S3·E7 — The Bear and the Maiden Fair

The hour retold

The old song the title borrows is about a bear and a maiden fair, and the episode builds to the literal version: a pit at Harrenhal, a bear the size of a cart horse, and Brienne of Tarth in a dress with a tourney sword — Locke’s idea of an evening’s entertainment. Jaime Lannister, freed, cleaned and pointed toward King’s Landing with his apologies in hand, gets one day down the road before the arithmetic of what he owes turns him around. He jumps into the pit one-handed and unarmored, puts himself between the bear and the maiden, and the pair of them are hauled out by men who cannot afford to lose him. It is the hinge of his whole story: the Kingslayer went back.

Around that center, the season tightens its screws. Daenerys reaches Yunkai and raises her price from passage to everything — every slave freed, or the city breaks — discovering the appetite that conquest feeds. Robb’s camp learns Talisa is pregnant, a small sunlit scene the show hands the audience like a keepsake before the Twins. Melisandre sails up the coast with her purchase, telling Gendry the name of the father he never met. And in a nameless dungeon, the boy playing games with Theon Greyjoy stops pretending to be a rescuer. What his keeper wants from him is not information, and not ransom. It is everything, taken slowly.

What happens

• Dany reaches Yunkai and raises the stakes: free every slave, or be the first city she breaks.
• Jaime, freed for King's Landing, turns his escort around for Brienne — and jumps into a bear pit with no hand.
• Robb's queen is pregnant; the North marches for the Twins and a wedding.
• Theon learns what his smiling keeper actually wants from him. Everything.

The people of the episode