent all the wildlings.

Gendry is meant to be Robb's age, slightly older than Joffrey according to the wiki. Robert must have immediately cheated on Cersei.
Or they could further conflate Gendry's story with Edric Storm and say that actually his mother was highborn.

@ElenadeClermont thank you!

I hope Tormund survives. I love his book character. The part where he tells Jon about having to kill his son who was turned into a wight was so sad.

I am convinced that Tormund is the Mormont girls' father. He slept with a she-bear and Maege's daughters were fathered by a bear.

Ha, yes, I love that theory!

I'm actually feeling a bit ambivalent about this next episode.

1. In each season, the episode I have liked least has been the 'long battle' episode.
2. This season, I've been finding it difficult to see what is going on in the poorly lit night-time scenes.
3. I don't want any of my favourite characters to die!