‘Game of Thrones’: 5 Things You May Have Missed From Season 7, Episode 6, “Beyond The Wall”

If you’re like me, you probably squealed out loud in pain when the Night’s King’s (conveniently placed) ice dagger tore through one of Daenerys’s beloved dragons. Then you asked yourself: Wait, which dragon was that?

Game of Thrones has always put the shine on Drogon. He’s big and black and the one Daenerys rides. So, I knew – as did you, fair reader — that it was not Drogon who got hit. But was it Rhaegal or Viserion? The books always made it very clear which was which, but show has often been murkier on the topic. Over at Vulture, they have an intense breakdown of how to tell the dragons apart using the subtleties in their scale coloring, but, friends, I discovered an easier way to confirm which dragon got the spear.

[Adopts Steve Brule voice]: Just put on the subtitles!

Yes, if you were watching Game of Thrones with the subtitles function turned on, you would have noticed the caption “[Viserion screaming].” You didn’t need to brighten the levels on your screen and compare and contrast nuances in scale color. You just needed to watch TV the way I do: like someone hard-of-hearing, or like someone who enjoys watching TV and reading at the same time.

But seriously, Viserion would have been the obvious choice to fall. In the books, it’s explained that Daenerys named her three dragons after the three most important men in her life: her dead husband, Khal Drogo, her dead brother, Rhaegar, and her other dead brother, Viserys. Of those three, Viserys was literally the worst. He manipulated Dany, abused her, and sold her to the Dothraki in an effort to buy their armies so he could conquer Westeros. After threatening Daenerys one too many times, Drogo crowned the greedy guy with molten gold. Perhaps the morale here is don’t name a dragon after the brother who betrayed you — because the dragon might be killed in battle and resurrected by the Night’s King to be used as a weapon against you.

(Oh, and it also makes sense they would keep Rhaegal alive to be the one that Jon — Rhaegar’s long-lost Targaryen heir — eventually rides. You know, we’re just assuming that Jon will ride a dragon, too, at some point.)

For a moment or two last night, it seemed like Jon Snow might really be facing his doom. After all, who could survive freezing cold temperatures and the entire Army of the Dead? Well, magical Jon Snow could — thanks to the “deus ex machina” appearance of his long-lost Uncle Benjen.

Jon’s obsession with his “cool uncle” Benjen started in the very first episode of Game of Thrones. After all, it was Benjen’s life as a bad-ass ranger at the Wall that inspired the brooding teen boy to leave Winterfell behind and to take the Black. Benjen disappeared on a mission early on in Season One, never to be seen again, until he emerged as a half-wight, half-human version of himself last season. He helped Bran and Meera make it to the Wall. On the show, Benjen takes up the role of the mythical Game of Thrones book character Coldhands (though it’s believed that Benjen is not the same character as Coldhands in the books).

Benjen was a hugely important character in Jon’s life, so it was a nice — if not awfully convenient (there’s that word again to describe this episode!) – move to have him be the one who saves him from the White Walkers. It also would have been nice for HBO to put Uncle Benjen in the “Previously On…” segment to rejigger some people’s memories, but maybe that would have spoiled the surprise? And yet, there was a time where it felt like almost every episode opened with a reminder that Benjen was lost beyond the Wall…it just didn’t happen last night.

So, Jon Snow just stumbled upon an easy way to kill the entire Army of the Dead in one blow: take out their leader.

During a melee between a group of wights and one White Walker last night, Jon managed to slay the White Walker in question with a stroke of his Valyrian steel sword, Longclaw. When that happened, almost all of the wights in the group were also vanquished, leading the team to come up with the theory that if you take out the White Walker who created a wight, that wight also is destroyed. Ser Beric implores Jon to break from their mission and try to take out the Night’s King — to end it once and for all. But Jon wants to stick the (INSANE and STUPID) plan of kidnapping a wight to bring to Cersei in King’s Landing.

Why is this new plot development irking fans on twitter? Because it feels like a plot development that’s come out of nowhere. Jon and Sam and other heroes on the show have faced off against the Army of the Dead — and they’ve managed to kill White Walkers — but we’ve never seen this trick where killing one White Walker takes out its particular “coven.” Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson likens this to vampire lore, where there’s a concept of “sires” (and she also lays out all the insane new revelations we somehow finally have about fighting the Army of the Dead).

Anyway, this new key bit of information certainly helps set up an inevitable showdown between Jon Snow and the Night’s King…and makes the war ahead seem a lot easier to win than we were led to believe.

This is a question I have, so bear with me.

During last night’s episode, Littlefinger did all he could to deepen the gulf between Sansa and Arya. He even pointed out to Sansa that Brienne could be used as an important line of defense between the warring sisters. As Brienne is honor-bound to both Stark girls, she would have to protect one from being harmed by the other. Sansa seems to reflect upon this and then sends Brienne away to be her proxy at the big “wight viewing party” Cersei, Dany, and Jon are organizing in King’s Landing. So…why?

I can think of two reasons. One is good for the Stark sisters and one is bad.

The first is that Sansa has gotten really good at seeing how Littlefinger plays his games and understands that he’s pitting Arya against her. Sending Brienne far away, where she can’t offer Sansa protection, is an act of faith in Arya’s favor. It’s her way of saying that she won’t let Littlefinger win and she trusts Arya not to betray her or the family.

The other reason? Well, maybe Sansa is plotting to hurt Arya herself. If Brienne isn’t around, no one is going to stop Sansa from doing harm to Arya. Except, you know, Arya herself. Which leads us to…

In his recap of last night’s episode, our own Vinnie Mancuso drops this line: “[W]e seem to have missed a step between the moment Arya defeated The Waif in season 5 and the instant she just straight-up became The Waif.” Oh, but did she?

See, there’s this fun theory I saw percolating last night — thanks to David Sims and Starlee Kine’s conversation on twitter — that Arya might not be Arya. She may be the Waif wearing Arya’s face:

It’s a juicy theory that makes a lot of Arya’s season seven moves make way more sense. Indeed, she’s been passing through this season with a hyper-coldness. There’s something almost sociopathic about her words and actions; It’s as if she’s almost forgotten how to be human.

It’s important to remember that we never saw what happened to end the fight between Arya and the Waif. A candle is snuffed out by the stroke of  a sword, and then it seems Arya has prevailed. But what if that that was the Waif? And she’s stolen Arya’s identity to go on her own Westeros killing spree? The Waif did quiz Arya on every single part of her life story. It’s not impossible, is it?

And yet…and yet…the Waif couldn’t fake that moment Arya has with Nymeria in Episode 2, “Stormborn.” Even if the Waif knew all about Arya’s relationship with the long-lost direwolf, she couldn’t fake the connection between the two. No, I think it is Arya Stark in Arya Stark’s body. She’s just become like the Waif in order to survive. The fact that she doesn’t kill Sansa when she stumbles upon the faces seems to also confirm that Arya is Arya. Because the Waif would have to end it right there to preserve the secret; Arya Stark can’t help but to stay loyal to House Stark.

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