Valar Morghulis (S02E10)
Airdate: 3 June 2012
Written by: David Benioff & D. B. Weiss
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Running Time: 64 minutes
In its second season, Game of Thrones continued its established tradition of utilising the season finale not as a locus for cataclysmic, audience-shocking twists, but as a narrative mop-up operation. The penultimate episode, Blackwater, delivered the season’s undeniable ‘wham’ moment: the decisive, spectacular Battle for King’s Landing. Valar Morghulis, the concluding chapter, is thus tasked almost entirely with sifting through the aftermath, charting the political and personal consequences of the Lannister victory. Yet, its true narrative ambition lies in its deliberate focus on characters and forces operating far from the capital’s smoke-clogged skies. By checking in on the Starks in the North, Daenerys in Qarth, and Jon Snow beyond the Wall, the episode subtly argues that the seismic events of Blackwater—while defining the immediate future of the Iron Throne—may ultimately pale in significance against longer-brewing storms. The War of the Five Kings is revealed as a brutal, cynical game of musical chairs, while the real existential threats gather in the frozen darkness and across the Narrow Sea.
The episode’s most potent illustration of this cynical reality is found in King’s Landing itself, where the architect of the city’s salvation is unceremoniously discarded. Tyrion Lannister, having nearly paid for his strategic genius with his life, awakes to a world that has moved on without him. Grand Maester Pycelle’s gleeful revelation that Tyrion is no longer Hand, that his father Tywin has assumed the role, and that his sellsword ally Bronn has been stripped of his command, is a telling example of political ingratitude. The nasty scar bisecting his face becomes a metaphor for his new station: marked, diminished, and a visible reminder of a service the regime would rather forget. His lover Shae’s desperate urging to flee underscores his precarious position, yet Tyrion’s decision to stay is the first stirring of a deeper, more bitter understanding of the game. His subsequent visit from Varys, who offers sympathy and a frank admission of the injustice, serves as a confirmation: in the theatre of power, the stagehands who save the production are never allowed to take a bow.
That theatre is in full, grotesque swing in the Iron Throne room. In an over-theatrical display of realpolitik, the balance of power shifts publicly and decisively. King Joffrey, the capricious boy-king whose cowardice and folly nearly lost the city, is now the beneficiary of Tywin Lannister and Petyr Baelish’s machinations. His breaking of the betrothal to Sansa Stark—framed as a punishment for her family’s treason—and his new pledge to marry Margaery Tyrell cements the essential Lannister-Tyrell alliance. Baelish, the broker, is rewarded with the hollow title of Lord of Harrenhal, a transaction performed with the calculating clarity of a stock exchange. The irony is layered: Joffrey, a paragon of vile impulsiveness, here performs a act of cold, strategic reason for the good of the realm, while Sansa, the victim, feels only profound relief. Yet Baelish’s whispered promise to help her escape is a chilling reminder that her value as a political prisoner remains undiminished; her personal relief is irrelevant to the currents of power that still hold her fast.
This theme of noble intentions succumbing to personal folly finds its purest expression in Robb Stark’s camp. The Young Wolf, hitherto the show’s most unambiguously heroic figure, makes a decision that undercuts his strategic position entirely. His marriage to Talisa Maegyr, conducted in a simple ceremony of the Faith of the Seven, is a romantic gesture of breathtaking political naivety. Catelyn Stark’s warnings about breaking the sacred pact with Walder Frey hang heavy in the air, ignored. The scene is subdued, almost intimate, which makes its future ramifications all the more devastating. The script, by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, here employs a sharp, tragic irony: Robb, the honourable king, chooses love and breaks an oath, while Joffrey, the dishonourable monster, chooses duty and secures an alliance. It is a deliberate inversion that begins the process of deconstructing the Stark myth of inherent virtue, a process that continues elsewhere.
Indeed, Valar Morghulis actively works to complicate the show’s moral binary. This is most starkly demonstrated in the brief but brutal scene with Brienne of Tarth and her captive, Jaime Lannister. Confronted with the hanged, mutilated corpses of three peasant women—accused of ‘lying with lions’—they discover the perpetrators are Stark soldiers. Brienne’s swift, lethal dispatch of her own side’s men is a pivotal moment. It is partly pragmatic (to silence witnesses), but primarily an act of a personal chivalric code that transcends factional loyalty. The episode forces the audience to witness the brutal reality of war from the ground level: there are no purely virtuous armies, and the Stark cause, however just in its origins, is now being prosecuted by men capable of rape and murder. This nuanced, cynical approach to morality is a hallmark of the series at its best.
The episode’s narrative sprawl allows it to efficiently set numerous other plotlines in motion. Arya Stark’s escape from Harrenhal brings her face-to-face once more with the mysterious Jaqen H’ghar. His offer to teach her the arts of assassination is a fork in the road for her character; her refusal, driven by a desperate desire to reunite her family, is poignant. Yet the gift of the Braavosi coin and the password “Valar morghulis” (all men must die) is an irresistible narrative hook, as is Jaqen’s stunning, magical transformation of his own face—a moment that expands the show’s mystical boundaries and deeply imprints on the young girl’s psyche. Her path is no longer simply one of survival, but of potential transformation.
In Winterfell, another kind of transformation occurs: utter destruction. Theon Greyjoy’s pathetic last stand, undercut by his own men’s betrayal, completes his arc from arrogant invader to tragic fool. Maester Luwin’s dying counsel to Bran—to head north to the Wall, not south to safety—is a crucial piece of narrative guidance, steering the true heir of Winterfell toward his mystical destiny. The burning of Winterfell is not just the loss of a castle; it is the symbolic annihilation of the Stark home, the centre of northern power and identity, making Robb’s southern gambit seem all the more rootless.
Across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen’s storyline reaches a crescendo that, while visually and narratively satisfying, hints at future repetitive patterns. Her journey through the surreal, prophetic visions of the House of the Undying—the Iron Throne room desolate and snow-strewn, a reunion with Khal Drogo and their unborn son—is one of the episode’s most memorable sequences, beautifully directed by Alan Taylor. It ties her destiny inextricably to Westeros. Her confrontation with Pyat Pree, however, resolves with a simplicity that borders on contrivance. The command “Dracarys” and the ensuing dragonfire are thrilling, but they establish a template: an Essosi adversary dramatically underestimates Daenerys and her dragons, only to be spectacularly incinerated. Her subsequent justice against Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Doreah, walling them alive in his empty vault, is a stark display of her growing ruthlessness. Yet, as with Pyat Pree, it feels somewhat neat, a villain disposed of rather than truly grappled with.
North of the Wall, the narrative lays two crucial pieces for the coming conflict. Jon Snow’s killing of Qhorin Halfhand—a staged act of treason to cement his cover with the wildlings—is a brutal rite of passage that severs his last clean tie to the Night’s Watch. Meanwhile, Samwell Tarly’s terrifying encounter with the army of the dead provides the episode’s chilling, masterful finale. The three horn blasts, the grotesque wights shambling through the blizzard, and the final reveal of their unimaginable numbers marching southwards is a stark, visual rebuke to the political squabbling of the south. It tells Sam, and the audience, in no uncertain terms where the true, existential danger lies. All the spectacle of Blackwater is rendered momentarily trivial by this silent, advancing horror.
If the episode has a significant flaw, it is found in a rare moment of clumsy exposition. The scene where Varys explicitly recruits the prostitute Ros as a spy lacks the subtlety that typically defines the Spider’s machinations. Ros, portrayed as a shrewd survivor, seems inexplicably unaware of Varys’s status as a eunuch, a fact widely known in the capital. The dialogue feels engineered to explain Varys’s methods and network to the audience, rather than arising naturally from the characters. This lack of narrative subtlety would become a more persistent issue in the series’ later seasons.
Ultimately, Valar Morghulis is a remarkably efficient and effective season finale. It performs the necessary function of resetting the board after the climactic battle, but does so with a consistent, cynical intelligence. The balance of power has shifted back toward the Lannisters, but at the cost of exposing the hollow, thankless nature of their rule. The Starks are weakened, both by the literal destruction of their home and the metaphorical crumbling of their leader’s honour. New powers—Daenerys with her dragons, the White Walkers with their legion of the dead—are announced with fire and ice. The episode understands that in the world of Game of Thrones, the most important moves are often made in the quiet aftermath of the noise, and that the phrase “valar morghulis” is not just a Braavosi greeting, but a reminder that in the grand, grim scheme of things, all men must die—some merely with more consequence than others.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
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