Television Review: Home (Game of Thrones, S6X02, 2016)

Home (S6x02)

Airdate: 1 May 2016

Written by: Dave Hill
Directed by: Jeremy Podeswa

Running Time: 53 minutes

The sheer, sprawling epic scope of Game of Thrones has always been both its greatest boast and its most daunting narrative challenge. By its sixth season, the series had long accustomed its audience to the absence of key characters from entire episodes, a necessary evil of managing a cast of dozens across continents. Yet this practice reached its apotheosis of narrative neglect with Bran Stark. His quest for the Three-Eyed Raven, seemingly concluded with his arrival at the weirwood cave in Season 4, resulted in the character being unceremoniously benched for the entirety of Season 5—an omission that felt less like a scheduling necessity and more like a creative admission that his mystical, slow-burn storyline had become an inconvenient tangent. The second episode of Season 6, aptly titled “Home,” finally addresses this gap, but its function is emblematic of the show’s late-stage metamorphosis. Home is a brutal, sudden rearrangement of Westeros’s complex political web, executed with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel, prioritising shocking tableaux and plot propulsion over the nuanced character work that once defined the series.

The episode opens in the frostbitten depths beyond the Wall, immediately re-establishing Bran’s narrative. Guided by the Three-Eyed Raven—now recast from Struan Rodger to the legendary Max von Sydow—Bran experiences a vision of Winterfell’s past. It is a poignant, if somewhat saccharine, sequence. Bran witnesses his father, Ned, as a boy sparring with his brother Benjen, and sees the fleeting image of his aunt Lyanna, a figure he knows only as a stone effigy in the crypts. The inclusion of a young Old Nan (Anne Tierney) and, most significantly, a young, articulate Wylis (Sam Coleman)—the stable boy who would become the simple-minded Hodor—offers a tantalising breadcrumb for future tragedy. Von Sydow, with his sonorous gravitas, lends the scene a weighty, mythic quality, yet his warning that dwelling there is dangerous feels less like profound wisdom and more like the show nervously signposting its own forthcoming, and often clumsy, reliance on time-bending narrative mechanics. This vision serves a dual purpose: it re-acclimatises the audience to Bran’s powers and provides a fleeting moment of warmth before the episode descends into its characteristic cold brutality. It is a competent scene, but one that already highlights the show’s new preference for iconic imagery over substantive exploration of Bran’s psychological state after years of isolation.

From this mystical detour, Home lunges headlong into resolving the cliffhangers left simmering since Season 5’s brutal finale. At Castle Black, the mutiny led by Alliser Thorne reaches its predictably swift conclusion. Edd’s escape, his rallying of Tormund Giantsbane and the wildlings—including the giant Wun Wun—and the subsequent surrender of the Night’s Watch conspirators is executed with workmanlike pacing. The mutineers are deposited in the ice cells, and the stage is cleared for the episode’s central, much-hyped event: the resurrection of Jon Snow. Ser Davos Seaworth, a man of pragmatism not piety, turns in desperation to the disgraced Melisandre. The ensuing ritual, conducted in a gloomy storeroom with Jon’s corpse laid out like a sacrificial offering, delivers manufactured suspense. The red priestess chants, washes the body, and cuts his hair—all to no immediate effect. One by one, the hopeful onlookers depart, leaving only Ghost and the corpse. Then, in a final gasp of air, Jon’s eyes snap open. It is the dramatic beat the entire world was waiting for, yet its execution renders it curiously hollow. The resurrection feels less like a miraculous, world-altering event born of divine magic or profound sacrifice, and more like a cynical narrative reset button, dressed up in the trappings of a medical drama’s last-second CPR success. The audience’s widespread prediction of this outcome robbed it of surprise, and the show’s decision to frame it with such clichéd “is it, isn’t it?” melodrama did little to reinvest it with genuine wonder.

Elsewhere in the North, the episode continues its theme of brutal, simplified realpolitik. Sansa Stark, having escaped Winterfell with Theon Greyjoy, is now under the protection of Brienne of Tarth and Podrick Payne. Theon, crippled by guilt and fear—both of Ramsay’s hounds and, as he admits, of Jon Snow’s likely vengeance for his betrayal of the Starks—chooses to part ways. He requests a horse to make for the Iron Islands, a decision that makes stark dramatic sense. It removes a dramatically spent character from a plotline needing momentum and pragmatically acknowledges that Brienne’s chances of delivering Sansa to Castle Black are higher without a broken, hunted man in tow. It is a clean, unsentimental severance, typical of the episode’s ethos.

That ethos finds its purest, most horrifying expression in Winterfell itself. The political manoeuvring of the Boltons, once a subtle game of legitimisation through marriage and fear, is here resolved with astonishing, brutal swiftness. Roose Bolton is told that Lady Walda Frey has given birth to a trueborn son, irrevocably undermining Ramsay’s tenuous position. Ramsay’s response is a primal act: he embraces his father and stabs him. The shock on Roose’s face is palpable, but more telling is the immediate, silent acquiescence of the surrounding lords. Power, the scene asserts, resides not in bloodlines or legal decrees, but in who holds the knife and has the stomach to use it. Ramsay then completes his consolidation by luring Walda and her newborn to the kennels, where they are fed to his hounds. The act is not shown directly—a rare moment of restraint—but the sound design and Ramsay’s chillingly casual demeanour make it one of the most disturbing moments in the series to that point.

This tendency to simplify and sensationalise is equally evident in the episode’s revival of the dormant Ironborn plotline. At Pyke, Balon Greyjoy stubbornly clings to a failed conquest, refusing his daughter Yara’s pragmatic counsel to make peace. His stubbornness is rendered moot in a scene of pure, gothic melodrama. On a rope bridge during a storm, Balon is confronted by his long-exiled brother, Euron (Polou Asbæk). A brief, exposition-heavy exchange establishes Euron’s madness and ambition before he casually tosses Balon to his death. It is a spectacular, visually striking murder, but it is pure narrative convenience. Euron returns at the exact moment required to inject chaos into the storyline, and his character is defined not through demonstrated action but through grandiose pronouncements. The subsequent introduction of the kingsmoot—a quasi-democratic elective assembly that adds a sliver of unique cultural worldbuilding to the Iron Islands—is a welcome detail, but it feels like a bone thrown to book readers after the blunt force of Balon’s dismissal.

In King’s Landing, the tension between the Crown and the Faith Militant continues to simmer. The High Sparrow’s calculated cruelty in barring Cersei from her daughter Myrcella’s funeral is a potent stroke, provoking a furious Jaime to threaten the sparrow’s life. The High Sparrow’s calm retort—that he and his followers would welcome martyrdom—is a sharp reminder of the unique threat posed by fanaticism. More interesting is Tommen’s scene with Cersei, where the boy-king expresses his shame and impotent rage, wishing he had torn down the Great Sept. It is a rare moment of psychological insight in the episode, hinting at the weakness that will soon be catastrophically exploited.

Across the Narrow Sea, the narrative continues to streamline Daenerys’s absent empire. In Meereen, Tyrion Lannister, now de facto ruler, is confronted with the crumbling of the queen’s legacy, as Yunkai and Astapor revert to slavers. His solution is a characteristically bold, foolhardy gamble: to unchain Dany’s two remaining dragons, Rhaegal and Viserion, in the catacombs. The scene is a highlight, combining genuine tension with Tyrion’s wit and vulnerability. That he survives is perhaps a stretch, but the act serves as a symbolic assertion of control and a promise of future firepower, even as Tyrion himself doubts the risk’s worth.

In Braavos, Arya Stark’s storyline remains in a holding pattern. Still blind and begging, she endures beatings from the Waif until Jaqen H’ghar reappears to continue her training. It is a perfunctory check-in, ensuring the audience remembers her arc exists, but contributes little to the episode’s momentum.

Behind the scenes, Home is notable for significant production shifts that reflect the series’ elevated status and budget. The recasting of the Three-Eyed Raven with Max von Sydow is the most prominent. Replacing the capable but lesser-known Struan Rodger with an icon of von Sydow’s stature, arguably the greatest film star ever to appear in the series, was a clear prestige play. Having just appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, von Sydow’s presence cemented Game of Thrones as the pre-eminent fantasy franchise of its day, a move that undoubtedly aimed to awe critics into overlooking the narrative simplifications becoming ever more apparent. Similarly, the recasting of Leaf, a Child of the Forest, from child actress Octavia Alexandru to adult actress Kae Alexander, accompanied by a far more elaborate, alien-like CGI design, showcases the increased budget. Yet this too feels symptomatic of a shift towards spectacle over substance; the character becomes a more visually impressive mystical prop, but her role in the narrative remains opaque and minimally explored.

This gets to the core critique of Home, and indeed of much of Season 6. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were now operating almost entirely beyond George R.R. Martin’s published source material. Their approach, however, was not to emulate the dense, interwoven complexity of the books, but to simplify drastically. Plotlines were boiled down to their most basic components; characters who offered no immediate dramatic payoff were eliminated (or, like Bran, ignored for a season); and political dilemmas were resolved with sudden, shocking violence. This was partly a commercial necessity—as the show conquered the global mainstream, it had to appeal to the lowest common denominator, favouring clear heroes, obvious villains, and immediate gratification over moral ambiguity and slow-burn intrigue.

Sometimes this simplicity works, as with Ramsay Bolton. His solution is brutally efficient and psychologically consistent for a character who understands only violence and dominance. The murder of Walda Frey, while horrifying, is coldly logical from his perspective. Yet elsewhere, the simplification feels crude. The Greyjoy resurrection is rushed, with Euron’s menace told, not shown. A more egregious example is a brief, grisly vignette in King’s Landing: a commoner (Dylan Edwards) entertains peers with the tale of flashing his large penis at Cersei during her Walk of Atonement. Later, while urinating in the cellars, the Mountain—now a hulking, silent zombie—appears and crushes his skull against a wall. While it efficiently demonstrates the Mountain’s lethality and Cersei’s newfound, vengeful protection, the scene is pure punitive spectacle. It serves no lasting dramatic purpose, targeting a single, random heckler instead of the systemic threat of the Faith Militant. It is shock for shock’s sake, a visceral jolt that substitutes for narrative progression.

Home is a solid, often gripping hour of television that nonetheless lays bare the creative compromises defining late-period Game of Thrones. It moves the pieces across the board with undeniable efficiency and delivers several unforgettable, if brutal, moments. The acting, particularly from Iwan Rheon as Ramsay and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, remains superb, and the production values are cinematic. Yet, beneath the surface gloss, a hollowing-out is evident. The resurrection of Jon Snow, the narrative centrepiece, feels like a foregone conclusion dressed in cheap melodramatic garb. The complex political tapestry of Westeros is repeatedly cut with the sharp, simple knife of murder rather than unravelled with patience. The episode is a confident stride forward, but one that leaves much of the story’s soul behind in the snows of earlier, more ambitious seasons.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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