Kill the Boy (S5x05)
Airdate: 10 May 2015
Written by: Bryan Cogman
Directed by: Jeremy Podeswa
Running Time: 50 minutes
By the midpoint of its fifth season, Game of Thrones had settled into a rather predictable, if contentious, pattern of massive deviation from its literary source material. George R.R. Martin’s sprawling, unfinished saga presented an escalating challenge to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, one they met with increasing boldness—and not a little recklessness. Yet, some episodes gave the impression that the creative team was learning from past structural missteps, striving for a more streamlined and focused narrative by employing a limited number of storylines set in distinct geographic locations. In doing so, Benioff and Weiss took a leaf from Martin’s own playbook. The author’s last published novel in the series had grown so unwieldy in scope that it was divided into two concurrent volumes: A Feast for Crows, focusing on King’s Landing and the war-torn Seven Kingdoms, and A Dance with Dragons, looking outwards to Essos and the Wall. Kill the Boy, the season’s fifth episode, directed by Jeremy Podeswa and written by Bryan Cogman, firmly takes the latter route. It is an instalment that consolidates the outward-looking, world-expanding threads of the narrative, attempting to build momentum for the season’s back half. The results are a fascinating mixed bag: visually stunning in places, thematically coherent in its central metaphor, yet often undermined by the very adaptation compromises it seeks to navigate, revealing the growing strain between the published text and the television series’ imperative to condense and contrive.
The title itself, ‘Kill the Boy’, is somewhat obscure and—in keeping with the series’ tradition—deliberately misleading. It refers not to an act of violence against a child, but to the counsel of Maester Aemon Targaryen at Castle Black. In a scene of quiet gravity, the ancient maester advises a conflicted Jon Snow: “Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born.” This encapsulates the episode’s core thematic concern: the painful shedding of naivety and the assumption of grim, pragmatic leadership. For Jon, this means making a decision of monumental risk and moral complexity. With Stannis Baratheon finally departing Castle Black to march on Winterfell (brusquely refusing the Night’s Watch’s offer of sanctuary for Queen Selyse and Princess Shireen), Jon is left as de facto commander. His solution to the twin threats of the White Walkers and the Watch’s depleted ranks is audacious: he frees the captured wildling leader Tormund Giantsbane and proposes an alliance. He offers the surviving wildlings safety south of the Wall and land in the Gift, in exchange for their swords in the coming war against the dead. Tormund, recognising the existential threat, reluctantly agrees, revealing that the remnants of Mance Rayder’s host are gathered at Hardhome, a settlement north of the Wall accessible by sea. Jon’s plan to rescue them using ships borrowed from Stannis is a brilliant example of strategic thinking, a true ‘man’s’ decision. However, the episode wisely underscores the profound cultural hatred this ignites among the Watch’s rank-and-file. The bitter resentment of men like Olly, whose family was slaughtered by wildlings, is portrayed as a deeply human, understandable trauma. This plot strand, while logically sound, suffers from a sense of protracted wheel-spinning; the Castle Black storyline had begun to feel stagnant, and Jon’s heroic pivot, though well-acted by Kit Harington, carries a whiff of narrative inevitability rather than shocking revelation.
In Winterfell, the episode continues its brutal education of Sansa Stark, another character being forced to ‘kill the girl’ she once was. Having arrived with the dubious protection of Petyr Baelish, she is now a gilded prisoner in the lion’s den—or rather, the flayed man’s dungeon. The arrival of Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne nearby, managing to slip a message of support to Sansa, offers a fleeting glimpse of hope. This hope is viciously extinguished by the superb Charlotte Hope as Myranda, a kennel master’s daughter and Ramsay Bolton’s jealous lover. A character invented wholly for the series, Myranda is a deliciously perverted counterpoint to Sansa’s cultivated grace. Her ‘tour’ of the kennels, where she reveals the broken creature that is Theon Greyjoy—now the pathetic ‘Reek’—is brutal example of psychological torture. The horror culminates at a tense supper where Ramsay, in a display of performative cruelty, forces Reek to apologise publicly to Sansa for murdering her two brothers. Simultaneously, Lord Roose Bolton delivers his own calculated blow: his wife, Walda Frey, is pregnant, likely with a son whose claim would supersede Ramsay’s newly-won legitimacy. Iwan Rheon’s performance here is exemplary, his smile never reaching his eyes as he processes this threat to his inheritance. Cogman’s script sharpens the Boltons’ grotesque dynamic by altering Roose’s backstory: he casually mentions raping miller’s wife who later conceived Ramsay, discarding the book’s reference to the ‘First Night’—a dubious medieval custom rightly dismissed by modern historians—for a act of unambiguous, personal violence that better defines the family’s inherent brutality.
Across the Narrow Sea, in Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen is undergoing her own traumatic transition from liberator to ruler. The episode confirms the death of Ser Barristan Selmy, a significant departure from the books that removes a key figure of Westerosi honour from her court. In his absence, the martial counsel comes from Daario Naharis, who presents two brutally simple options for dealing with the Sons of the Harpy: a street-by-street purge or the execution of the Great Masters’ leadership. Daenerys, in a moment of terrifying, Targaryen-style justice, chooses a third path. She has the captured masters dragged to the dragon catacombs, where she sacrifices one to her dragons Rhaegal and Viserion—a stark message of fire and blood. This act of terror, however, leads her to a surprising reversal. Confronted by Hizdahr zo Loraq, who remains a voice for peace despite being imprisoned, she not only agrees to reopen the fighting pits but also consents to marry him as her prince consort. This political marriage is the ‘kill the girl’ moment for Daenerys; she sacrifices her personal desires and some of her revolutionary purity for perceived stability. Meanwhile, a tender subplot sees Missandei confess her feelings for the recovering Grey Worm, a rare moment of gentle humanity amidst the politicking, though it arguably veers towards sentimentality.
The episode’s most unequivocal success lies in its breathtaking excursion to Old Valyria. As Jorah Mormont, transporting his captive Tyrion Lannister to Daenerys, chooses the perilous shortcut through the Smoking Sea, the show delivers one of its most visually arresting sequences. Director Jeremy Podeswa and production designer Gemma Jackson render the ruins of the ancient Valyrian Freehold—a civilisation clearly modelled on the Roman Empire, fused with inspirations from Angkor Wat—with awe-inspiring grandeur. Overgrown with jungle yet still radiating lost majesty, the landscape is a potent symbol of fallen empires, a theme central to the entire series. The scene is elevated further by the literate dialogue; both Tyrion and Jorah quote poetry about the Doom, their shared wonder bridging their captor-captive dynamic. This reverie is shattered by an attack from the Stonemen, victims of the lethal Greyscale disease. The attack, a significant deviation from the books (where it occurs in a different locale, the Sorrows, with a different companion for Tyrion), is thrillingly executed. Its consequence is profound: Jorah is infected, a ticking clock introduced onto his mission with a mere glimpse of scales on his wrist. This sequence works precisely because it understands the power of Martin’s world-building—the sense of deep history and cosmic melancholy—and translates it into pure, compelling television spectacle.
Podeswa’s direction throughout is competent, embodying the polished, cinematic style expected of HBO drama. He handles the requisite adult content with a workmanlike efficiency, as evidenced in the scene where Ramsay and Myranda discuss his impending marriage. Both Rheon and Hope appear naked, their conversation a twisted negotiation of power and possession that leads to sex, a moment that feels more contractual than erotic, included because the network’s brand demanded it. Where Podeswa truly excels is in compensating for the more pedestrian elements of the script, such as the plodding Castle Black politics, with the majestic visual storytelling of the Valyria sequence.
Kill the Boy is an episode defined by the difficult labour of its writer, Bryan Cogman, often described as the series’ ‘bible keeper’. His task here was unenviable: to reconcile Martin’s extant material with drastic new plot developments—Barristan’s death, Sansa in Winterfell, Tyrion’s accelerated journey with Jorah—for which there is no literary blueprint. Not all these interventions were worthless; the invention of Myranda adds a potent layer of petty, personal malice to the Bolton horror show. Yet, one feels the strain of compression. The episode functions as a crucial pivot, thematically cohesive in its exploration of forced maturation, and it contains individual scenes of great power and beauty. Nevertheless, it also highlights the show’s growing tendency to favour plot mechanics over organic character development, and shocking deviations over nuanced adaptation.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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