S5·E5 — Kill the Boy

The hour retold

Maester Aemon’s advice to Jon — kill the boy, and let the man be born — gives the hour its title and its argument, and Jon spends the episode proving he heard it: he opens the Wall to the free folk his brothers hate, gambling his command on the wager that living enemies beat dead recruits for the war actually coming. It is the least popular decision a Lord Commander has made in the show’s run, and the show is careful to make clear it is also the correct one. South, Stannis marches on Winterfell with his wife, his daughter and his red priestess in tow, converting a military campaign into a pilgrimage — a choice about to prove the difference between the two is not academic.

In Meereen, Daenerys tries to rule the way her advisors keep telling her a queen should — feeding a slaving Master to her dragons on suspicion alone, then offering marriage to a Meereenese nobleman to buy the peace her armies can’t — and neither gesture looks like the woman who broke chains in Astapor; it looks like a monarch running out of easy answers. And in the ruins of Valyria, Tyrion and Jorah drift past the Doom’s petrified stone men reciting poetry to keep their nerve, until one of the plague-ridden wretches grabs the dwarf by the wrist — a quiet, horrible reminder that in this world the past is never actually past, just sleeping in the water.

What happens

• Dany feeds a Master to her dragons on suspicion — then reopens the fighting pits and offers marriage to Hizdahr.
• Jon makes the hardest call of his command: the free folk come south of the Wall.
• Stannis marches from Castle Black for Winterfell, family and red woman in train.
• Tyrion and Jorah sail through ruined Valyria, past stone men — and one grabs the dwarf.

The people of the episode