“Hardhome”
May 31, 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 – “Hardhome” [The A.V. Club]
These partnerships and alliances—one of them long anticipated—all speak to Game Of Thrones’ interest in making a larger point about humanity. Sam argues to Olly—who does not seem convinced, we’ll get to that later—that the Wildlings are humans too, and that’s admittedly a bit facile. But what Sam is doing is going back to a basic level of human life, an idea that works to break down the “wheel” of power in Westeros that Daenerys seeks to destroy. Cycles of human conflict are what Game Of Thrones was first predicated on, but the only true, unadulterated evil in this world was the very first evil we saw in the series’ prologue—those who are no longer living.
Cultural Learnings 