‘Game of Thrones’ Recap Season 7, Episode 4: Through the Fire and Flames

“Men shit themselves when they die” is a lesson that Bronn learned at just five-years-old, but it’s also one David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were clearly taught in Fancy Lad school. When those dudes decide to put on a battle, they put on a goddamn capital-B Battle; not a delightful night of swords and sorcery at Medieval Times, but a soil-your-britches scream-fest covered in mud, blood, and the guy to your left’s entrails. War in Westeros is gross. It is unpleasant. Men shit themselves. Think back to the overwhelming dread of “Hardhome,” or the violent futility of “Blackwater.” But Game of Thrones has never been interested in your comfort level; if anything, it’s here to consistently top itself. The next step up that particular chaos ladder lands us in last night’s “The Spoils of War,” capped off by the most chaotic, explosive, stress-sweat-inducing sequence in the series’ entire run, a balls-to-the-wall combination of dragon-fire, equestrian theatrics, and straight-up gallantry so hardcore it made “Watchers on the Wall” look like an episode of Ballers. Clearly, in its shortened seventh season, Game of Thrones has transformed from a meditative subversion of political chess-playing into a weekly Sunday night IV drip of adrenaline.

Here’s the thing; a horde of Dothraki infantrymen balancing on horseback to pepper the Lannister army with arrows was, like, the fifteenth most impressive part of that finale just from a technical standpoint. The mark of a truly memorable Game of Thrones scene lies in the afterglow, when the excitement wears off and you try to decipher how all that was even possible to pull off in the first place. I’m still roughly 95-percent sure HBO paid a few dozen extras to just kill each other for real to film “Battle of the Bastards.” With “The Spoils of War,” I’m left wondering which Screen Actor’s Guild loophole allowed director Matt Shakman to set 50 stuntmen on fire at the same time.

But the whole affair—which I desperately hope eventually gets christened something less lame than “The Loot Train Attack”—wouldn’t have worked so well if every single person involved wasn’t selling this fiasco as the most terrifying experience imaginable. It’s jarring to hear Bronn, usually all quips and confidence, screaming “get in line” with a quiver in his voice. It’s heartbreaking to see all conviction drain from Jaime’s face—Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Scooby Doo ruh-roh gulp was almost comical—as Drogon swoops down from the clouds, a mythical monster from a children’s story come to life. Hell, special shout out to the random Lannister soldier who was physically shaking at the sight of the approaching Dothraki.

That sense of fear is so well done that by the time the two sides collide, when the Dothraki start Spider-Man leaping into the Lannister lines and Daenerys turns half her opponents into unnamed Sandor Cleganes that the chaos practically becomes palpable; it creeps out of the on-screen mayhem into those watching at home. We realize how easy it is for any of these characters to die, a few seconds before we decide we don’t want any of them to go. We root for Bronn to escape from the world’s most persistent Dothraki, but at the same time we don’t want the bolt from Qyburn’s dragon-killer to come within a mile of Dany or Drogon. I even wanted Dickon Tarly to survive, and he’s, you know, Dickon Tarly. The audience turns into Tyrion Lannister—standing absurdly, dangerously close to a dragon slaughter—throwing allegiances to the side and willing Jaime to turn his golden-hand-having ass back to King’s Landing posthaste.

Underneath the death and destruction there’s quite a lot of familial symmetry going on here. As the Song of Ice and Fire history buffs out there know, Dany’s air raid is nearly identical to the infamous “Field of Fire,” in which her distant relative Aegon The Conqueror rode his dragon Balerion—along with his sisters, also both aboard a fire-breathing monster—to turn the combined forces of King Mern IX of The Reach and King Loren Lannister into a smoldering heap of ashes and piss-stained leather jerkins.

But the real echo of the episode belongs to those Lannister brothers, Jaime and Tyrion; more specifically, the final image of Jaime sinking, armor-clad, to the bottom of a lake. The Kingslayer throwing common sense to the smoky wind and charging a grown-ass dragon is arguably the most stirring moment in the show’s history, for sure. But if that final shot is the one that feels familiar, it’s because it is almost the twin of a short-lived cliffhanger from season 5’s “Kill the Boy” that saw Tyrion headed to the bottom of Valyria’s greyscale-infested waters. Obviously, Tyrion survived.

But can we say the same for his brother? Personally, when it comes to TV deaths I’m a subscriber to the Three B’s: Unless I see a body Burned, Buried, or Blasted Into Outer Space, nothing is confirmed. And even then, I seem to recall all the nations of the world mourning Jon Snow for an entire summer before Melisandre resurrected him via magical bikini wax after two episodes. But if this was, truly, the last time we saw Jaime Lannister alive? What a beautifully poetic swan-song it would be, to have him charge down the Mother of Dragons and her most nuclear son because nothing, nothing gets Jaime Lannister’s blood boiling like a Targaryen trying to “burn them all.”

It’s almost a shame that the most incendiary set-piece in Game of Thrones history came at the tail-end of an episode so jam-packed with wonderful, understated moments. The long-awaited reunion between Sansa and Arya Stark was as subtly warm as could be, with Benioff and Weiss mostly using silence as a substitute for the years of truly awful nonsense that’s happened to both these women that don’t need to be explained out loud. Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, too, let their expressions do the heavy lifting; the smiles are grim but genuine, the shit they’ve seen written plain behind their eyes. Turner especially deserves praise for the look of sheer, barely suppressed exasperation that comes with explaining that Bran is basically a human version of Netflix’s The OA now.

If anything, the three Stark siblings in Winterfell are a visual testament to how far this show has come; they are all such vibrantly different characters than they were when we met them. Sansa grew from a clueless princess wannabe with dreams of embroidery dancing in her dreams into a measured, calculated leader. Bran used to climb fortress walls like a jungle gym to the protests of a protective mother, and now he’s an all-knowing, wheelchair-bound time-traveller.

And Arya? She is actually the most interesting case because more so than her siblings does Arya look outwardly unchanged. But then she strolls into Winterfell’s courtyard with a re-gifted Valyrian steel dagger on her hip and gracefully takes on Brienne of Tarth with the fluidity of Syrio Forel and ingenuity of Jaqen H’Ghar. It’s a wonderful scene—as well-choreographed as it is a study in character work—that also might hint to the future of this show. When the fight is on, the men of Westeros shit themselves. But the women? They smile.

Vinnie Mancuso writes about TV for a living, somehow, for Decider, The A.V. Club, Collider, and the Observer. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.

Watch Game Of Thrones: "The Spoils of War" on HBO Go