Warning: If you have not seen the show, or read the books, and yet somehow are still reading this review, know that there will be spoilers.
From its very first frames, The Rains of Castamere announces itself as an event episode. As it starts, a moody cello blooms onto the soundtrack. The camera slides across tight close-ups of elaborately carved figurines arrayed on a map of Westeros- lions, wolves, a flayed man- and we know this will be an important hour for Game of Thrones.
Even casual fans of the show probably already know this. The Rains of Castemere is the ninth episode of the show’s third season. The ninth episode of the first season ended with the moral center of the show getting his head chopped off and the ninth episode of the second centered around the biggest action set piece the show, not to mention the books, has yet to give us. Readers of the books have even more reason to be nervous, but neophyte and expert alike are aware that shit is to go down. Game of Thrones is a show with a ton of moving parts. It follows a large number of characters separated by motive, allegiance, and vast amounts of physical space. Episodes can sometimes be so concerned with moving figurines across the map that they lack cohesion, but here the writers can tie up strings, pay off plots, and show us that what may have looked like meandering was in fact a pre-planned march to a specific point in TV space-time. We arrive at such a point here, and the careful build-up makes The Rains of Castemere the most memorable, effective episode the show has yet produced.
And the ending where many of our favorite characters are brutally murdered probably has something to do with this, too.
It’s pointless to talk about this episode for too long without mentioning that little incident- the Red Wedding is the point to which this season has been marching all along- but that it hits as hard as it does owes a lot to the episode that precedes it. The most obvious way the episode lets us know what’s coming is by spending so much time with Robb and company. Robb’s story has moved in fits and starts this season- Catelyn gave a few moving monologues here, Robb made some stupid tactical decisions there- mostly pacing from one spot to another within a holding pattern. But here, we spend the first fifth of the episode discussing Robb’s plan to storm Casterly Rock and getting reacquainted with Walder Frey, the grand Lord Asshole of the Twins. David Bradley plays Walder Frey as a lecherous, sniveling weasel of a man, but in his first scene, wherein he publicly drools over Robb’s wife Talisa like he’s hired her for his latest bachelor’s party, director David Nutter is content to let us think that Frey is merely a huge jackass rather than a huge jackass planning mass murder.
It’s still possible to believe that Frey is content just to shame Robb the second time the episode returns to the Twins, this time to witness the wedding between Edmure Tully and one of Frey’s prettier daughters. Frey gives Robb a nod as if to say ‘Look what you missed,’ killing good taste but keeping hope alive. Also converging on the Twins: Arya and the Hound, the most charming odd couple to hit Westeros since Jaime and Brienne. Like Robb, Arya’s story has felt stalled for some time. She hung out with Beric Dondarrian and his merry band of thieves for a while. That didn’t work out, and she’s spent the last couple of shows staring daggers at the Hound. But now she’s close to seeing her family again, something she hasn’t done since the first season, and the episode takes the time to highlight how much this means to her. Arya stares across the river to the castle where she will be reunited with her mother and brother, and the weight of her two-season journey is felt suddenly and fully.
Even when not dealing directly with the lead-up to the Red Wedding, The Rains of Castemere wisely focuses on the scattered Starks, giving it a sense of uniformity that would be diluted were the Lannisters or Stannis or Brienne to make an appearance. Jon Snow finally blows his cover when he and his wildling raiding party steal some horses from an old Northman. The man is a witness and has to die, and the ever-mistrustful Orell suggests Jon do the deed. That Jon is too damned honorable to kill for the sake of his mission is not shocking- he is Ned Stark’s son, after all- but Ygritte remaining by his side even as the wildlings turn on him is commendable and not completely expected. Rose Leslie has done a terrific job of breathing a lusty, full life into her character, and while I knew Jon was going to ditch her it was still hard to watch her watch him leave.
The episode continues the Stark-fest by having Jon’s wildling melee happen in sight of Bran and his companions, who are holed up in a nearby tower waiting out a rainstorm. The characters in Game of Thrones have become so wrapped up in their own plotlines that any meeting, or near-meeting, between them is default event television, even without the added bonus of learning that Bran can control Hodor and his direwolf with his mind, which it ends up he totally can. The episode also checks in with Sam and Gilly, who are approaching the wall from the north, and Deanerys, who conquers Yunkai by sending her lieutenants into the city to convince the slaves to rise in revolt against their masters. These scenes aren’t worthless- the sight of Jorah, Grey Worm, and Daario taking on fifty-some-odd Yunkish guards is particularly fun- but they feel lifted from a less momentous episode.
Because everything else in The Rains of Castemere is devoted to preparing us for the Red Wedding, which takes up the last fourth of the episode. The writers take their time setting the table- we’re given snippets of conversation between Robb and Talisa, Catelyn and Roose Bolton- before Edmure and his new wife are carried off to bed, the doors close, and the minstrels at the wedding feast start playing ‘The Rains of Castemere.’ Nutter makes excellent use of Michelle Fairley’s face here, giving us several slow, lingering shots of Catelyn’s expression as it dawns on her that something is very, very wrong. Of the characters collected here, she’s the one we’ve known the best and the longest, and we see the carnage mostly through her eyes.
The violence hits hard and fast. It begins with Talisa getting stabbed in her stomach, unquestionably the most brutal moment, and keeps the momentum going as Robb, then the Stark soldiers, and then Catelyn are hit with arrows or knifed at the throat and go down, one after the other after the other, while Walder Frey cackles. It’s a horrifying sequence made all the more effective because of the production’s total commitment. The very idea of killing off one’s core cast of good guys en masse is shocking, but the production team seems determined to raise the level of visceral brutality to levels not yet seen as if determined that this scene is one for which the series is remembered.
Indeed, the scene is so effective that it’s hard to imagine how the show is going to top it in the seasons to come. Game of Thrones is a show with a ton of moving parts, and it’s always adding more. In the first season, most characters were confined to two or three locations and concerned with different parts of the same plot threads. Now they’re zipping all over the map, going about their own business on errands of ever-increasing complexity that do not necessarily have any narrative connection to each other. The Red Wedding is a watershed moment for the series because it’s connective. It represents a clear journey’s end for several important characters and ties up threads for several more, like the Lannisters, who have doubtlessly been working toward this outcome for some time. The books following A Storm of Swords have their share of shocking moments, but they’re disparate, important for the characters involved but not so much for the fate of Westeros as a whole. They don’t tie the show together like the Red Wedding does, and that means the producers will have to rethink how they stage the their event episodes going forward.
But those producers have proved themselves competent enough for me to be excited about whatever they do in the future. Episodes like The Rains of Castemere don’t just provide great reasons to tune in on broadcast night- they give fans a reason to stick around for the long haul, to see what seeds planted here will sprout into their own event episodes two, three, four years down the line. When this series has wrapped, I imagine that the Red Wedding will indeed be one of the scenes for which it’s remembered, but the audacity of its existence makes me sure there will be plenty of others.
Also-s:
Even casual fans of the show probably already know this. The Rains of Castemere is the ninth episode of the show’s third season. The ninth episode of the first season ended with the moral center of the show getting his head chopped off and the ninth episode of the second centered around the biggest action set piece the show, not to mention the books, has yet to give us. Readers of the books have even more reason to be nervous, but neophyte and expert alike are aware that shit is to go down. Game of Thrones is a show with a ton of moving parts. It follows a large number of characters separated by motive, allegiance, and vast amounts of physical space. Episodes can sometimes be so concerned with moving figurines across the map that they lack cohesion, but here the writers can tie up strings, pay off plots, and show us that what may have looked like meandering was in fact a pre-planned march to a specific point in TV space-time. We arrive at such a point here, and the careful build-up makes The Rains of Castemere the most memorable, effective episode the show has yet produced.
And the ending where many of our favorite characters are brutally murdered probably has something to do with this, too.
It’s pointless to talk about this episode for too long without mentioning that little incident- the Red Wedding is the point to which this season has been marching all along- but that it hits as hard as it does owes a lot to the episode that precedes it. The most obvious way the episode lets us know what’s coming is by spending so much time with Robb and company. Robb’s story has moved in fits and starts this season- Catelyn gave a few moving monologues here, Robb made some stupid tactical decisions there- mostly pacing from one spot to another within a holding pattern. But here, we spend the first fifth of the episode discussing Robb’s plan to storm Casterly Rock and getting reacquainted with Walder Frey, the grand Lord Asshole of the Twins. David Bradley plays Walder Frey as a lecherous, sniveling weasel of a man, but in his first scene, wherein he publicly drools over Robb’s wife Talisa like he’s hired her for his latest bachelor’s party, director David Nutter is content to let us think that Frey is merely a huge jackass rather than a huge jackass planning mass murder.
It’s still possible to believe that Frey is content just to shame Robb the second time the episode returns to the Twins, this time to witness the wedding between Edmure Tully and one of Frey’s prettier daughters. Frey gives Robb a nod as if to say ‘Look what you missed,’ killing good taste but keeping hope alive. Also converging on the Twins: Arya and the Hound, the most charming odd couple to hit Westeros since Jaime and Brienne. Like Robb, Arya’s story has felt stalled for some time. She hung out with Beric Dondarrian and his merry band of thieves for a while. That didn’t work out, and she’s spent the last couple of shows staring daggers at the Hound. But now she’s close to seeing her family again, something she hasn’t done since the first season, and the episode takes the time to highlight how much this means to her. Arya stares across the river to the castle where she will be reunited with her mother and brother, and the weight of her two-season journey is felt suddenly and fully.
Even when not dealing directly with the lead-up to the Red Wedding, The Rains of Castemere wisely focuses on the scattered Starks, giving it a sense of uniformity that would be diluted were the Lannisters or Stannis or Brienne to make an appearance. Jon Snow finally blows his cover when he and his wildling raiding party steal some horses from an old Northman. The man is a witness and has to die, and the ever-mistrustful Orell suggests Jon do the deed. That Jon is too damned honorable to kill for the sake of his mission is not shocking- he is Ned Stark’s son, after all- but Ygritte remaining by his side even as the wildlings turn on him is commendable and not completely expected. Rose Leslie has done a terrific job of breathing a lusty, full life into her character, and while I knew Jon was going to ditch her it was still hard to watch her watch him leave.
The episode continues the Stark-fest by having Jon’s wildling melee happen in sight of Bran and his companions, who are holed up in a nearby tower waiting out a rainstorm. The characters in Game of Thrones have become so wrapped up in their own plotlines that any meeting, or near-meeting, between them is default event television, even without the added bonus of learning that Bran can control Hodor and his direwolf with his mind, which it ends up he totally can. The episode also checks in with Sam and Gilly, who are approaching the wall from the north, and Deanerys, who conquers Yunkai by sending her lieutenants into the city to convince the slaves to rise in revolt against their masters. These scenes aren’t worthless- the sight of Jorah, Grey Worm, and Daario taking on fifty-some-odd Yunkish guards is particularly fun- but they feel lifted from a less momentous episode.
Because everything else in The Rains of Castemere is devoted to preparing us for the Red Wedding, which takes up the last fourth of the episode. The writers take their time setting the table- we’re given snippets of conversation between Robb and Talisa, Catelyn and Roose Bolton- before Edmure and his new wife are carried off to bed, the doors close, and the minstrels at the wedding feast start playing ‘The Rains of Castemere.’ Nutter makes excellent use of Michelle Fairley’s face here, giving us several slow, lingering shots of Catelyn’s expression as it dawns on her that something is very, very wrong. Of the characters collected here, she’s the one we’ve known the best and the longest, and we see the carnage mostly through her eyes.
The violence hits hard and fast. It begins with Talisa getting stabbed in her stomach, unquestionably the most brutal moment, and keeps the momentum going as Robb, then the Stark soldiers, and then Catelyn are hit with arrows or knifed at the throat and go down, one after the other after the other, while Walder Frey cackles. It’s a horrifying sequence made all the more effective because of the production’s total commitment. The very idea of killing off one’s core cast of good guys en masse is shocking, but the production team seems determined to raise the level of visceral brutality to levels not yet seen as if determined that this scene is one for which the series is remembered.
Indeed, the scene is so effective that it’s hard to imagine how the show is going to top it in the seasons to come. Game of Thrones is a show with a ton of moving parts, and it’s always adding more. In the first season, most characters were confined to two or three locations and concerned with different parts of the same plot threads. Now they’re zipping all over the map, going about their own business on errands of ever-increasing complexity that do not necessarily have any narrative connection to each other. The Red Wedding is a watershed moment for the series because it’s connective. It represents a clear journey’s end for several important characters and ties up threads for several more, like the Lannisters, who have doubtlessly been working toward this outcome for some time. The books following A Storm of Swords have their share of shocking moments, but they’re disparate, important for the characters involved but not so much for the fate of Westeros as a whole. They don’t tie the show together like the Red Wedding does, and that means the producers will have to rethink how they stage the their event episodes going forward.
But those producers have proved themselves competent enough for me to be excited about whatever they do in the future. Episodes like The Rains of Castemere don’t just provide great reasons to tune in on broadcast night- they give fans a reason to stick around for the long haul, to see what seeds planted here will sprout into their own event episodes two, three, four years down the line. When this series has wrapped, I imagine that the Red Wedding will indeed be one of the scenes for which it’s remembered, but the audacity of its existence makes me sure there will be plenty of others.
Also-s:
- After the Hound brings up Ned’s death, Arya looks him dead the eye and vows to someday put a sword through said eye and out of the back his skull. I probably shouldn’t be afraid of a fifteen-year-old, but Maisie Williams is just that good.
- Bran, now convinced by his newfound powers that he must go north of the wall to find the three-eyed raven, bids goodbye to Osha, who ain’t about to go back to the stank-hole, and Rickon, who, we are reminded, exists.
- Jorah comes back from his battle with the Yunkish guards battered and bloody and bearing good news, but all Deanerys can do is ask after Daario Naharis. If Jorah’s face were a wall, that’s the moment it cracks from the inside-out and crashes into a pile of rubble.
A
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