Game Of Thrones Episode 6 Recap And Review: Beyond The Wall

With Game of Thrones season 7 already winding down, we knew that showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss were going to raise the stakes significantly in episode 6, and boy did they do exactly that. We didn't zoom around Westeros this week as much as we have been in recent episodes, but the places we did visit offered more than enough action and intrigue to fill Beyond the Wall's 71-minute running time. It's all leading up to next week's season finale, which promises to be quite the epic episode.

Warning: what follows this paragraph are comprehensive spoilers for this week's Game of Thrones episode, Beyond the Wall. If you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want it spoiled, do not read past this paragraph. Seriously, this one is absolutely worth watching.

While most of the action takes place north of the wall, there's still plenty going on in Winterfell. Remember last week when Littlefinger planted that years-old note from Sansa asking Robb to come to Winterfell and bend the knee to Joffrey? Arya is angry after discovering that letter, playing right into Littlefinger's scheme and confronting Sansa about the note. Sansa, in her opinion, betrayed the Starks by writing that note, and most importantly betrayed their father at a time when he needed help.

Sansa (and the rest of us) remember things differently: at that time, Sansa was a frightened child who was forced by Cersei to write that note on the premise that it would save her father. Of course, neither Sansa nor Cersei considered just how cruel Joffrey could be, throwing that plan out the window just a couple of episodes later. Arya doesn't buy this line of reasoning, though – apparently she thinks that Sansa, who was barely a teenager at the time, should have given her life in defiance before writing that note.

That rather strange discussion isn't the only confrontation between Sansa and Arya during the episode. Later on, Sansa makes the boneheaded decision to go snooping around in Arya's room. While she's looking around, she discovers Arya's faces, which once belonged to the victims she's killed. Arya, of course, discovers Sansa snooping about, and instantly becomes creepy and cryptic. Arya threatens to claim Sansa's face but ultimately leaves her alone. Even though Arya didn't do the one thing we feared she might, things still don't look good for the relationship between the two.

Much later on in the episode, Sansa is summoned to King's Landing, apparently to attend this upcoming meeting between Cersei and Daenerys to discuss the White Walker threat. Sansa says that she will not attend the meeting, deciding to send Brienne of Tarth in her place. Brienne knows that leaving Sansa alone is a bad idea – not only is Littlefinger lurking in the shadows, but now Arya is acting as if she'd like to kill Sansa. Sansa isn't interested in hearing Brienne's concerns, though, sending her off to King's Landing anyway.

Like Winterfell, our time at Dragonstone is short this week, and only consists of a couple brief conversations between Daenerys and Tyrion. The two discuss Jon Snow's apparent infatuation with Daenerys before the conversation moves onto the upcoming meeting with Cersei. Tyrion notes that they will travel to King's Landing with the full force of their army behind them, and that if Cersei tries to make a move, they will burn King's Landing to the ground.

Daenerys is still worried about the volatility of the situation, and Tyrion tells her that Jaime has promised that he'd "keep a grip" on the Lannister forces. It's then that the conversation wanders into a territory that Daenerys is uncomfortable with: who will be her successor once she's reclaimed the Iron Throne and lived out her life as Queen of Westeros. She tells Tyrion that they will discuss this once she wears the crown and suggests that maybe he's been thinking about her death a little too much.

As these political matters are happening in Winterfell and Dragonstone, our group of burly heroes pushes north beyond the wall. Jon, Jorah, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros, Gendry, Tormund, and The Hound are looking for the White Walker army so they can capture a wight and take it to King's Landing to show Cersei that the White Walker threat is real.

The White Walker army is still a significant distance from the wall, which means that the group spends a long time walking. It's during these periods that they get acquainted to one another – The Hound and Tormund discuss Brienne of Tarth, Jon attempts to give Jorah Longclaw, his family's incestral sword, and Gendry confronts Beric and Thoros about selling him to Melisandre all those seasons ago.

It isn't long before the group come upon a mountain shaped like an arrowhead – the same one The Hound saw in his vision in the fire. He points out that they're getting close and the group press on, eventually coming upon a group of polar bears that have been returned from the dead by the White Walkers. The bears attack, killing a few of the extra men Jon's group brought along and wounding Thoros. Flaming blade in hand, Beric cauterizes Thoros' wound and they continue their march.

The next morning, the group discover a small force of White Walkers, lead by one of the Night King's generals and split off from the main army. It's unclear what they're doing, but Jon and company don't need to know – they attack, with Jon fighting the general. With a quick slash of Longclaw, the general is turned into pieces of ice, killing all but one of the wights immediately. As they are capturing the lone wight, it lets out a piercing shriek, drawing the attention of the nearby White Walker army.

Jon quickly tells Gendry to run back to Eastwatch and send a raven to Daenerys asking for her help while the rest run out onto a frozen lake. They stop at first, as the ice is cracking underneath them, but with the main wight army closing in, they have no choice but to run out to an island in the middle of the lake. Most of the people in the group make it to the island safely – save for the last remaining unnamed extra – and just in time to watch the ice break under the weight of the full White Walker force. For now, they are safe, as the wights can't cross the exposed water to the get the island our heroes are stranded on. In the freezing temperatures of the north, however, it isn't going to stay that way for long.

Thoros doesn't survive the night and the group burn his body so he doesn't turn into a wight. They discuss what happened when Jon killed the White Walker general in the previous day's fight. The theory is that the wights are bound to whatever White Walker raised them, meaning that if they can manage to kill the Night King, they'll take out the entire wight army in one fell swoop. Though Beric is ready to charge into the fray and take the fight directly to the Night King, Jon decides to focus on the task at hand, telling them that Daenerys is the only hope for their survival now.

Later on, thanks to a poorly thrown rock from The Hound, the wights discover that the lake has frozen over again, enough that they can cross and attack the group on the island. They do exactly that, almost overwhelming Jon and his group at many points. Daenerys arrives just in time to help, and her dragonfire makes short work of the attacking wights. She lands Drogon on the island to rescue the surviving humans, but just when it seems like a victory for the living, the Night King hurls one of his spears into the shoulder of Viserion, one of Daenerys's dragons.

Viserion tumbles to the ground and seemingly dies on impact, sinking into the freezing waters of the lake as Daenerys and the rest watch on in horror. Jon, who's still on the ground fending off attacking wights, tells Daenerys to fly the rest out of there. She does so just as the Night King is winding up to throw another spear at Drogon, just barely missing his target and allowing everyone but Jon to escape.

Almost immediately, Jon is overwhelmed. He somehow manages to survive, but with so many wights, that survival promises to only be momentary. Things look grim until a hooded rider with a flaming ball and chain appears out of nowhere. It's Jon's uncle Benjen, who wastes little time in surrendering his horse to Jon and telling him to make for the wall. Jon has no time to convince Benjen to come with him, and he's sent off back toward Eastwatch as Benjen gives his life so Jon can escape.

Back at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, Daenerys and the rest of the group are nearly ready to give up on the search for Jon when he appears, half-dead but still clinging to life. The group wastes little time in departing Eastwatch – they will head straight from the Wall to King's Landing with their wight in tow.

Jon is recovering on the journey to King's Landing and is visited by Daenerys. In a soft moment between the two, Daenerys pledges that she'll help Jon defeat the White Walkers while Jon says that he accepts her as his Queen. The two, it seems, have formed the alliance that they both desperately needed.

The episode ends with a shot of the White Walker army pulling Viserion from his watery grave. The Night King walks up to Viserion's corpse, places his hand on the dragon's forehead, and Viserion reawakens with the White Walkers' trademark icy blue eyes. The Night King, it would seem, now has a dragon of his very own.

Daenerys and Jon got their wight, but at a great cost. Not only did Daenerys lose one of her beloved dragons, but it's now under the control of the Night King. Viserion is now a fabled Ice Dragon, presumably capable of countering the dragonfire of Rhaegon and Drogon. Not only that, but we know that the Night King has the ability to snipe dragons out of the sky. This, as you may have already guessed, is not good.

On the other hand, Beric and Jon are certainly onto something when they theorize that destroying the Night King will drop the entire wight army instantly. While the Night King may have dealt a major blow to the living forces who oppose them, Jon Snow may have discovered a White Walker weakness that doesn't revolve around dragonglass and Valyrian steel. Even with the loss of Viserion, that discovery may make it all worth it.

Now we come to the difficult part of this plan: convincing Cersei that the White Walker threat is worth an armistice. That is going to be no small task, and we should expect Cersei to try to set a trap for Daenerys and her followers when they arrive at King's Landing next week. Tryion is serious about not tolerating such a move, and if Cersei is plotting something, she might pay dearly for it.

After all, Daenerys now understands that the real threat is the White Walkers. She is going to have little patience for Cersei's games after seeing the brutality and destruction the White Walker force is capable of. If Cersei tries anything funny during their meeting, Daenerys would be justified in melting the Red Keep in retribution, if only because there's very little time left to be occupied with this silly game of thrones.

We should remember, too, that after the events of this week, Jon Snow is firmly on the side of Daenerys. He is no longer entering this meeting in King's Landing as a neutral party, so Cersei won't really have any sympathetic ears when it comes to her side of things. Cersei should absolutely fear an alliance between Daenerys and the North, because together they're going to be a nearly impossible force to beat.

Given the fact that the stakes are so much higher when it comes to the White Walkers, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the war for the Iron Throne decided in the next episode. Obviously there's an outside chance of this happening, but the season could end with Cersei's death. It's going to take a lot to fight the White Walker army, and I'm not convinced that the showrunners will be able to wrap up both storylines in next year's six-episode season.

While we're on the topic of deaths, I'm still thinking that Littlefinger won't survive the season either. With Brienne gone, this gives Littlefinger the opening he's been waiting for to enact whatever it is he's planning. He's already driven a wedge between Arya and Sansa and because of that, he may get a little cocky knowing that their protector has gone off to King's Landing. I think he's going to make a fatal mistake and, trying Sansa's patience for the last time, will pay for it with his life.

That is assuming that Arya can get it together, of course. Arya proved this week that all of the assassin training in the world doesn't make you cunning or smart, and she is letting her anger and brutality guide her feelings far too often. She needs to be able to look at the world through multiple lenses, but thus far, she's only been able to see it through one: the lens of revenge. This bloodlust is clearly affecting her ability to reason, so here's hoping she learns to take a more nuanced approach to conflicts from here on out. If she doesn't, she might make a mistake that she regrets before the end of the series.

It's hard to know where we're headed going into the season finale. A number of things could happen next week, and many of the options are worrying. Whatever happens, it's sure to be a great episode, so you won't want to miss it.

For now, head down to the comments section and let us know what you thought of Beyond the Wall. What are your predictions for next week? Who will live and who will die? Is Gendry ever going to get to do anything other than run away? Share your take down below.