S6·E6 — Blood of My Blood

The hour retold

A dead man saves the living in the woods beyond the Wall — Benjen Stark, the First Ranger everyone assumed lost to the same dark that made the Night King’s army, returns half-wight and half-Watch, carrying Bran and Meera to safety with a foot in both worlds. At Horn Hill, Samwell Tarly brings Gilly home to the family that disowned him, receives his father’s contempt in the same voice and same room as before, and quietly walks out with Heartsbane, the Tarly ancestral sword — a small act of theft that plays as the largest act of self-respect Sam has managed in five seasons.

In King’s Landing, Margaery converts the crown itself to the Faith’s cause, engineering a fusion of throne and sept that briefly looks like it might save both her family and her husband’s reign — a performance of penitence so precise the High Sparrow, for once, cannot tell where the acting stops. In Braavos, Arya is sent to kill an actress and instead saves her, refusing the Many-Faced God’s indifference to a life that has nothing to do with her old list — a decision that earns her the Waif’s death warrant and, not incidentally, proves the House never actually managed to erase Arya Stark of Winterfell. And at Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys addresses a hundred thousand riders with a dragon circling overhead, and the show barely needs the speech — the image does the work of finally making her invasion of Westeros look inevitable rather than aspirational.

What happens

• A dead man in the woods saves Bran and Meera: uncle Benjen, half-wight, half-Watch.
• Sam takes Gilly to Horn Hill, meets his father's contempt, and leaves with the family sword.
• Margaery converts the crown to the Faith; Tommen fuses crown and church; Jaime is shipped to Riverrun.
• Arya saves the actress she was sent to kill; the Waif is given her death warrant.

The people of the episode