‘Game of Thrones’: 5 Things You May Have Missed From Season 7, Episode 5, “Eastwatch”

Gilly may have discovered the truth about Jon Snow, Rhaegar Targaryen, and who really deserves to sit on the Iron Throne…but Sam was too pissed off about how the maesters had treated him that he shut her down and didn’t listen.

If you recall, last night’s episode featured a tense fireside chat between the two love birds wherein Gilly was excitedly quizzing Sam on all the minute details High Septon Maynard recorded in his lifetime. By the time she rolled around to Prince “Ragger’s” instant annulment and then secret marriage to another in Dorne, Sam had checked out. He snapped at the Wilding gal about how he was wasting his time at the Citadel — and he did so in precisely the moment that she might have found a whopper of a detail: Prince Rhaegar legally annulled his first wife, Elia Martell, so he could legally marry Lyanna Stark.

This is huge for a number of reasons. Namely, book fans have assumed for awhile that Jon was either a lovechild born out of wedlock, or Rhaegar invoked the Targaryen’s old bigamist ways to marry both Elia and Lyanna at the same time. Gilly’s close reading suggests that Rhaegar straight up divorced Elia so that only his marriage to Lyanna was legal.

That means that Jon Snow is NOT a bastard.

He is the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen.

It also means that he comes in line before his aunt, Daenerys Targaryen, to sit on the Iron Throne.

You know, it’s a detail that could come in handy if Jon desperately needs to rally all the armies of the Seven Kingdoms to the cause of fighting the White Walkers. See that, Sam? The maesters weren’t giving you pointless grunt work after all.

Arya has returned to Winterfell on a bit of a confidence high. She successfully survived training at the House of Black and White. She managed to single-handedly defeat all of House Frey (and she proved she could meet Brienne of Tarth in single combat). It’s enough to make a girl think she’s invincible…but she’s not.

Arya was always going to question Sansa’s motives as a leader. After all, she’s not seen how the coy princess of a girl transformed into a keen power player over the course of years and years of abuse. She also has never really grasped the finer points of politics — something that Sansa tries to point out. So when she thinks she’s being crafty about spying on Littlefinger, she’s actually falling straight into the snake’s trap.

Littlefinger knows that all power he has over Sansa will slip away if she strengthens her ties to Bran and Arya. So to drive a wedge between the women, he leaves a trail of proverbial bread crumbs to a piece of paper that could ruin Sansa and Arya’s relationship forever: the letter of fealty young Sansa was forced to sign to House Lannister around the time of Ned Stark’s beheading in the capital:

Robb, I write to you with a heavy heart. Our good king Robert is dead, killed from wounds he took in a boar hunt. Father has been charged with treason. He conspired with Robert’s brothers against my beloved Joffrey and tried to steal his throne. The Lannisters are treating me very well and provide me with every comfort. I beg you: come to King’s Landing, swear fealty to King Joffrey and prevent any strife between the great houses of Lannister and Stark.

Your faithful sister, Sansa.

It shows Sansa in a bad light on paper — siding with the Lannisters over the Starks — but back in Season One, even Robb and Catelyn could tell the tween girl was forced to write it out at Cersei’s behest. Arya, who has been wandering Westeros and Braavos on the fringe all these years, won’t grasp the subtleties of an “oath” like this, and will likely now turn against Sansa…placing the elder Stark in Littlefinger’s path once more.

Again, Arya thinks she has the upper hand, but that’s because she doesn’t know Littlefinger.

When Lannister guards catch Ser Davos and Gendry tryng to sneak out of King’s Landing, the Onion Knight comes up with a clever excuse for why they’re skipping the docks: they’re smuggling fermented crab. Ser Davos explains that just a bit of the stuff triples a brothel’s earnings in a week because a taste of the stuff works like our American viagra.

So…does it?

Well, fermented crab is a delicacy in Thai cuisine, but there’s nothing to suggest that fermenting the shellfish does anything to increase the libido. If anything, it just brings out the flavors of the fish more. However, shellfish like crab contain an awful lot of zinc and zinc is the mineral that is found in most aphrodisiacs (like oysters and chocolate). It’s the scientific thing that boosts our sense of sexual desire.

So, sure, snacking on shellfish could help keep a guy in the mood, but unless there’s something magical in that fermenting liquid, it’s not going to give anyone an instant erection.

When Gendry shrugs off carrying a sword and reaches for a warhammer, you should have gotten a bit of a nerd tingle in your, uh, nerd regions.

Gendry, as you know, is the last living bastard son of Robert Baratheon. Before he was king, Robert had to wage war against House Targaryen. His weapon of choice? Yup, the warhammer. While years and years of being a blacksmith might have left Gendry feeling better suited to swinging a hammer than a sword, the weapon directly connects him to the father he never knew.

Robert’s warhammer holds another significance, of course. It was the weapon that finally took down Rhaegar Targaryen at the Battle of the Trident.

So, if you’re following, Gendry’s real dad murdered Jon Snow’s real dad with a big giant hammer, and now Gendry’s going to stand by Jon Snow’s side in a battle against the White Walkers with a big ‘ole hammer of his own. Of course, there’s another, way more fun, ancestral connection between the two young men…

So, I realize that there are two obvious parallels people will pick up on when they rewatch Jon and Gendry’s meeting in the Dragonstone caves. The first is the parallel the guys themselves point out. Jon’s “father” Ned Stark was best friends with Gendry’s father and now these two bastard sons are keeping the family tradition alive by fighting alongside each other for a common good.

Then there’s the layer I pointed to above: Gendry’s father actually killed Jon Snow’s real father. Woof. 

Then there’s a third layer that I find really juicy. We’ve been talking a lot about Aegon the Conqueror this season. Basically, how he landed on Dragonstone with his sisters and then conquered the Seven Kingdoms with the help of his three dragons. What’s often cut from these stories is the fact that Aegon and his sisters (and their dragons) weren’t completely alone in the fight. They had their bastard brother, Orys Baratheon. Yeah, House Baratheon is actually a bastard Targaryen house. Their ancestral home of Storm’s End was given to Orys as a thanks for helping out in the conquest. Orys was also Aegon’s best friend and was a fierce warrior (and kind of nice guy? It’s tough to tell how “nice” people were in the annals of Westerosi history, but Orys comes across as a chivalrous guy).

So now, we have Orys and Aegon’s own direct descendants — Orys’s a king’s bastard, and Aegon’s a true Targaryen — standing together on Dragonstone, planning to join forces against a common foe. Except this time, neither young man wants to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. They both want to save it.

Oh, and if you’re looking for another fun twist: Orys Baratheon’s son’s name was…drumroll please…Davos. (No! Not that Davos. It’s just an added layer of symmetry that Ser Davos’s name dates back to the first Baratheon heir and he’s taken Gendry, the last Baratheon heir, under his wing.)

Where to Stream Game of Thrones