S3·E4 — And Now His Watch Is Ended
The hour retold
The Watch eats itself. At Craster’s Keep, starving men bury Bannen — dead of a wound the ranging’s host would not feed — and the arithmetic of resentment finally carries the room: Craster dies at his own board, guest right shattered, and when the Old Bear commands his brothers to stand down, Rast’s knife answers for the mutineers. Jeor Mormont, who held the Watch together with gristle and habit for a generation, dies on the floor of a wildling’s hovel, strangling his killer, while Sam runs into the night with Gilly and her newborn — the one thing Craster valued, carried off by the one man Craster despised.
The rest of the hour belongs to two monologues and a single word. Varys, gossiping with Tyrion about revenge, opens a crate to show him the sorcerer who cut him as a boy — patience measured in decades, delivered with tea. And in Astapor, the season plays its ace: Daenerys hands over Drogon, takes the whip that commands eight thousand Unsullied, and reveals — in fluent Valyrian, to the slaver who has spent three episodes describing her anatomy in it — that a dragon is not a slave. Dracarys. The Unsullied level Astapor’s masters, the freed army chooses to follow her, and the show mints its single most replayed sequence: the moment Daenerys Targaryen stops being a claimant with dragons and becomes a cause. The episode title, meanwhile, belongs to the Old Bear. His watch is ended; his war is just arriving.
What happens
- At Craster's, the Watch turns on itself: mutineers kill their host and their Lord Commander.
- Varys reveals what was in the box the sorcerer sent him — and who is in his crate now.
- The Tyrells plot Sansa's marriage to Loras; Littlefinger's ship for her waits anyway.
- In Astapor: 'Dracarys.' The Unsullied are hers, the masters are ash, and the whip is on the ground.
The people of the episode
Daenerys Targaryen — Bought an army with a dragon, then took the dragon back.
Samwell Tarly — Runs into the night with Gilly and her newborn son.
Varys — Patience measured in decades, revenge measured in crates.
Margaery Tyrell — Teaches Joffrey to wave at the crowd she bought for him.
Theon Greyjoy — Led in circles by a smiling boy back to the same cross.The fallen — spoilers
- Lord Commander Jeor Mormont — Stabbed in the back by his own sworn brothers at Craster's Keep.
- Craster — A guest-right death for the man who fed his sons to the cold.
- Kraznys mo Nakloz & the Good Masters — Astapor's slavers, unmade by the army they sold and the dragon they thought they'd bought.