“High Sparrow”
April 26, 2015
As noted last week, my reviews of Game of Thrones have shifted to The A.V. Club, but I will continue to link them here for regular readers. Warning: These are reviews intended for book readers, so if you want to know absolutely no small details about the story as told in the books, you may want to steer clear.
Game of Thrones – “High Sparrow” [The A.V. Club]
And yet at the same time, it’s also just so much easier when you have multiple characters occupying the same space. The show could have started the season with Sansa at the Eyrie, but what function would that serve if they can map similar self-discovery onto Sansa’s journey back to Winterfell? While there is a version of this show where practical changes like this one read purely as logistical, “High Sparrow” avoids this fate by tapping into the show’s history and creating an arc that uses that history more poetically than the books the show is based on.
That may be a bold claim, but Martin’s story is so sprawling that it often feels like the story could never truly come full circle, especially given we’re still waiting for major convergences that Martin has been teasing for multiple books at this point. The show, by comparison, is pacing itself differently, and uses Sansa’s return to Winterfell to tighten its storytelling and pay tribute to where the show began. Whereas Martin’s return to Winterfell felt like following a war, Game Of Thrones’ return to Winterfell is about character, and creates a stable foundation for whatever comes next.
Cultural Learnings 