S4·E7 — Mockingbird

The hour retold

An episode about champions — who fights for whom, and what it costs to have someone in your corner. Cersei resolves the trial’s arithmetic by naming Ser Gregor Clegane, and the show reintroduces the Mountain disemboweling prisoners for exercise. In his cell, Tyrion holds auditions: Jaime cannot fight with his left hand, and Bronn — in the pair’s bittersweet last scene of the season — declines with the honesty that made him likable: he likes Tyrion, but he likes himself more. When has anyone risked everything for him, Bronn asks, and the answer walks in wearing Martell colors. Oberyn Martell volunteers to be Tyrion’s champion for reasons that have nothing to do with Tyrion: the Mountain killed his sister, and the Crown has finally arranged for the two of them to meet legally.

The title’s mockingbird is Littlefinger, and the Vale pays out his long game in the snow. Sansa, building Winterfell out of drifts in the Eyrie’s garden, gets a kiss she did not ask for; Lysa sees it, and the episode ends with the season’s most vertiginous domestic scene — Sansa held over the Moon Door by her own aunt, then Lysa held over it by her own husband. Only Cat, he tells her, and lets go. Elsewhere the Hound, bitten and refusing fire to cauterize it, tells Arya the true story of his burns — a brother, a brazier, a father’s lie — and lets her clean the wound: trust, from a man who has none to spare. Champions everywhere; the trick, the hour suggests, is surviving yours.

What happens

• Cersei names her champion: Ser Gregor Clegane. The Mountain.
• Jaime can't fight, Bronn won't die for free — and Oberyn Martell volunteers, for reasons carved in Elia's name.
• The Hound takes a bite for a dying farmer's mercy; Arya finishes it cleanly.
• Lysa sees a kiss in the snow and holds Sansa over the Moon Door; Littlefinger holds Lysa over it longer.

The people of the episode

The fallen — spoilers

• Lysa Arryn — Sent through her own Moon Door by the man she killed her husband for.