Television Review: The Red Woman (Game of Thrones, S6X01, 2016)

The Red Woman (S6x01)

Airdate: 24 April 2016

Written by: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by: Jeremy Podeswa

Running Time: 50 minutes

By the time the fifth season of Game of Thrones had concluded, it was evident that showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were sailing through uncharted and increasingly perilous waters. The series had begun to seriously run out of its literary source in George R. R. Martin’s notoriously unfinished series of novels. While some plot threads and characters from the published works remained to be addressed, the creative team was, by this juncture, left to mainly make it up as they went along. That newfound narrative freedom, at its best, produced moments of thrilling television; at its worst, it led to contrived plotting and character assassination of a different kind. The Red Woman, the premiere of Season Six, is a notable and deeply emblematic example of this precarious phase—an episode that manages to be structurally solid yet simultaneously highlights the alarming creative cracks beginning to fissure the grand edifice of the show.

The episode’s most immediate success, and the primary engine for its record-breaking ratings, was its exploitation of the neat, if all-too-obvious, cliffhanger that closed Season Five: the assassination and apparent death of Jon Snow. The consequences of that event meticulously frame the entire episode, from its chilling opening to its melancholic close. It begins with the grim, pragmatic horror of Ser Davos Seaworth discovering Jon’s bloodied corpse in the snow and, with the help of the loyal Eddison Tollett, transporting it to a storeroom. Edd and the handful of loyalists swear revenge, while Ser Alliser Thorne and his conspirators attempt to woo the rest of the Night’s Watch by justifying their treacherous act with rhetoric echoing Brutus and the murder of Julius Caesar. Barricaded inside, Davos—a political survivor, not a warrior—has no inclination to surrender to Thorne’s offered mercy, understanding its hollow nature. The most significant development in this strand, however, belongs to Melisandre. Her faith in her own prophetic abilities is visibly, devastatingly shaken by Jon’s death, which directly contradicted her vision of him fighting amidst the flames of Winterfell. This crisis of belief culminates in the episode’s final, haunting image: removing her enchanted choker, she reveals herself not as the imperious, youthful priestess, but as a grotesquely ancient woman, her body frail and withered.

Elsewhere, the episode briskly addresses another cliffhanger from the previous season’s finale. Theon and Sansa’s desperate leap from Winterfell’s walls is revealed to have been survived by a fortuitous landing in a deep snowdrift. Their respite is brief, as they are mercilessly hunted by Ramsay Bolton’s men and hounds. Ramsay’s motivation here is presented with a sliver of complexity: he is genuinely angered by the death of his favourite concubine, Myranda, yet is equally, if not more, concerned that his father Roose might disinherit him if he fails to recapture his politically vital wife, Sansa. The duo is eventually run to ground, only to be rescued in an opportune, albeit slightly convenient, moment by Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne. The ensuing action scene is visceral and realistically messy, with Podrick’s clumsy but determined efforts perfectly illustrating a less-skilled fighter alongside a knight of Brienne’s calibre. Her subsequent oath of fealty to Sansa Stark provides one of the episode’s few unambiguously satisfying beats, a long-awaited fulfilment of a narrative promise.

In King’s Landing, the mood is one of grim aftermath. Cersei Lannister’s anticipation of a reunion with her daughter Myrcella curdles into devastating heartbreak as Jaime returns with the girl’s corpse, revealing her poisoning at the hands of the Sand Snakes. The parallel storyline sees Queen Margaery still languishing in a cell within the Great Sept of Baelor, where the High Sparrow continues his soft-spoken but relentless campaign to break her spirit and extract a confession. These scenes are functional, serving to establish the season’s stakes in the capital, but they lack the political intricacy that once defined the show’s treatment of the Red Keep.

It is in Dorne, however, where The Red Woman commits what many viewers, particularly fans of the novels, would consider its most egregious sin. The potentially catastrophic political consequences of Myrcella’s murder are rendered moot in the most absurdly simplistic fashion. Ellaria Sand and Tyene simply assassinate Prince Doran Martell—one of the realm’s most cautious and formidable political players—along with his bodyguard Areo Hotah and the maester, seizing power in a bloody coup. The last loose end, Doran’s son Trystane, is disposed of with laughable ease by Obara and Nymeria Sand, who are revealed to have been conveniently hiding aboard his ship in King’s Landing’s harbour all along. This entire sequence reduces one of the Seven Kingdoms’ most fascinating and distinct regions to a mere garden palace, dispatches a deeply strategic character with bewildering abruptness, and introduces glaring continuity errors.

Across the Narrow Sea, the episode diligently sets up the season’s arcs in Essos. In Meereen, Varys and Tyrion confront a deteriorating situation in Daenerys’s absence, with support waning even among the freed slaves. The threat is made spectacularly clear when the Sons of the Harpy burn the vast fleet Daenerys had planned to use for the invasion of Westeros. Meanwhile, Daario Naharis and Jorah Mormont track Daenerys to the Dothraki Sea, only to discover she has been captured by a khalasar led by Khal Moro (Joe Naufahu). In a scene that emphasises the cyclical nature of her journey, Daenerys finds herself once again at the mercy of Dothraki tradition. Despite her status as the widow of the great Khal Drogo, Moro—while showing her a degree of respect—inviolably upholds the custom that all widowed khaleesis must spend their remaining days in the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, effectively making her a prisoner once more.

In Braavos, Arya Stark’s punishing apprenticeship with the Faceless Men continues. Now blind as a consequence of her disobedience, she is forced to beg on the streets, periodically beaten by the Waif in a cruel regimen designed to break down her identity. It is a bleak, punishing thread, its purpose clear but its execution feeling somewhat like narrative marking time.

Directed by Jeremy Podeswa, The Red Woman is, on a technical level, a solid piece of television. It is competently paced, looks superb, and features several strong performances, particularly from Liam Cunningham and Carice van Houten. Yet, solidity is not what the fandom craved at this precipice. The episode does little to allay the growing fears regarding the series’ declining quality in its post-source-material era. It continues storylines, provides new cliffhangers, and contains individual elements of excellence, but it is also riddled with abysmal missteps. In their attempt to steer the saga without Martin’s detailed charts, Benioff and Weiss make serious errors of judgement that, in some cases, paint them into narrative corners from which they would struggle to escape.

The episode’s good elements, as noted, are worth commending. The rescue of Sansa and Theon is a standout action sequence, notable for its grounded chaos. The continued shading of Ramsay Bolton, showing him capable of a flicker of genuine sorrow for Myranda before callously ordering her body fed to the dogs as “good meat,” adds a sliver of disturbing complexity to the show’s primary monster. Most memorable, of course, is the revelation of Melisandre’s true form. It is a masterful piece of visual storytelling and a brave subversion. After years of the show arguably providing fan service by featuring van Houten in a state of undress at every opportunity, the showrunners seemingly offered a stark atonement: replacing that image with one designed to haunt the viewer—a grotesquely ancient, naked crone. The combination of heavy makeup on van Houten’s face and a digitally imposed senior body is unsettlingly effective. The scene’s conclusion, with this ancient woman covering herself with a blanket as she retreats to bed, injects a sudden, surprising pang of humanity and sympathy into her character.

Furthermore, the episode should be commended for its narrative restraint regarding Jon Snow. It resists the easiest route of revealing his wounds to be superficial or resurrecting him immediately. For the entire hour, he remains unequivocally dead, forcing the narrative to briefly grapple with the tangible consequences of his loss, a gravity that is often missing from later revivals in popular culture.

Yet, for these merits, the episode’s failures are more notable and far more damaging to the long-term integrity of the story. The first, and perhaps most fundamental, is the lack of a coherent justification for Jon Snow’s assassination itself. Ser Alliser Thorne’s passionate speech to the Night’s Watch, though well-delivered by Owen Teale, cannot mask the staggering illogic of the act. Beyond an irrational, longstanding hatred of the Wildlings, the conspiracy makes no strategic sense. Jon Snow was the Lord Commander, a proven fighter, and the primary figure holding the Wall against the existential threat of the White Walkers. Murdering him on the eve of that war is not merely treacherous; it is suicidally stupid. The show asks us to believe that seasoned men like Thorne would prioritise petty prejudice over the survival of the realm, a characterisation that feels shallow and plot-driven.

However, the Dorne subplot represents an even greater creative failure, one that arguably infuriated the novel-reading contingent more than any other. The coup is not just simplistic; it is narratively bankrupt. Prince Doran Martell, a character of immense patience, hidden strength, and complex political machinations in the books, is reduced to a feeble, passive figure who is dispatched in seconds. His entire house is wiped out with barely a whimper, reducing Dorne’s rich history and political independence to a footnote. The logistical nonsense of the Sand Snakes’ travel—simultaneously in Dorne to murder Doran and on Trystane’s ship in King’s Landing—is a glaring continuity error that speaks to a shocking carelessness. It suggests that the writers viewed Dorne not as an integral part of the world, but as a messy plot thread to be severed as quickly and as bloodily as possible, regardless of sense or source fidelity.

The Red Woman serves as a perfect microcosm of Game of Thrones in its sixth season: handsomely produced, occasionally brilliant, but fundamentally unstable. It showcases the show’s enduring ability to deliver powerful character moments and stunning visuals, while simultaneously exposing the hollowness that can creep in when intricate, character-driven plotting is replaced by the necessity to simply "move the pieces" towards a predetermined end. It is the work of capable filmmakers pushing through without their primary navigator, and the strain, even in this ostensibly solid premiere, is already visibly showing.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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