(Spoilers for this episode)
Uhh yeah, wow, that whole thing was executed in such a harrowing way. It reminded me of the scene in Qarth where the whole council had their throats cut, except this obviously had crazy emotional impact. (These were three of our lead characters!) It also reminded me of that scene in Braveheart (omg Braveheart spoilers incoming) where his wife's throat is cut. There's something about matter-of-fact stabbings and throat-cuttings of major characters that reliably delivers maximum devastation.
The stomach stabbing was absolutely horrifying. It certainly delivered that sense of WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!? — that look on Talisa's face is pretty much how I felt. I still can't close my jaw.
Even more devastating was Catelyn's final expression. All the tragedy of her life was crystalized in that moment. And of course she had to be the last one to go, her throat unceremoniously sliced, the blood basically spraying at the camera. Her tragedy just usurped Ned's.
I definitely appreciated all the foreshadowing in this episode:
- Frey shrugging off the oath-breaking should have raised some serious red flags.
- Someone said of the impending festivities, "the hall will flow red with wine" or something like that.
- The surprise pretty daughter should have sincerely freaked people out. Why on earth would Frey be so generous?
- Bolton refusing wine.
- Robb and Talisa's excessive happy talk and smiling was like a screaming alarm.
- When sizing up Talisa, I think Frey was actually confirming that she was pregnant (his talk about being able to tell what the dress is hiding and such).
That's from memory; I'm sure a rewatch would yield a few more. Tell me what I missed.
When GRRM was writing the book, he was like... man, I need to kill another Stark, but it really needs to have some impact this time. Let's kill a few of them... and one of them should probably be a fetus.
btw, I didn't get why Catelyn realised what was going to happen, what was the thing she saw under Bolton's sleeve?
She was first tipped off when the guards closed the door. Then she started looking around and putting things together, and you could just feel that sinking feeling along with her. The dread in that scene was amazing.
Anyway, she saw that Bolton was wearing chain mail under his clothes, i.e. he was dressed for battle.
