Yes, that actually did just happen. Jace Lacob on the latest shocking twist on HBO’s Game of Thrones, and why the disturbing outcome of the Red Wedding was crucial for the series. Spoilers abound!
And they partook of his salt and bread.
Oaths
are meant to be sacred: after all, a man is only as good as his word.
But a world in which oaths are meaningless and void is a terrifying
place without logic, justice, or order. On this week’s episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones
(“The Rains of Castamere”), we see the ramifications of breaking one’s
word. Just as Robb Stark (Richard Madden) betrayed his vow to Walder
Frey (David Bradley), promising to marry his daughter in exchange for
Frey bannermen, so too does Walder Frey betray the most sacred oath of
all, that of hospitality.
This week’s gut-wrenching episode hammered home the dramatic stakes at play within HBO’s Game of Thrones, one that perfectly captures the bloodshed of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels
and their underlying notion that no one is ever truly safe. That goes
for kings and queens, mothers and children, the old and the unborn.
In a series that’s already rife with whiplash inducing plot twists,
the Red Wedding is one of the most unsettling, horrific, and terrifying
moments, not least because it lulls the audience into a false sense of
safety. By eating Walder Frey’s bread and salt, the Starks engage in the
age old custom of hospitality. To betray one’s guests in one’s home is a
most grievous sin, yet that’s just what Walder Frey does to enact a
most terrible vengeance against the King-in-the-North and his clan,
murdering Robb, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), and their men at the wedding
feast, transforming this bawdy celebration into a bloodbath from which
no one escapes.
That
includes Robb’s wife, Talisa (Oona Chaplin), a character based somewhat
on Robb’s wife in the novel, Jeyne Westerling. The source of this
enmity between the Freys of the Crossing and the Starks—Robb chose to
marry her rather than fulfill his obligation—Talisa is the first to be
killed by the Freys, daggers plunged repeatedly into her belly,
annihilating both her and the unborn heir to Robb’s throne. It’s
gruesome and disturbing, and captures Walder Frey’s desire to destroy
everything the Starks have built. In the novel, however, Jeyne, is not
pregnant with Robb’s heir (there are implications that her mother has
been treating her with herbs so that she won’t conceive) and is not even
at the Twins, instead left behind at Riverrun. (Jeyne is later pardoned
by the Lannisters and promised a nobleman as a husband, indicating the
Westerlings played a part in Robb’s betrayal and assassination.)
For
those hoping Robb and Catelyn somehow manage to survive, I hate to be
the bearer of bad tidings: they’re dead. House Stark is now dust, the
Stark children scattered across Westeros, Winterfell in ruins, and the
hope of the North in tatters. (To make that sink in even further, we’re
forced to watch as the Freys slaughter Grey Wind as well.) The
Lannisters, it seems, have won the war, thanks to help from the Freys
and from turncloak Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton), who switched
allegiances along the way this season. (A few clues that Catelyn too
late picked up on: Roose’s desire not to drink, the playing of the
Lannister ballad “The Rains of Castamere,” and the fact that Roose was
wearing chainmail under his finery.) The Lannisters send their regards
and they always, as we know, pay their debts.
If
you’re a viewer who somehow managed to remain unspoiled about this
latest twist, congratulations for having restraint and not peeking ahead
to see what was going to happen to the King-in-the-North. For those of
us who have read the novels, the Red Wedding was as big a shocker as the
beheading of Ned Stark (Sean Bean) was in Season 1 of Game of Thrones,
the sort of insane reveal that displays just how dire life in Westeros
truly is: this story is no fairy tale, nor will it have a happy ending.
(Among the novels’ readers, the Red Wedding is almost synonymous with
“plot twist that leaves you screaming with rage and depressed beyond
words.”)
In
Martin’s novels, the good too often die young and the wicked go
unpunished. For a narrative that is, at its heart, about the pursuit and
retention of power, it’s essential for these types of events to unfold
as they have, for Ned Stark to hold onto his honor only to be killed at
the whim of a mad child-king, for Catelyn and Robb to be betrayed by
their host and their allies at a wedding banquet, of all places. Life is
brutal and short, and the titular game is always being played.
Talisa’s pregnancy seemed to be a change that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss
implemented because they wanted the shock and horror of this sequence
to be felt even more keenly as Talisa is murdered while carrying Robb’s
heir and because she wants to name him, if he’s a boy, Eddard after
Robb’s doomed father. Their relationship is sweet and tender—and also
passionate, as we saw repeatedly—a meeting of equals, of a young king
and a selfless battlefield healer. Robb is punished for choosing love
over his duty, of putting himself before his responsibilities as a ruler
and a strategist, a decision that leads to the destruction of all he
holds dear. (In the novel, this plays out slightly differently, as Robb
chooses to marry Jeyne because he has deflowered her after she comforted
him when he learned of the “death” of his brothers. What follows at the
Red Wedding is even more tragic because it stems from the fact that
Robb couldn’t keep it in his pants.)
It’s
impossible not to feel Catelyn’s burning rage as she attempts to save
Robb by holding Walder Frey’s young wife hostage, a ploy that backfires
entirely when Walder calls her bluff. (She does still kill his wife, a
moment that’s translated from the book, where she kills Walder’s
mentally challenged relative.) Watching her son die in front of her,
Catelyn has her throat slashed opened, an arterial spray of crimson that
leaves no uncertainty about her fate. Most cruelly, it appears for a
split second that Catelyn can talk her way out of the situation, but in
truth she and Robb were dead the moment they set foot in the Twins. Her
final moments are slick with blood and bitter defeat.
(Even
more depressing is how close Maisie Williams’ Arya is to reuniting with
her family. She arrives at the Twins just as her mother and brother are
being slaughtered and bears witness to the slaying of Grey Wind. As
much as the Red Wedding is a shock to the viewer, its impact is
compounded by the heartbreak of Arya Stark, who once again must shoulder
immense loss and a feeling that she’s always too late to save her loved
ones.)
The
Red Wedding is a necessary moment for the longevity of the series, a
truly stunning turn of events that throws viewers off balance once more,
making us wonder who will be the next character to face death and
leading us to question whether anyone on Game of Thrones has any
chance at long-term survival. As terrible as it is to lose Madden’s Robb
and Fairley’s Catelyn—whose final moments are alight with the fire and
gritty determination that we’ve come to expect from her—those deaths
count toward raising the narrative stakes. They’re every bit as
important and vital as Ned’s death or the blade slicing downward on the
sword hand of Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). They’re permanent
and palpable signs of the frailty of human life of the transitory
nature of all living things. And, most important, these moments will
reverberate sharply through Game of Thrones, for they remind us that, though this game may have rules, those rules can and will be broken.
Lanelle Swoope : Actress 
Tamie Shonk : Geographer 
Rosalba Burritt : Nurse 
Antonetta Kleinberg : Gardener 
Cordia Tankson : Waitress 
Onita Colosimo : Diplomat