Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Sex! Sex! Sex! There’s no aphrodisiac more powerful than war to bring out the randy in folks. And, of course, that goes quadruple for “Game of Thrones.”
“The Watchers of the Wall” begins with Jon Snow attempting to have “the talk” with Samwell Tarly ‘neath an ominous sky of imminent war. Unfortunately, it comes off more like a dissertation on making breakfast burritos.
However, Sam does reveal his freaky-deaky side, asking Jon about Ygritte’s feet.
Cut to the Wildlings — er, “Free Folk” is the politically correct term, “Wildlings” would be the name of the football team Dan Synder would own if he lived in Westeros — where Tormund is talking about copulating with a bear-like, not-afraid-to-use-her-claws woman. Ygritte, however, is not in the mood. She just wants to make arrows and kill her ex-beau. Styr, leader of the Thenn people — a k a the Wildling cannibal skinheads (sorry, I’m already using that as the name of my own black metal band) — doubts her convictions. She thinks he’s just hungry for her “ginger minge” and promises an arrow for anyone who gets in the way of her killing Jon Snow.
Even blind Maester Aemon is feeling his, er, dragon blood flow through his loins, waxing all romantic with Sam about lost love.
Lo and behold, Gilly arrives at Castle Black, cradling Sam Jr., and the three have a sweet, albeit short-lived reunion, before the horns blow.
Once. Twice. The Wildlings are here.
Up atop the wall, a-hole gym teacher-turned-acting commander of the Night’s Watch Alliser Thorne has a coulda, woulda, shoulda moment with Jon Snow vis-à-vis closing the tunnel after gazing out over the 100,000 or so fire-dancing Wildlings about to crash the party. In an extremely backhanded, curmudgeonly way only he could summon, of course. The top of the wall lights up like Christmas as the archers nock their fire arrows.
Meanwhile, Sam — really the star of the ep — finally gets some sugar from Gilly in the basement down below, where he’ll hide her. His boy Pip, on the other hand, seems to have taken over the scaredy-cat role, confessing he’s never even held a spear before.
Back to those Wildings hordes. Here they come, mammoths and giants and cannibals, oh my, in tow. Not up the wall, but to the southern gate (the one to the tunnel Jon wanted sealed). An errant dropping of an oil-filled barrel bomb from the top of the wall spurs Alliser to drop a see-you-next-Tuesday bomb or two (so unlike him) before deciding to head down and square off with the Wildlings who’ve already infiltrated the wall a few weeks back (Ygritte & Co.), leaving bearded and bald and not exactly brave Brother Slynt in charge.
Alliser gives a self-help speech to his army similar to Tyrion’s Blackwater Bay address. And off they go.
Cling. Clang. Clong. The cacophony of swords and shields and axes is upon us as the border-hopped Wildlings in Castle Black attack. In typical “GoT” fashion, they’ve saved their bloodiest, World Star-iest moments for the penultimate episode of the season (Prince Oberyn’s brain popcorn scene in the pen-penultimate ep aside). Knives in the eye. Axes in the solar plexus. Decapitations. Boiling liquid melting faces. And those giants down there? They seem to have giant-size arrows. One Tomahawk missile from their bow sends a poor crow whizzing through the cosmos.
Meanwhile, Ygritte is (what gaming dorks like me call) “camping” — hidden away in the shadows, sniping crows with her bow, easy-peezy.
Slynt, on the other hand, decides to take the coward’s way out and deserts to the castle’s bowels where Gilly is squirreled away.
Pip, alongside Sam, revels in his first crossbow kill for half a second, only to be mowed down by an arrow through the gullet, courtesy of Ygritte. And just when he was getting used to Sam’s swearing, too.
Back to the top of the wall, they’re carpet-bombing the giants below with lit-fused oil barrels. Not quite as effective as Tyrion’s explosive pig scat in Blackwater Bay, but it’ll have to do.
Meanwhile, a giant starts going to town on the southern gate door like Jack in “The Shining” — punching, punching, punching and tying chains to ultimately take ‘er down. Alliser, meanwhile, finds himself in a face-off with Tormund. One he loses, by getting stabbed in the leg. He falls to the ground and is medevac’d by fellow crows.
Sam, meanwhile, convinces a young Watcher named Olly to elevator him up to the top of the wall. He also implores him to find a weapon of his own and fight. Jon abdicates the top of the wall to Edd — preshadowing a bit of awesomeness called “the scythe,” hmmmmm — and goes down to fight the Wildling forces on the ground.
Oh, and that giant down below is progressing quite nicely through the south gate’s tunnel, despite being shot with 20 or so arrows.
Back to Jon, who’s Jedi-mastering fools left and right with his Luddite saber. A nice long shot of the carnage sets the scene. The Watch is winning. Winning-ish. Ghost, Jon’s loyal direwolf, is uncaged and sicced upon the Wildlings, biting throats like they were squeaky chew toys. Good puppy.
Now it’s Jon versus an ax-wielding Thenn. Jon loses his sword and is forced to bring a chain to an ax fight. No wait, stop: hammer time. Ned Stark’s (only figuratively, but maybe soon to be literally) lady-killing bastard plunges a metal mallet into the Thenn’s head, only to go face to face with his ex-old lady, Ygritte. Awkward! But before she can do what scorned Wildling women want to do, young Olly snipes her in the heart. She dies in Jon Snow’s arms, all nostalgic for their spelunking sex romps in the cave. Jon promises he’ll see her in the cave again, one day. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she gurgles back as she always did.
But about that scythe! Turns out it’s a nifty little in-case-of-emergency-break-ice kind of weapon: a giant smiling blade that pops out of the ice wall and amputates any and all extremities of any and all Wildings attempting to scale the wall. Good on you, Edd.
In the final face-off, Jon Snow comes upon a clearly outnumbered Tormund, crossbows him, and takes him as a POW. Sam checks on Gilly — surprises her from behind and almost gets taken out by a drumstick (you can take the girl out of the Beyond the Wall …) — only to find a cowering Slynt in the fetal position along with her.
The episode ends with a stubborn Jon Snow — mourning his fallen friends who indeed protected the southern gate from the giants, and who now lie dead with one — dead set on hunting down Mance Rayder. He bequeaths his Valyrian steel sword to Sam and exits the gate for the north, much in the same fashion as the trio of crows did in the opening of the very first episode of GoT.
Read into that what you will!
Tune in June 15 for the Season 4 finale.