S7·E2 — Stormborn

The hour retold

Dany’s Dragonstone war council splits her invasion three ways at once — Dorne and Highgarden to squeeze King’s Landing’s supply lines, Grey Worm’s Unsullied to take Casterly Rock — and Olenna Tyrell, characteristically, tells her the plan is too clever by half: be a dragon, not a sheep. It is advice the season will spend the rest of its run proving painfully correct. In a locked cell at the Citadel, Samwell Tarly risks his own imprisonment to cut greyscale from Jorah Mormont’s arm with a blade and sheer nerve, a small act of mercy that will matter more, later, than either man can know yet.

Arya, riding toward King’s Landing and her list, turns north instead at a crossroads — toward Winterfell, toward the family she has spent six seasons assuming was gone — and meets Nymeria, her own direwolf, grown huge and wild in the years since she drove her off to save her life. That’s not you anymore, Arya tells her, and lets her go, choosing home over vengeance in the same breath, and the scene plays as a small mercy toward herself as much as toward the wolf. At sea, Euron’s fleet ambushes Yara and Theon’s in the dark: two of the Sand Snakes are killed outright, Ellaria and Yara are taken captive, and Theon — frozen by the same paralysis that has haunted him since the Dreadfort — jumps overboard rather than fight, a failure the show is careful not to excuse even as it understands exactly where it comes from.

What happens

• Dany's war council divides the war: Dorne and Highgarden strangle King's Landing; the Unsullied take Casterly Rock.
• Sam risks his chains to cut the greyscale from Ser Jorah in a locked cell.
• Arya turns north at the crossroads — Winterfell, not King's Landing — and meets Nymeria's pack in the wood.
• Euron's fleet ambushes Yara's in the night: two Sand Snakes die, Ellaria and Yara are taken, Theon jumps.

The people of the episode

The fallen — spoilers

• Obara & Nymeria Sand — Killed with their own weapons on the deck of their burning fleet.