The Five Most Baffling Moments From Last Night’s Game of Thrones
Wow – who saw that coming, right?? Game of Thrones continues to heat up (despite winter being here) with some epic fights and great character beats, but we were more than a little confused by some of the scenes we witnessed in the third episode of the final season. Below we’ve tried to break down the five weirdest bits, and what they might mean going forward.
(Apologies for this not being faster – I was at my kid’s cello recital when this episode aired, and had to set my VCR to record so I could watch it later).
1. The Opening Theme Was Different
Game of Thrones is known for changing its opening in each episode to show which locations the episode will take place in, but this is by far the biggest change we’ve seen. As the camera whooshed over the Godswood model, there was a hard jump to a family japing around their home, set to a new, weirdly comical theme song. This is, as far as I could tell from the rest of the episode, ‘House Taylor’ – a small but close-knit family led by a construction worker and entertainer. To introduce them this late – and within the body of the opening credits – is very unusual, and shows that the showrunners aren’t afraid to carve out their own space within George R. R. Martin’s sweeping epic
2. Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor Dominates
After a staticky cut back to Winterfell, we were more than ready to see how the assembled forces would deal with the threat posed by the White Walkers. But instead, the image of our heroes crackled away just before the battle could begin and the production team chose to focus on the distant dilemmas of Lord Taylor, who, in this episode, needs to explain to his wife that he accidentally dropped her wedding ring down the sink. It was unexpected, but honestly, we were on the edge of our seats – how will Game of Thrones resolve this plot line with just four more episodes left to go?
3. Who is Wilson?
As the episode carried on, we found ourselves less focused on the stakes of the battle for the north and more concerned with Wilson, the mysterious figure who would not – or perhaps could not – move from behind Tim’s fence for the entire episode. What secrets is he hiding? Could he be another one of Robert’s bastards, perhaps? Or a Lannister sleeper agent? A familiar of Melisandre? Could the Three-Eyed Raven perhaps tell us more? The only thing we know for sure is that we’re hooked!
4. The Intro Played Again
About half an hour into the battle, there was a hard jump back into the new intro. Honestly, even as a stylistic choice, this one baffled us – especially as, right afterwards, Tim seemed to be involved in a new mission of some kind, this time feuding with Al, his underling in his performance troupe, who attempted to offer his wise counsel against the excessive deployment of the mysterious “Binford 9000”. We’re going to be all over Reddit today trying to figure out what it all means.
5. What Is Tim Building?
Here’s our theory: Lord Taylor is planning on marching on King’s Landing soon, his sons in tow. True to his epithet as ‘The Man Of Many Tools’, he’s building siege weaponry, and he’s aiming himself right at the Iron Throne. But Tim spent so much of the episode explaining how to sand down table legs and outlining the domestic uses for a bandsaw (curiously, not a single hand was cut off) that we can’t help but wonder if there’s enough time left to resolve this plotline. Is this a character from the books, perhaps
It’s a shame that we only caught blurred glimpses of the battle for Winterfell in-between all of this, and I suspect that my VCR cut out the last few minutes, but one thing’s for sure – we’re so keen to see next week’s episode that we’ve already rewound the tape.
Share your (non-spoilery!) thoughts about this week’s Game of Thrones in the comments below!
