Jon Snow’s rag-tag expedition into the frozen wastes races against time to find their quarry. The strain of keeping Winterfell running and the Northern Lords happy in her brother’s absence is beginning to tell on Sansa, and Daenerys finds herself questioning her feelings.

It’s been a remarkable season of Game of Thrones to date, confounding most of the expectations the show tends to generate for itself and breaking new ground in terms of what it does and more importantly, how it does it. For this episode, rather than delivering the usual all-singing, all-dancing explode-a-thon that is a Game of Thrones season penultimate episode, we get instead a mostly quiet, almost reflective piece.

That’s not to say that there is no action here – there is, though it feels somewhat muted next to what we have been given in previous episodes. But mostly what we get is a lot of people sitting in darkened rooms talking to each other about the past, the future and the fate of the world, contrasted against Snow and his band of misfits tramping in the wildest, most dangerous part of that world engaged on a quest that – even by the standards of the King in the North – seems frankly suicidal.

Still, watching this disparate band of cutthroats, mercenaries and proud warriors trade insults, compare records and speak of past battles is entertaining, and reveals sides to many of them that aren’t immediately apparent. The hardship they face together may not make them all like each other any more than they did, but it’s certainly bonding them in its own way.

At Dragonstone, the relationship between Tyrion and Dany continues to intrigue. Clearly the Hand of the Queen took his conversation with Varys last week to heart, but can he tame the wilder impulses of the Mother of Dragons, and ultimately, does he want to? Daenerys herself seems to be struggling with her feelings for Jon Snow – it’s clear that she feels affection for him, but she also has reservations.

In Winterfell, events take a turn for the slightly bewildering. In what has to be the first misstep of the season to date, the tension and intrigue built last week with the interactions between Arya and Sansa, Littlefinger lurking in the shadows, are somewhat squandered. The continuing interactions between the Stark sisters become odder and odder, coming across as conflict for the sake of it rather than an organic development. Still, it’s clear that the happiness of their reunion has long faded, and issues may arise sooner or later, though who will emerge on top is anyone’s guess.

As the episode draws to a close, we get an action sequence that isn’t unfortunately quite as exciting as the writers probably envisioned. It improves as it progresses, but it definitely starts to sag in the middle, and could have benefited from better, pacier editing.

As the credits roll, we are confronted with something that may tip the entire balance of the war against the dead – let’s hope we get an answer on that one sooner rather than later.

Verdict: A mixed bag of an episode – it almost feels like this is the ‘filler’ that this season to date had lacked. Not bad, but definitely the weakest of the current series. 7/10

Greg D. Smith