Helen Sloan/ courtesy HBOWarning: major spoilers below! Do not read until you have watched Game of Thrones season five episode 5, "Kill the Boy."
Another one bites the dust! Game of Thrones is pulling no punches when it comes to branching off from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. So far, two people, Mance Rayder and Ser Barristan Selmy, both still alive in the books, have died on the show, proving that no character's fate is safe from these bloodthirsty showrunners. (Who would have ever thought there'd be more bloodthirsty storytellers than Martin himself?!)
And in tonight's action-packed episode, another "safe" character, Ser Jorah Mormont, found himself facing that same fate. No, he didn't die on his way to Daenerys, bringing Tyrion along as his captive. But he did contract a fate worse than death. Plus, Tyrion saw a dragon! What else happened? Read on for our full recap of "Kill the Boy!"
After a week of anguish, we finally return to Meereen to find out who survived the Sons of the Harpy attack: Grey Worm's alive! Yay! Ser Barristan is not. Noooo! Dany is intent on getting revenge for her friend's death and figuring out who is responsible for the Sons of the Harpy, so she rounds up the leaders of all the oldest families of Mereen and lets her dragons burn and eat them alive until they confess.
After three days, Grey Worm wakes up with Missandei at his bedside, and makes his own confession: when he passed out after his fight, he feared not death, but the fact that he would never get to see her again. She kisses him, and later gives advice to Dany that makes her see she was wrong about "tradition." She decides to reopen the fighting pits, but only to free men, since "slavery will never return to Meereen," and then shocks us all: she tells the captive Hizdahr zo Loraq that she will marry him, because he's the leader of one of the oldest families in the city, to unite their people for good. Whattt?!
At Castle Black, Maester Aemon Targaryen has Sam read him news of Dany's exploits in Meereen, and he worries about her being alone. Coincidentally (or not?), Jon interrupts him and asks to speak with Aemon alone, seeking advice on whether he should do something that will make half of the men of the Night's Watch hate him, and Aemon tells him they already do so he might as well do what needs to be done. "Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born." Is this Aemon's way of hinting that Jon needs to shed his past and become the man Aemon knows him to be…and book readers have been suspecting all along? R+L=J!
Jon then meets with the still captive Tormund, and offers to let all the wildlings south of the wall, and promises to give them land before the white walkers make it to the wall. Jon wants to save all of the people north of the wall since they "belong to the realm of men," and the Night's Watch is bound to serve all men, including the free folk. Tormund makes Jon agree to come with him as he goes north to tell the wildlings to start moving south so they'll believe the offer is real. The Night's Watchmen don't like this idea at all, but Jon knows the white walkers are coming with winter, and knows they need the wildlings to help fight the army of the dead. He agrees to go with Tormund, and they borrow ships from Stannis.
Just outside of Winterfell, Brienne and Pod are still keeping close to Sansa. She tries to get a message to Sansa via a worker at the inn at which they're staying. Later, Sansa gets the message from her chambermaid: if she ever feels unsafe, all she has to do is light a candle in the window of the broken tower.
Meanwhile, Sansa's new fiancé Ramsay is enjoying the last moments of bachelorhood with his lover Miranda, even though she's all kinds of pissed that he's going to marry Sansa, and that he thinks she's pretty. He gets bored of her jealousy, though, and threatens her. So she takes her jealousy to the next level by acting sweet to Sansa only to lead her to Theon, who recognizes her! Maybe he's not totally Reek after all! He tells her she "shouldn't be here." Is he trying to help her? But even more shockingly, when "Reek" apologizes for letting Sansa see him, Ramsay forgives him.
But he hasn't lost his taste for psychological torture: at dinner, Ramsay makes "Reek" come out, and tells Sansa how he punished him until he was no longer Theon. He also makes him apologize to Sansa for killing her two brothers—even though he really didn't! Will he figure out a way to let Sansa know they're still alive? Doubtful, because Ramsay still isn't done with his psychological torture: he decides to make Theon give Sansa away at the wedding. What. A. Sadistic. Jerk! But his joy is short lived, since Roose announces his wife is pregnant, and it looks like it's going to be a boy! Will Ramsay lose his status as heir to the Bolton name?
Later, as Ramsay lets his father know he's pissed about potentially losing his position as head of their family, Roose tells him about his late mother. He apparently raped a peasant girl after having her husband hanged, so it's pretty clear from where Ramsay gets his sadistic genes. But the awful story turns into a weird father/son bonding moment, because Roose assures Ramsay that he is his son. This family, man. So messed up.
Back at Castle Black, Stannis confronts Sam in the library about how he killed a white walker, and Sam tells him about the dragonstone blade and the army of the dead he saw north of the wall. Stannis tells Sam to keep researching about why dragonstone can kill a walker. This seems like it will be super important in the future, so we should probably remember this. Stannis then tells Davos they march on Winterfell in the morning. Seeing as how Roose and Ramsay know Stannis is coming, it's time to gear up for a major battle, y'all!
And now, on to the biggest revelation of the night: Jorah's big mistake. Continuing their trip to Meereen, in between annoying Jorah, Tyrion is shocked to find out he's sailing them straight through Dany's old homeland of Valyria. Tyrion believes "the doom" still rules the land, but finally shuts up when he sees fully-grown Drogon flying overhead, with complete terror in his eyes. But while they're both distracted by the dragon, they miss the fact that "stone men" (aka men completely overtaken by greyscale who are sent to Valyria to live out the rest of their agonizing days with the fatal disease...and who are totally gross and creepy) are completely surrounding them, and they attack their boat. Tyrion gets dragged into the water by one of them and Jorah saves him…but in doing so, he got infected with greyscale himself. Yikes!
We know that there is a way to stop the spread of greyscale, since Stannis hired a healer to do exactly that for his daughter Shireen. Of course, she's hideously disfigured and ostracized to this day and will be for the rest of her life, but at least she's still alive! Will Jorah be able to get the same fate, or will he succumb to the disease? He's already decided to keep it a secret from Tyrion, so he might just suffer in silence until he's past the point of saving.
But we have no way of knowing, since Jorah never gets greyscale in the books! The anticipation of the unknown is killing us slower than a bout of greyscale...and it's just as agonizing!
What did you think of "Kill the Boy," Game of Thrones fans? Hit the comments section below to weigh in now!
Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.