This episode was definitely slower then the other episodes, but we saw some really good development of characters, relationships, and events as things are set up for episode 9, which has, historically, been the episode that packs the most punch whether it be a brutal death or a major battle.  Here are our top moments of Game of Thrones episode 6×8 called No One.

Arya

Probably one of the most entertaining moments of the episode was Arya’s arc.  Last episode we watched in horror as the Waif stabbed Arya in the stomach several times, but Arya manages to escape her.  She ends up stumbling down a street wounded and fading.

This episode we find out that Arya makes her way back to Lady Crane (which we predicted in an earlier recap) and Lady Crane patches her up and hides her.  We see a very touching moment where we get a little bit more of Lady Crane’s past and how Arya respects her more.  Lady Crane reminded us of Lady Catelyn as she takes care of Arya (and even looks like her a bit) which makes Arya’s interaction with her even more interesting and heart felt.

Unfortunately, this relationship does not last as the Waif ferrets out where Arya is and brutally kills Lady Crane.  This starts a fierce and intense chase scene through the city where a newly healed Arya flees for her life.  In one part she jumps and tumbles down a long staircase and opens up her wounds. Arya manages to escape the Waif and lead her nemesis to the dark room she had been hiding in with her sword Needle.

Wounded, things look dire when the Waif corners her in the room and Arya faces her on her feet with needle.  She slices off the top of the single candle in the room plunging it into darkness.  The next scene takes place in the House of Black and White.  Jaqen H’Ghar notices a trail of blood and follows it to the inner room where they keep the faces of the deceased.  He looks up and sees the Waif’s head on display with her eyes gouged out.  Arya confronts Jaqen with a sword to his chest as he tells her that she has finally become “No One”.  She tells him that she is not “no one”, but Arya Stark of Westeros and she wants to go home.  He allows her to leave the House of Black and White and we will finally see Arya back where she belongs.

What was so good about this part was the suspense and intensity as we watched Arya buoy between life and death.  The flight scene and encounter with the Waif was so well done and dynamic as one couldn’t help but have their eyes glued to the screen. It was looking really bad for the wounded Arya, but, as many people have stated, Starks are hard to kill and Arya has definitely lived up to this standard.

We also love that Arya has finally reclaimed her name which means that she has accepted her past and wants to move forward.  We think that the time that Arya spent in the House of Black and White was critical as it not only honed her assassin skills, but it gave her time to heal mentally and emotionally from all the horror she witnessed in Westeros.  Arya is no longer focused solely on vengeance, but can face what is coming next with a more rational mind, and that is going to make her doubly dangerous.  Enemies of the Starks better watch their back because Arya is coming, and they may not even know she’s there until there is a sword in them.  What we really want to see is a reunion with Arya and her direwolf Nymeria, who has not been confirmed dead yet.

Cersei and King’s Landing

Last we saw in King’s Landing, the High Sparrow made a move that gave him more power and influence over the king, and in this episode we truly get to see this puppet master at work.  In previous episodes, Cersei has been confined to the Red Keep, and even the High Sparrow has not been able to get at her after her walk of shame.  We all know that Cersei’s trial is coming, but she is confident that all will go well as she expects a trial by combat and she has the zombie Mountain at her side.

In this episode we truly get to see the strength of the Mountain in action when the High Sparrow, now known as the High Septon, sends his cronies, Lancel included, to bring Cersei to his chambers.  When asked why he won’t visit Cersei in the Red Keep, they basically reply that he doesn’t have to and that he ordered them to bring her to him even if  by force.

Now these scrawny sycophants really think they will have no problem bringing a helpless woman to the High Sparrow.  Lancel even warns Cersei that they will use violence to drag her from the Red Keep.  Here is where we really start to like Cersei: she does not put up with this crap and says that she “chooses violence”.

The scrawny cronies actually try and go after her even after the zombie Mountain steps in between her and them.  The Mountain kills one of the High Sparrow’s men by literally ripping his head off with his bare hands, and the rest of the group wisely back off and leave.  One point for Cersei and the Mountain.

Cersei is later summoned to the throne room where a royal decree is to be issued and is incensed that she was not made aware that her son was going to make such a decree.  To add to this insult, her own uncle, Kevan, will not allow her to stand by her son’s side, but wait like every other person in the gallery.  This seems coldhearted, but we soon learn why.

Tommen makes an announcement of the date to when his mother and Loras Tyrell’s trial will be held.  He then adds a new decree and rule: from that day forward no trial by combat will be allowed.  Cersei is both shocked and hurt by her son’s betrayal (who, by the way, could not even look at his mother after the announcement).  Unfortunately, that was ten points for the High Sparrow whom we are really starting to hate.  It says something that one feels more sympathy for Cersei than the High Sparrow.  It seems Cersei is going to be in dicey waters come the next few episodes.  Her part in the episode ends though with some hope for her as she is pulled aside by Qyburn and tells her that there is new information he gathered from his little birds in concerns with a rumor they had heard of.  Will this help Cersei?  We will have to see in the next few episodes.

Jaime Lannister, Edmure Tully and Riverrun

Brienne of Tarth and Podrick finally make it to Riverrun to find it under siege.  She see’s Lannister colors and Jaime Lannister, and, after being surrounded by Lannister men, she requests to see him. They bring her to him where she gets the general scoop of what is going on with the siege: it is still at a standstill.  She requests that Jaime allow her to cross the siege lines and talk with the Blackfish.  Her goal is to get the Blackfish to give up the castle and take his army north to fight for Sansa.  This will meet both Brienne and Jaime’s goal, and which he agrees to allow her to try. He does warn her that the Blackfish is stubborn and won’t agree to her terms.  And she reminds him that what he is doing is not just.  Riverrun is Brendan Tully and Edmure Tully’s home, and forcing them to give it up to conquerors after practically slaughtering their family is not just.

Brienne takes this chance and gets into Riverrun where she meets with the Blackfish, and, as Jaime warned her of, he was not moved to leave Riverrun and give it up to the Freys and the Lannisters, even if it meant helping Sansa.  Disheartened, Brienne orders Podrick to send a raven to Sansa telling her she failed.

Meanwhile back at camp, Jaime visits the disheveled Edmure Tully.  He offers him a bath, clothes, a comfortable place, and a chance to see his wife and newly born son.  All Edmure has to do is go into to Riverrun and order his men to surrender the castle.  Edmure is dismissive of Jaime even after Jaime guarantees Edmure’s mens safety, but then we see the dark side of Jaime. Jaime explains his real motivation for wanting the siege to be ended quickly which is that he loves Cersei and wants to get back to her.  The only way he can do that is to take back Riverrun, and he threatens that he will do whatever it takes to do this even if it means killing Edmure’s child and every last Tully out there.  Once again we see the old Jaime resurface and in our opinion Cersei is toxic for Jaime.  When he is with Brienne the good in Jaime comes to the surface.

Edmure, knowing that Jaime (unlike the Freys) will follow through with his threat, agrees to his terms.  Edmure is allowed to walk up to the gate of Riverrun where he orders his men to stand down and open the gate.  The Blackfish orders them not to open the gate, but the men are loyal to Edmure, who is the true heir to Riverrun, and they open the gate.  The men lay down their arms, and, true to Jaime’s word, none of them are hurt.

The Blackfish takes that time to escape with Brienne and Podrick in a secret passage out of the castle by way of the river.  Brienne and Podrick get in the boat and Brienne begs Blackfish to get in and fight by Sansa’s side.  Stubborn to the end, Blackfish tells her that she is more helpful at Sansa’s side, and that he will not leave his home nor will he run like he did at the Red Wedding.  He was going to stand and fight.  The Blackfish runs back up the stairs to hold them off to give Brienne and Podrick time to escape.  Later we learn that the Blackfish is killed.

We watch is sadness as the Tully colors are torn from their walls and the Frey and Lannister banners are hoisted up as they enter the castle.  Standing on the battlements, Jaime sees Brienne’s boat on the river, but does not raise the alarm.  At least he did one good thing this episode.

It will be interesting to see what will happen next here once Jaime races back to King’s Landing.  We doubt the Frey’s will be kind to Edmure, and his men may have lost faith in him.  We also wonder if the Frey’s will keep Jaime’s promise not to harm the Tully forces as they are notorious for breaking rules of engagement.  Hopefully the Tully forces will not be killed and will find their way to Sansa and join her ranks.  We will see in the next episode.

Daenerys and Meereen

Meereen has seen little time in the past couple episodes, but we go back to Meereen and Tyrion this episode.  It starts with Tyrion and Varys as they walk through the port of Meereen.  Meereen is starting to recover from its hard times and things are looking up for the city.  Daenerys is still not back, but Tyrion’s pact with the masters of Yunkai and Astapor has given Meereen breathing room to heal and grow. Varys is leaving Tyrion on a secret mission to Westeros.  We aren’t sure what he will be doing, but it will probably be important for later.  It was really touching to watch Tyrion say his goodbye to Varys as they have become close friends, and we love that friendship and its development.

Tyrion then has a funny and engaging scene with Missandei and Greyworm as he tries to get them to tell a joke.  Things seem to have been patched up until a warning bell is sounded, and Greyworm rushes out of the room.  Next thing we see is a scene of hundreds of ships from the masters storming the port of Meereen as they lay siege to the city.  Tyrion realizes that he put too much faith in the masters keeping to their bargain and regrets his actions.  It was also interesting to see a character that is usually very confident in his decisions to express doubt and regret.  We definitely still think that Tyrion made the right decision because, in our opinion, he bought Meereen much needed time.

We watch in horror as the city is bombed as they launch catapults and the unsullied have taken up residents in the pyramid as it is the best place to dig in and protect.  They are on the very top of the pyramid looking down on the destruction.  Things look bad for Meereen, but then they hear a thump on the roof.  And to everyone’s great relief in walks Daenerys, mother of dragons.  We see Drogon flying away, but we hope he will stay and help her fight.  We guess we will have to wait to next week to find out.

The Hound

The Hound is on the hunt for the men who slaughtered the peaceful community he has been apart of, and he manages to find some of them.  The Hound does what he does best which is kicking some ass and easily lay these guys out.  Unfortunately, the three men he was after was not apart of the group he took out.  Later on the road, he comes across the Brotherhood without Banners who have the three men he was looking for in nooses.  They are about to put them to death and we find out that these three men dragged the Brotherhood’s name through the mud when they slaughtered the community.

The Hound is adamant in getting to kill these men to which they say they will only give him two, but they won’t allow a brutal death which the Hound would have given them.  In the end, the Hound kicks the boxes out from under their feet and watch them strangle to death.

The Brotherhood is trying to convince the Hound to join their ranks, and what is most interesting is that they plan on going north because they are aware of the threat coming from the north.  Why this is interesting is finally there is a group that can see the forest and not the tree.  They know that there are bigger threats that are being ignored by most people, but, being a group with no loyalty to anyone except to mankind as a whole, they know they have a bigger battle to fight.  The only other character, really, that had that foresight was Jon Snow and he was killed for it.  We hope that the Hound joins their ranks and journeys north as the fight is going to need great warriors.

We are also curious how they knew that there is a threat coming from the north.  If they are referring to the Boltons, then that’s an obvious assumption to make: the Boltons controlling Winterfell is bad for everyone involved.  If, on the other hand, they are referring to the White Walker threat, how exactly did they know?  Our guess is maybe the fire priest saw something in the flames.  We are interested to see how this all pans out.

Notable Moment

-the next episode starts the war for Winterfell and it looks intense and awesome.  It makes us nervous because things are not looking good for Jon Snow and Sansa in the trailer.  Check out this trailer below:

-Will we finally get to see Daenerys’s dragons out and free fighting for their mother?  It will get interesting next episode.