Oliver Davis reviews the seventh episode of Game of Thrones Season Four….
Mockingbird.
Directed by Alik Sakharov.
Written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.
Arya
There are many odd couple pairings in Game of Thrones – Bronn and Jaime, Pod and Brienne, Stannis and Davos – but the most endearing by far is Arya (Maisie Willaims) and Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane (Rory McCann), more popularly known by Westerosi gossip magazines as ‘Sandya.’
In episode seven, their relationship thaws even further. After an attack, Arya treats her captor’s wounded neck – an area symbolic of comfort. Just a few weeks prior, Arya had been considering killing Sandor in his sleep. Now, within easy murder distance, the thought never crosses her mind. There is an echo in here of the shaving scene between Theon/Reek’s (Alfie Allen) and Ramsey Snow (Iwan Rheon), though this is much, much less sinister.
Just before the attack, Arya and Sandor were discussing the notion of death with a dying man. They found him sitting outside his burnt-down barn, a gaping stab wound in his gut. “Not a nice way to go,” the Hound observes. “Better than dying,” the man reflects.
What follows is a poignant dialogue about the man’s passing, how ‘nothing’ might in fact be worse than this. Arya corrects him with harrowing confidence: “Nothing isn’t any worse or better than anything; it’s just nothing.” Moments, flashes like this remind you how wise, cynical and old the little Stark girl has become. Shortly after, she stabs an attacker in the heart. “You’re learning,” Sandor mumbles, the closest to praise she’ll ever get from The Hound’s gruff tones.
A strong scene on its own merit, but when considered in the overall episode, the themes and words adumbrate and foreshadow another of the installment’s storylines; a fantastic, sleight of hand narrative trick.
Tyrion
The Imp (Peter Dinklage) is a man trapped, constantly framed behind his cell doors. Throughout the episode he is visited by friends/potential champions after having decided his fate at the end of last week’s ‘The Laws of Gods and Men.’ His brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) can barely defeat a stable boy since his right hand was hacked off; his befriended sellsword Bronn (Jerome Flynn) was bought out, and doesn’t fancy his chances against Gregor ‘The Mountain’ Clegane (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, runner-up in 2014’s World’s Strongest Man) anyway. The latter’s scene is particularly heartbreaking, if only for both men’s struggles against sentimentality. The extra clasp of their parting handshake is the closest physical contact between them.
Tyrion coming to terms with his fate as his champions fail him is choking. A scene showcasing The Mountain’s strength, as he barechestedly impales a man on the end of his sword, makes the task seem all the more insurmountable. The dying man by his torched barn might as well have been Tyrion thinking out loud. Might ‘nothing’ be better than this?
These narrative reveals work best in threes, and ‘Mockingbird’ is no exception. After Tyrion’s first and second choices make their excuses, he is visited in his prison by Prince Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) at night. He despises The Mountain, the beast who had killed and raped his sister – he will be Tyrion’s champion.
There’s another man who hates The Mountain as much as Oberyn – his brother, The Hound. In his scenes with Arya, Sandor painfully reveals how he got his scars, how his brother burnt his face on hot coals for borrowing a toy. The two characters – Oberyn and Sandor – reflect each other, just as the themes of death, dying and ‘nothing’ echo between their two threads. The writing and plotting really are tremendous.
Sansa
The episode’s big cliffhanger, another corker after last week’s ‘Trial By Combat’ conclusion, is Little Finger’s (Aidan Gillen) murder of his wife, Lysa Arryn (Katie Dickie). He pushed her out of the Vale’s Moon Door after she threatened to kill Sansa (Sophie Turner). As she did, Lysa screamed at Sansa to keep her eyes open and look, look at the endless drop’s ‘nothing.’
The choice between ‘this’ and ‘nothing’ is a constant torment for the characters in Game of Thrones. They are so close to the latter, yet cling to the burning aim that defines them. Duty, revenge, love, greed – constantly driving them forward while simultaneously keeping them so, so close to their own Moon Door. It’s a bold claim considering the brilliance of Season One, but Four might be the best yet.
Oliver Davis is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors. You can follow him on Twitter (@OliDavis).
Originally published May 20, 2014. Updated November 28, 2022.
