Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker, season 6 episode 3 - review: what's wrong with Jon Snow? Rickon's plight, and other talking points

BY Ed Power

Season six of Game of Thrones officially has our undivided attention thanks to ongoing helpings of black magic, time travel and infanticide. But could the show maintain its breakneck momentum going into the third episode?

After last week's double bill of baby killing and necromancy – you probably haven't heard but apparently minor character Jon Snow walks among us again  – there were surely grounds for worrying Oathbreaker might add up to one magnificently damp squib.

Yet fears of anti-climax proved largely unfounded as show-runners David Benioff and DB Weiss delivered a generally satisfying dispatch.

We flashed back to a young Ned Stark tangling with the Targaryens and witnessed further Church v State tensions at King's Landing, the delicate ecumenical stand-off complicated by Lannister secret weapon Ser Robert Killbot.

In Jon Snow news, the Lord Commander (Kit Harington) was coming to terms with being suddenly, gloriously alive again. Here, the big shock is that he has officially unambiguously quit Castle Black. "My watch is ended." he told second -in-command Edd as he stomped away.

You could tell Snow was serious because, in the evening's final scene, he ditched his official Lord Commander Shoulder Pads of Doom before striding down a long dark tunnel and towards a destiny as yet unmapped. It was a gripping ending, delivering the catharsis viewers had waited for, apparently in vain, from the opening credits.

Where was the awe and terror of the reanimated Jon Snow?

Following 12 months of grieving, second-guessing and wild theorising, it appeared inevitable that the immediate aftermath of the Stark scion's return would be a right royal letdown. His resurrection had been perfectly played with Snow bathed in an eerie blue that gave him the pallor of a crypt adornment.

How then to follow what has already taken its place as one of Game of Thrones iconic scenes? This was the conundrum at the Wall, where the Night's Watch was absorbing the re-emergence of a beloved leader last seen being used for Piñata-practice by Ser Alliser and his co-conspirators.

In the event, the handling of his comeback verged on perfunctory. Jon was shocked, Ser Davos was shocked, Melisandre was shocked - and also convinced that it was Snow, not her dead master Stannis, who was destined for greatness. And yet, the denizens of Castle Black came across spectacularly blase; Wildling boss Tormund Giantsbane spoke for many when he used the event as an opportunity for a joke about Snow's manhood.


This was not the seismic reckoning fans will have anticipated and you wonder why Benioff and Weiss went to such efforts drawing a veil of secrecy around the Snow's death and rebirth in the first place.

Granted, Harington was persuasively grim-faced as he sat bolt upright and stark naked on the resurrection slab - but that same enigmatic grumpiness has been his default setting from the very beginning. He certainly did not convey any of the awe and terror you would expect of someone who had stepped into the beyond and back. It is entirely possible he was not asked to. Game of Thrones seemed to want done with the entire death storyline as quickly as possible.

If there was a payoff it was watching Alliser and the other traitors held to account for their attack on their Lord Commander. The execution scene was Game of Thrones at its most swaggeringly nasty, with teenager Olly among the turncoats sent from the gallows. Yes, the four corpses dancing as they dangled was horrible. But, let's be honest – if gratuitous grisliness was a deal-breaker we'd have give up on this show a long time ago.

Rickon is back (who is Rickon again?)

You remember Rickon, yes ? Sweet, curly-mopped lad? Easily mistaken for a charred shepherd boy? Youngest child of a family of prominent land owners whose members have since embarked on a range of interesting careers?

The missing-presumed-forgotten Stark princeling made a shock return (or it would have been shocking had Maisie Williams not let it slip in an interview that he was back).

Alas, he can't have been very pleased to be in the frame again as he was gifted to the Boltons (well, Ramsay and his dogs) as a gesture of fealty by oikish House Umber.


Ignored for three seasons, now a humiliated bargaining chip. Even in obscurity, the Starks can't catch a break

How close did the flashback come to proving R+L=J? 

Can we take this opportunity to praise the show-runners for reneging on their initial pledge to never jump around in the time line?

The earlier death of Myrcella was given an added poignancy by the season five flashback to Maggy the Frog's prophesy to a young Cersei that her children would all wear "golden shrouds" (two down and one to go, Tommen).

Now, peeking over the shoulder of Timelord Bran, we whooshed back to young Ned Stark and the Tower of Joy (can somebody please, please take this as a band name). Held captive within was Ned's sister Lyanna and what a thrill it was watching the Warden of the North storm the battlements.

There have been broad hints that the Tower of Joy would solve the mystery of Jon Snow's parentage (it's generally accepted Lyanna was Snow's mother). But tonight we made do with Ned tackling Targaryen super-swordsman Ser Arthur Dayne in breathlessly choreographed combat.


Robert Aramayo (The Tourist, Nocturnal Animals) made for a convincing young Sean Bean and it was fun reconnecting with Westeros's one, true unsullied hero, in those halcyon days when his head was still attached to his shoulders. Oh noble Ned, whatever you do in the future, don't trust those Lannisters.

Do we need another Daenerys Goose Chase? 

Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) is one of Game of Thrones most engaging characters, a mix of contradictions that somehow adds up to a compelling and plausible protagonist.

It's just as well she is so fascinating because, since acquiring her dragons in season one's Dothraki death barbecue, the show has wasted her on an interminable road trip across Essos, aka the continent where nothing important EVER HAPPENS.

How our hearts soared as the Sons of the Harpy finally forced her storyline up a gear last year. But now, imprisoned in the Dothraki widow colony and due to stand trial for flouting tribal laws, she is bogged down once more.

Daenerys we adore you - but please come to Westeros so you can impact on meaningfully on the wider plot.

Cersei and Jaime need to just start killing people 

What fun it is has been witnessing twins-with-benefits Cersei and Jaime plot their bloody revenge against the Sparrows, Sand Snakes, Tyrells and anyone else who has ever thrown them an iffy glance across the mead hall.

But the preliminary scheming has gone on a bit and decisive action is overdue. Cersei (Lena Headey), to her credit, was lip-smackingly menacing as she and Jaime gatecrashed the Small Council. But her thirst for vengeance requires follow-through, with the novelty of the Queen Mother stomping about in her cropped "peeved Cersei" haircut dimming rapidly.


Also failing to convince was the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) talking Angry Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) down from a ledge with a speech about gods and wisdom and why it's okay to throw your wife in the clinker if she has offended the divine. Now that his dander is officially up, it is implausible Tommen would fall for the Sparrow's zen claptrap. In a season full of subplots and reversals, a  turncoat Tommen would surely be a volte-face too far.

It was great to see the return of the Gilly and Sam rom-com 

The only vaguely normal romantic pairing in Westeros were on a choppy sea voyage. But their relationship was about to enter even stormier waters as Sam (John Bradley-West) dropped the bombshell that Gilly (Hannah Murray) could not possibly accompany him to the men-only Citadel, where he was to study to be a Maester.


Instead, he would drop her off at the family castle. She resisted - but not too much. The scene was tender and sweetly underplayed – and interspersed with some qualify comedy vomiting by Sam.

Arya is still trapped in the House of Meh and White

Shapeshifter Jaqen H'ghar (Thomas Wlaschiha) was one of season two's most beguiling fixtures precisely because we were told so little about his motives.
But what once was enigmatic has become rote and predictable as Arya (Maisie Williams) continues in her new role as problem pupil at the House of Black and White.

She may have gained re-admission to Jaqen's cabal of Faceless Men (with a bonus restoration of her eyesight) yet it remains very much up in the air whether this is going to lead anywhere interesting.

We can tell you what isn't interesting: endless blind stick-fighting. Can we just get on with it please? We're starting to feel deflated every time Arya appears on screen.