David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are giving us deep cuts and hot, hot dragon action in “Game of Thrones” Season 7, Episode 4, “The Spoils of War.” Journeyman TV director Matt Shakman (“Mad Men,” “Fargo,” “You’re the Worst”) makes his ‘Thrones’ debut with this episode, and he leaves his mark. The first half is lovely and contemplative, often joyous, with Arya Stark returning to her home of Winterfell and reuniting with her siblings. The second half offers up a total surprise of a battle, as Daenerys is out for blood, toasting and roasting the Lannister army.
It’s the kind of battle that would have been reserved for an episode 9, if you will, but we don’t have 10 episodes this season, so Benioff and Weiss are letting it rip earlier, and though it’s a surprise, it was a welcome one. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Highgarden
We open on an important, establishing scene of Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) shepherding the loot from Highgarden. Though the castle stands empty at the moment, he still won’t gift it to Bronn (Jerome Flynn), instead tossing him a bag of coins and saying he’ll have his castle at the end of the war. Though Bronn side-eyes him and his “Lannisters always pay their debts” creed, he still follows orders and joins the Tarlies to strong arm the Tyrell farmers into handing over their harvest.
King’s Landing
Cersei’s (Lena Headey) taking yet another boring meeting with her Braavosi banker, it’s short, boring and serves to establish that Cersei might not be done with her borrowing just yet, as she’ll need to expand her armies and fleet soon. Perhaps a contact in Essos is in her future…
Winterfell
Let’s get to this juicy Stark stuff already! You know when the “previously on” throws it back to Season 1, we’re gonna have some puzzling out to do. Here, it’s about the provenance of a Valyrian steel dagger that was almost used to kill Bran (Isaac-Hempstead Wright) when he saw Jaime and Cersei doin’ it in the Winterfell guest room. Back in season 1, Catelyn wrestled away the dagger and gave it to Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen), who said he lost it to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), who presumably gave it to his brother, who gave it to the hired assassin to kill Bran.
Here, when Littlefinger presents the dagger to Bran as a gift, he says he doesn’t know who it belongs to, and that question is what started this whole war in the first place. Littlefinger is obviously ingratiating himself to Bran, for some reason, and Sansa later says he’d never give something without expecting something back. Psychic readings? Bran mutters “chaos is a ladder,” to Littlefinger, repeating his own words back to him.
Bran is still loopy as hell, and his aloof goodbye to Meera Reed (Ellie Kendrick) has her furious, especially considering all the loved ones (Never 4get Hodor) who died so he could live. And yet she realizes, “you died in that cave.” It’s not really Bran Stark, but the Three-Eyed Raven now.
On to happier things: Arya (Maisie Williams) is back at Winterfell!!!! When she approaches the gate, she has to give the slip to two bumbling guards who don’t believe her. Sansa (Sophie Turner) finds her in the crypt and the two embrace. It’s good to see the sisters Stark back together. They ask each other how they got back to and each just cops to, “it’s a long story,” and happily, Arya says “our stories are not over yet.” She also mentions her Kill List and Sansa’s like, okay baby serial killer.
They visit Bran at his tree and saying “I see quite a lot now,” he casually mentions he thought Arya would go to King’s Landing (he couldn’t like, mention that to Sansa?) to kill Cersei. And Sansa’s like, ok damn I really need to know who’s on this list now, and Arya’s all most of them are dead, ha. So Bran gives her the dagger instead. KILL LIST!
Later, Arya creeps her older sister out even more when she challenges Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) to a little sparring session (Aside: how has Pod not gotten ANY better at sword fighting after all this training?) With her trusty Needle and fancy footwork, Arya gleefully bests Brienne, at least twice her size. It’s… awesome. Pod has to be fully erect.