Recap: 'Game of Thrones' delivers best episode of Season 7 so far

Kelly Lawler | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 'Game of Thrones' recap: Season 7, Episode 5 Here are the three biggest developments from Season 7, Episode 5 of 'Game of Thrones.'

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers from Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 5, “Eastwatch.” Read our recap of Episode 4 here.

Now that was the Game of Thrones we love.

After a fiery, bombastic episode last week, Game of Thrones spent an hour showing it can still make a tense, suspenseful and immensely entertaining hour of television, even without all that dragonfire and death. And, OK, there was a little dragonfire and death this time, too.

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"Eastwatch" was the best episode of Thrones so far this season. The series needed to reinvent itself after it brought so many major characters together and narrowed its focus. It's been unable to continue its set pattern of flitting from location to location, checking in on the status of each major character and sprinkling in some major events or reveals when it made sense. In the first four episodes, Season 7 has been clumsy, trying to deal with the new circumstances of its characters from a structural standpoint. That was felt in last week's uneven episode, which struggled when there wasn't a dragon onscreen.

But Sunday's episode figured out how to crack the code. It zipped along, bringing characters back that we thought were rowing forever (hi, Gendry) and informing us that Rhaegar and Lyanna may have been married (thanks, Gilly). It focused on character and nudged the plot along without being too slow. It was funny, surprising and the most enjoyable episode in a good while.

'Game of Thrones': John Bradley talks Sam's big episode

Game of Thrones is a thrilling and explosive series, sure, but it's also a drama about the folly and idiocy of mankind, the cost of war and the ramifications of interpersonal conflicts that play out on a huge stage. "Eastwatch" reminded us of those themes and introduced a new one: the need for teamwork. Cooperation and compromise have almost never worked for the characters on the drama, if they have been attempted at all (see Theon's betrayal, the Red Wedding, etc). But the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the saying goes, and they're all up against a giant frozen horde of dead coming to kill us all, so it might be time to set aside sibling rivalry.

Or as Jon Snow put it, they're all on the same side because, they're "all breathing."

If everyone on the series doesn't learn how to be a team, they won't stay breathing for long.

Burn them all

The series has, since about midway through last season, slowly been tossing out some questions about Dany. Specifically, whether or not she inherited some of the cruelty, or the insanity, of her father the Mad King, who loved to watch people burn. There's no denying her recent coldness, exhibited as she burned Randyll and Dickon Tarly alive for refusing to bend the knee after the battle on the road. (Apparently there are no POWs in Westeros.)

Her actions may have won her every other Lannister soldier, but it horrified Tyrion and Varys, neither of whom can control her. For Varys, in particular, history is repeating itself. And we'd be inclined to agree. But the softness she showed when Jon played some How To Train Your Dragon with Drogon was promising. And hey, what more evidence do we need that he's a secret Targaryen?

Westeros: Where are they now?

Reunion is the name of the game this season, and no episode so far has done it better than "Eastwatch." Even if the circumstances are a little contrived.

First up are Dany and Jorah, and the Dragon Queen melted just a little bit to see her old friend. Then at Team Dany's meeting, Tyrion decides they should try to convince Cersei to join team anti-White Walker through a convoluted plan that involves Tyrion meeting Jaime in King's Landing and a team going north of the Wall to capture a wight and bring it to her to prove they're real.

This bizarre and hard-to-explain plan has smashing short-term results. Tyrion and Jaime reunite, and the loss of their brotherly bond is palpable. Jaime is the only one who is rightly panicked by Dany's firepower, and he listens to Tyrion because it might help him and Cersei survive the war (along with their unborn baby, don't forget him/her).

But the most exciting development of all, at least for this recapper, was the sudden and very welcome reappearance of Gendry, bastard son of Robert Baratheon, blacksmith and friend of Arya. If you forgot, we last saw him rowing away from Dragonstone, aided in his escape by Davos so he wouldn't be sacrificed by Melisandre. Davos finds him in King's Landing and recruits him for Jon's cause. He also breaks the fourth wall just a little bit when he mentions that he imagined Gendry was still rowing, a common fan joke. All that rowing perhaps helped his muscles, as he uses a war hammer (the weapon of his father) to help Tyrion and Davos escape some nosy gold-cloaks.

The Expendables

The reason the episode worked, in spite of all the convenient plotting, is that it was so immensely entertaining to see all these people together. Jon and Gendry, for instance, have a fascinatingly common history. Both bastards of great men (at least Jon thinks he is), they speak to each other like brothers, and in a way they are. They both chose similarly honorable paths, unlike, say Ramsay, whose anger over his bastardy curdled into rage and evil. Gendry quickly joins Jon's beyond-the-wall team, as does Jorah, eager to prove his usefulness to Dany once again.

Faster than a speeding bullet they're at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, where Tormund thinks Tyrion's plan is just as ridiculous as we do, but he eventually gets onboard. And guess what? He's got The Hound and the Brotherhood in his dungeon! And they're down for a little ranging beyond the Wall, too.

Call them the Expendables, the Avengers or the Team of Rivals, but they're certainly a motley crew, all covered in snow and fur and venturing into the white beyond. The plan still seems bizarre and potentially unnecessary, but this group of men together has the potential to truly do some damage, be it to a wight or anything else that could cross their path. And that's truly exciting.

Samwell the brave but foolish

Oh Sam. You hot-headed idiot.

Sam's story was rather simple. Angered by the Citadel's refusal to leave their ivory tower and accept that White Walkers are real, he steals a bunch of books and scrolls and absconds into the night with Gilly and Little Sam in tow to stop sitting on the sidelines.

What he missed, though, could have consequences for the rest of the series. Gilly read aloud, in a moment that gave a lot of people women-ignored-by-men-in-a-meeting vibes, that a Septon annulled a marriage of Prince "Ragger" (we assume this is her pronunciation of Rhaegar) in Dorne, and then married him to someone else. If this is really about Rhaegar, and that someone else is Lyanna, it means that Rhaegar did not kidnap Lyanna and rape her, as the tale goes. But rather they fell in love and married, and the Dornish setting indicates Rhaegar's first wife Elia (with whom he had children) may have sanctioned their separation.

It would also mean that Jon Snow was never a bastard.

If only Sam, like so many other people on this series, didn't let his emotions get in the way of bigger work.

To catch a spy

Now that the emotion of their reunion is out of the way, Arya's and Sansa's old instincts are kicking back in, which is immensely more interesting to watch than their awkward exchanges last week.

They've both changed so much, but they are still ideological opposites. Back then, they had two views of what it meant to be a woman in the world. Now, they have two different views of survival: Arya remains a hardened lone wolf, while Sansa, to stretch the metaphor, prefers a pack. That may be enough to divide them.

Arya's suspicions of Littlefinger, however, are rightfully placed. She spies him speaking to the lords expressing dissension over Jon's decision to leave Winterfell, whispering with a woman and getting a document from the new maester. That document, it turns out, is the letter Sansa sent way back in Season 1, after Robert died and Joffrey ascended the throne. Ned was imprisoned, for what Sansa was told was treason. Cersei made her write to Robb and ask him to come to King's Landing to pledge fealty to Joffrey. Robb instantly saw Cersei's influence in the letter, back then, and he called the banners to rescue his father. But we doubt Arya will see the same nuance.

Also of note...

Jaime is entirely motivated by his love for Cersei at this point, but Cersei still hangs on to power above all else. Even after telling him of their unborn child and embracing him, she threatened him if he betrayed her again.

The plan to bring a wight to King's Landing may be a fool's errand (mild book spoilers follow). In the books, a Night's Watchman is dispatched to bring the hand of a wight to King's Landing. But it rotted before he could show it to Tyrion, who was then ruling as Joffrey's Hand. What will happen to a full wight when he travels that far south?

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