Danearys returns this week and she gets to do something besides wander through the Red Wastes. However, that means no Jon, Bran, or Theon. Overall it wasn't as strong as last week, but better than the second episode. This week certainly had a crazy ending, though.
Also making a return this week is Robb, in a nice little scene akin to Martin's prologues for the books where it's some characters we've never met before that end up dying. They skip over the actual battle, but most people realize the budgetary restraints that cause that. If they stick to the book, there's a much bigger and amazing battle near the end that I imagine they are saving as much money as possible for. Important to the Robb story is the aftermath where he helps a fallen Lannister soldier and meets what I'm sure everyone can figure out is a love interest. It's a nice exchange that reminds us that the people that are being hurt the worse by this war are the ones who don't really care about the outcome, they just want to live their lives. We also get our first introduction to Roose Bolton and he comes off as creepy as you would expect in his short screen time wanting to flay the Lannister prisoners.
We move on to King's Landing where Joffrey is taking out his frustrations with Robb's victories on Sansa. Tyrion gets another moment to shine in a long list of shining moments so far. His take down of Ser Meryn is just pure Tyrion awesomeness. There's also that nice beat at the end where he realizes how strong Sansa really is to able to deal with all of this. It turns out that Bronn's plan help Joffrey by sending whores to him is a horrible, horrible idea. Hats off to Jack Gleeson to play such a vile person so well. That bedroom scene was very hard to watch, but solidifies exactly why we hate Joffrey so much. I was only disappointing that we didn't get to see Tyrion's reaction to what happened. Instead we get another Tyrion greatness moment where he manipulates Ser Lancel to be his spy in Cersei's bedroom, so I suppose I can't really complain.
Arya arrives at Harrenhal and what a great set piece that was. It truly captured the ugliness and haunting air that I read in the books. I hope at some point someone in the series explains the backstory for why it looks like it does because it's a cool story. We kind of enter a mini horror movie at Harrenhal with the Mountain randomly picking people to be tortured to death by the Tickler. The real horror is the nonchalant way the Tickler goes about the torture. He asks about the Bortherhood, but doesn't really seem to care about the answers. Even when someone actually does give him answers, he still lets the torture continue until death. The welcome return of Tywin to the series puts an end to that. It was great the way he came swooping in and immediately recognized that Arya was a girl. He may not be a good person, but her certainly is a smart one. We see that Arya has taken Yoren's final tale to heart and has started reciting the names of people that have done her wrong as her own little prayer before bed.
Dany finally finds a respite for her wanderings in the city of Qarth (it was great to finally see somewhere else in Essos besides Vaes Dothrak in the opening credits), but the Qartheen do not open their gates to just anyone. Dany shrewdly realizes that she also can't just show them the dragons because that is the only thing they really want and it would be easy for them to take them with force. When she says that she will lay waste to them if they don't let her in, you believe it, though, no matter how impossible it may sound. Luckily, Xara Xhoan Daxos comes to the rescue at the end. While it mirrors the book, the pacing of Dany's story so far has not been very conducive to the TV format. Wandering in the Red Wastes for a long time may make Qarth seem like the oasis that it is, but her story was the climax of last season and we are only now seeing any movement in it? Not great TV, but hopefully now her story will move faster.
Unfortunately the scenes in the Stormlands did not fair as well as the rest of the episode. Littlefinger being in that camp is not really adding anything. All he gets to do is make insinuations about Renly's sexuality, but we already saw in the beginning that two unknown Lannister soldiers know all about Renly and Loras. He also gets to harass Catelyn, but at least that was worth it to see her reaction to getting back Ned's bones. The scene where we finally get to see the two Baratheon brothers face to face was also kind of a letdown. I felt like there should have been more urgency to the scene, and maybe some more gravitas. Were not even sure why Stannis is willing to treat with Renly at all, I suppose to get him to stop playing king so Stannis can get his bannermen. At least it leads to the creepy final scene. The words on the page do not equal the horror of actually seeing that shadow thing crawling out of Melisandre. A nice capper to the episode.
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