Television Review: Battle of the Bastards (Game of Thrones, S6X09, 2016)

Battle of the Bastards (S6x09)

Airdate: 19 June 2016

Written by: David Benioff & D. B. Weiss
Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik

Running Time: 60 minutes

From its inception, Game of Thrones demonstrated that its creators possessed a formidable understanding of how to captivate an audience through a variety of means—political intrigue, shocking betrayals, and visceral drama. Yet, none of these methods proved as consistently and overwhelmingly impressive as the show’s large-scale battle sequences. These episodes offered an incredibly potent alchemy of action, human drama, and sheer spectacle, becoming cultural touchstones in their own right. This tradition was established with two pivotal conflicts that decisively shaped the future of Westeros, both wisely positioned as the penultimate episodes of their respective seasons: the Blackwater in Season 2 and The Watchers on the Wall in Season 4. This structural choice allowed each season’s finale to serve as a narrative mop-up, dealing with the aftermath. In its sixth season, the series repeated this principle for a third time with the episode aptly titled ‘Battle of the Bastards’. It is one of the most technically audacious and visually stunning pieces of the entire series, frequently cited as its ultimate highlight. However, beneath its breathtaking surface, the episode also exposes some of the narrative shortcuts and contrivances that would later become more pronounced in the show’s final seasons, making it a fascinating subject for a critical dissection.

The titular bastards are the two commanders whose clash will settle the question of who controls the North. The formal authority lies with Lord Ramsay Bolton, the legitimised bastard son of Roose Bolton. Having seized Winterfell through treachery following the Red Wedding, Ramsay maintains his grip through a campaign of terror and his deeply psychopathic personality, coercing the Northern lords into providing him with a formidable force of some 6,000 men. Arrayed against him, with at best half that number, is Ned Stark’s bastard son, Jon Snow. Jon’s army is a ragtag assemblage of Wildling refugees—the survivors from Hardhome—a handful of stragglers like the loyal Tormund Giantsbane, and a minuscule contingent of Stark loyalists who have gathered around Sansa. From the outset, the strategic and numerical odds overwhelmingly favour Ramsay. This imbalance is central to the episode’s tension, echoing the desperate defences of Blackwater and Watchers on the Wall, where a beleaguered garrison faced annihilation.

The episode opens with Jon being sternly warned by Sansa that marching on Winterfell without greater numbers is folly. Jon’s response is one of grim necessity: the onset of an even harsher winter makes keeping his army in the field impossible. He must fight now or never. This is precisely the same argument used by Stannis Baratheon before his own rash and ill-conceived charge against Ramsay, a move that ended in catastrophic defeat. The parallel is deliberate, framing Jon not as a leader backed into a corner, forced to gamble everything on a single throw of the dice. This establishes a key theme—the recurrence of strategic desperation, a motif that connects this battle to its predecessors. Blackwater too was built on a foundation of despair within King’s Landing, with Cersei Lannister preparing poison for herself and her son, believing defeat inevitable. Battle of the Bastards transplants this atmosphere of impending doom to the frozen fields outside Winterfell.

Before the main event, however, the episode delivers another significant battle on a different continent. In Essos, the fleets of the slaver city-states—Yunkai, Astapor, and Volantis—besiege Meereen. Daenerys Targaryen, having returned on the back of Drogon, vows a fiery retribution. In a scene that cleverly subverts expectations, Tyrion’s diplomatic overtures (which had previously failed) give way to a dramatic negotiation. The slavers’ representatives arrive expecting surrender, only to be informed that the surrender must be theirs. Daenerys’s claim is backed by overwhelming force: the sudden arrival of her Dothraki khalasar turns the land battle, while her three dragons, attacking from the air, make short, spectacular work of the wooden slaver fleet. It is a swift, brutal demonstration of power. Daenerys spares one master, Yezzan zo Qaggaz (Enzo Cilenti), to spread the word of her wrath, and later meets with Yara and Theon Greyjoy to secure their fleet for the invasion of Westeros. This sequence, while technically ambitious and rich in CGI, is narratively straightforward. Sometimes spectacle simplifies conflict; here, wooden ships are simply no match for dragonfire, rendering the outcome a foregone conclusion. Its primary function is to re-establish Daenerys as an unstoppable force, a contrast to the gritty, uncertain struggle about to unfold in the North.

The battle for Winterfell is where the episode truly earns its reputation, and it unfolds with a brutal, tactical realism that stands in stark contrast to the dragon-led rout in Meereen. Initially, Ser Davos devises a sound plan to mitigate Bolton’s numerical superiority: digging trenches to protect their flanks and funnel the enemy into a kill zone where they could be attacked from three sides. This plan is instantly obliterated by Ramsay’s mastery of psychological warfare. In a moment of exquisite cruelty, he produces the captured Rickon Stark, tells the boy to run towards his brother, and begins firing arrows at him. Jon Snow, acting on pure instinct, charges out alone on horseback in a futile attempt to save what he believes to be his last living brother. Rickon falls, and Jon’s cavalry and Wildlings, loyal to their commander, instinctively follow him into a disastrous frontal assault. This single, emotionally charged decision shatters any hope of disciplined tactics and triggers a massive, chaotic melee.

What follows is a directed chaos. Miguel Sapochnik, taking the directorial reins from Neil Marshall (who helmed both Blackwater and Watchers on the Wall), demonstrates an unparalleled skill in depicting the claustrophobic, visceral horror of medieval combat. The battle is shot with a terrifying intimacy. We are thrust into the press of bodies, the mud, the blood, and the panic. Ramsay, ever the pragmatist, casually orders his archers to fire volleys into the seething mass, thinning the ranks of both sides with chilling indifference. Despite these losses, he retains his disciplined infantry reserves. They advance in a grim, phalanx-like formation, shields locked, slowly and inexorably encircling Jon’s dwindling forces. The cinematography here is deliberately reminiscent of famous historical encirclements like Cannae, creating a suffocating sense of inevitability. Jon’s army is trapped, crushed, and subjected to a slow massacre. Just as the defenders in Watchers on the Wall faced annihilation from two sides, Jon’s men are compressed into a shrinking circle of death, with no possibility of escape.

Then, at the precise moment when all seems lost, the horns sound. The Knights of the Vale, led by Petyr Baelish and accompanied by Sansa Stark, arrive in a glorious cavalry charge that smashes into the rear of Bolton’s infantry. The tide turns in an instant. Ramsay flees to Winterfell, but any hope of a last stand is dashed by the giant Wun Wun, who sacrifices himself to batter down the gates. Jon storms the castle, beats Ramsay into a pulp, and Sansa later delivers poetic justice by feeding the defeated Bolton to his own starved hounds.

This climax provides the cathartic release the audience had yearned for across multiple seasons. The beloved hero triumphs, and the most despicable villain meets a gruesomely satisfying end. It is this fulfilment of fan desire that explains the episode’s immense popularity. It is one of the rare instances where Game of Thrones gives its audience exactly what they want, a stark contrast to the nihilistic shocks of the Red Wedding or the frustrating injustice of Oberyn Martell’s death.

The episode is justifiably praised for its direction. Sapochnik faced the monumental logistical challenge of staging two major battles in a single episode, a first for the series. While the Meereen sequence was more CGI-dependent, the Winterfell battle demanded a different kind of genius—making tactical sense and shifting fortunes comprehensible to a viewing audience without the aid of fantasy creatures. He succeeded magnificently, taking counsel from military historians to ground the spectacle in a harrowing realism. The violence is visceral and unflinching, but it is never gratuitous; it serves the story of a desperate, costly struggle. The triumph is costly: young Rickon and the last of the giants, Wun Wun, lie dead. This commitment to cost echoes The Watchers on the Wall, which was hollow and temporary, bought with the lives of Grenn and his brothers. Battle of the Bastards learns that lesson well—even the good guys pay a high price.

However, if there is a significant flaw in this otherwise masterful episode, it lies in the mechanism of the victory. The arrival of the Knights of the Vale functions as the ultimate deus ex machina. While the show had precedent for last-minute rescues—Stannis’s intervention at the Wall in Season 4 being the most direct parallel—the exact timing here feels too convenient, too perfectly calibrated to the moment of maximum despair. It retrospectively makes Sansa’s earlier, deliberate withholding of this potential aid from Petyr seem not strategically shrewd, but inexplicably and dangerously silly. Her refusal to even mention the possibility of Vale support created the very crisis the knights then resolve. This narrative contrivance prioritises dramatic tension over character logic, a choice that sparked considerable debate among fans and critics alike. It is a crack in the episode’s otherwise solid foundation, a hint of the more problematic, character-motivation-bending plotting that would plague the final seasons.

The episode’s quality was formally recognised with Emmy Awards for Sapochnik’s direction and for David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s writing. Its cultural impact is undeniable, immortalised in the ubiquitous internet meme of Jon Snow standing alone, sword drawn, facing the thunderous charge of Bolton cavalry—an image that perfectly encapsulates the episode’s theme of defiant, hopeless heroism.

In the end, Battle of the Bastards represents both the apex and a subtle turning point for Game of Thrones’ tradition of penultimate battle episodes. It synthesises the claustrophobic intensity of Blackwater and the large-scale choreography of The Watchers on the Wall, refining them through Sapochnik’s visionary direction into a sequence of unparalleled cinematic power on television. It delivers cathartic, crowd-pleasing narrative resolution while maintaining a gritty, costly realism within the battle itself. Yet, its reliance on a narratively convenient rescue sows a seed of doubt. It demonstrates that when spectacle becomes the primary engine, even the most brilliantly executed battle can rest on a foundation of slightly suspect storytelling. It is, therefore, not just the ultimate highlight of the series, but also a poignant testament to its evolving priorities—a breathtaking spectacle where the sheer force of its execution very nearly, but not completely, overwhelms its structural imperfections.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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