Item: Game of Thrones
Rating: 8
Author: Matt Fowler

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

We were given a somewhat lighter, less-vital episode of Game of Thrones this week with "The Broken Man," though that's not to say that Arya getting stabbed and the Hound returning from the "dead" weren't notable moments for the series. It's just that, comparatively, there wasn't a lot of movement this week, story-wise. Unless you take the word movement literally and count Jon and Sansa's whirlwind trek across the North to try and drum up support for their siege against Ramsay.

But let's dig into the Hound first and the big back-from-the-dead reveal that went down before the episode's opening credits. I loved it. Or, I should say I loved the Hound being back as a thing. He's a great character and the show could still do a lot with him. That being said, his storyline in this episode, with the communal support of a killer-turned-foolish-pacifist and his followers? Not the best. It felt sort of clichéd, actually, and very un-Game of Thrones, in a way.

Of all the people to find the Hound, it was a septon - Ian McShane's Brother Ray - who made himself and his flock an easy target and then refused to defend himself? Of course The Hound's going to dish out some violence after that. It very much felt ripped from a 1980s action movie. Except for the part where we didn't get to see Sandor dish out any vengeance just yet.

Also, was this the best time to bring The Hound back, pacing-wise? We've yet to see why he's needed back, from a specific plot standpoint, but his return felt a little diminished given all the payoffs we've gotten this season. From Jon's resurrection to Benjen's return (just last week), Season 6 is moving fast and giving back to the viewer at a record frequency. Maybe a little more spacing was needed here.

Game of Thrones: "The Broken Man" Images

McShane was great, but his character was too frustratingly foolish to buy into. I get that he wanted to leave certain horrors behind, but if he knows men might be coming back to kill them all and doesn't do anything about it, he kind of deserved what he got.

Speaking of knowing better, Arya should have spotted the Waif as that old woman. How could she not be on guard for something like that? It was a big moment -- I did gasp a bit -- when she got stabbed repeatedly because, well, it did not look good, but overall, it's easy to assume she'll survive this. If she doesn't, that would be a kick in the teeth, right? Arya dead during the happiest season of Game of Thrones to date? Yeah, that's not going to happen. Let's hope she learns to be smarter about things after this giant brush with death though. Finding men from Westeros and throwing money around, standing out in the open for any Faceless Man to see - Arya wasn't making herself hard to track down.

The rest of this Westeros-bound episode involved Cersei losing the support of Olenna (she's headed back to Highgarden, and rightfully blames Cersei for everything), while Margaery sent Olenna a sign she was still truly on her side, Yara trying to build up Theon's confidence so they can sail off and make a pact with Daenerys before their uncle can build his thousand ships, and Jaime taking over the siege of Riverrun. The latter giving us the return of Bronn for the first time this season and some choice Jaime grandstanding (and Frey slapping).

Though, truthfully, Jaime isn't having the greatest of luck with the big confrontations this year. He's lost twice to the High Sparrow now (despite galloping up those steps on horseback) and sort of shrunk before the glowering Blackfish this week. Jaime’s fun to watch, as always, but this is a tricky storyline. You want to root for House Tully, really -- especially since they stand against the Freys -- but you also want to see Jaime get a win. Perhaps he cuts the Freys out, makes a deal with the "weaker" Edmure, and the Blackfish falls. There are only so many zero-sum outcomes here, plus it’s highly unlikely they got Tobias Menzies to moonlight from his regular gig on Outlander, returning as Edmure, only to never have him speak or have any significance to the story.

I mentioned the Stark Support tour earlier, and how it was close to being a montage, given the amount of Houses visited (some even off-screen), and the best part of this journey involved the introduction of Lady Mormont, Lord Commander Jeor's niece. Mentioned last season by Stannis, this little 10-year-old girl proved to be a calculating and capable leader in a really awesome against-expectations way, proving that not every child leader in the realm was a halfwit and/or psycho. She, like all the other House leaders (including Tim Mcinnerney as Lord Glover), was still rather bent out of shape about Robb and that big loss. She’s too young to remember much about it perhaps, but she is the leader of Bear Island because of it.

The other interesting wrinkle here was Sansa's decision to write a distress letter behind Jon's back. Their reunion was warm and crowd-pleasing, but it's becoming more apparent that they don't see eye-to-eye many times. And perhaps, the distance they felt growing up together, where Sansa basically admitted to being cruel to him, is playing more of a role here in their young adult dynamic than they'd hoped for.

So who did Sansa write to? Well, we didn't see. We might assume that it's Littlefinger, since he's got all those Knights of the Vale at his disposal. Plus, that would help assuage the feeling that Littlefinger fell a few steps behind this season (and last), in a somewhat uncharacteristic manner. Because if his plan all along was for Sansa to need his help (some even speculate that he may have been the one to send "Ramsay's note" to Jon), then he truly is the Littlefinger we know and love-hate. Though if it turned out he was behind this new war in the North, would he be siding with Sansa or Ramsay?

Verdict

"The Broken Man" gave us back The Hound, but his return felt a little diminished, given the parade of returns we've already seen this year, and there weren't as many notable moments in this chapter as other Game of Thrones episodes. There were some fine scenes, but nothing on par with the show's usual goods, though Lady Mormont was a highlight and Jaime and the Blackfish's standoff is an interesting scenario, not to mention the questions raised by Sansa's letter. Arya getting her guts punctured was a shocker, but it didn’t feel right that she couldn't see her attacker coming.