We’re talking about the events in tonight’s “The Mountain and the Viper†episode of Game of Thrones. If you haven’t seen what happens yet, come back later. We’ll still be here.
It has been 364 days since a Game of Thrones episode ended without music playing over its closing credits sequence. The last time silence accompanied the scroll of names? On June 2, 2013, seconds after Catelyn Stark’s neck gets sliced open by Roose Bolton during the Red Wedding bloodbath. While tonight’s brutal incident can’t touch “The Rains of Castamere†in terms of flat-out shock value, its similar muted finish offers a nice book-end to a banner year for Game of Thrones viewers and also served to preserve the gruesome sound Oberyn’s head made when Gregor Clegane, a.k.a. the Mountain, broke it open like a ripe watermelon.
We’ll have our recap of the episode ready for you in the morning, but here are eight things the episode offered up that we can all ponder as we drift off to sleep, perchance to dream of balloons being popped:
1. At last, Sansa Stark seems to have learned how to play the game of thrones. But is she playing Petyr Baelish?
2. The Gray Worm and Missandei storyline: Why?
3. Pity the Ironborn chump who handed over Moat Cailin, his portly body stuck on a spike and flayed open. That was some of Ramsey Snow’s Bolton’s finest work.
4. Arya’s laughter at learning that another one of her family members had bitten the dust was priceless.
5. Oh, that Gilly!
6. They’re giving Tyrion all the monologues this season.
7. Was Daenerys’s reaction to Jorah’s onetime betrayal a bit too much? That was many moons ago!
8. I wonder if they offered the part of Oberyn Martell to Mandy Patinkin first? Come to think of it, in a light-hearted take on Game of Thrones that someone needs to greenlight, Wallace Shawn would play Tyrion, Robin Wright would take on the Claire Underwood–esque Cersei, Andre the Giant could play both the Hound and the Mountain, and Cary Elwes would make for a decent Jaime Lannister. Inconceivable, you say? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.