If you thought winter was a long time coming, or that the White Walkers sure aren’t in any rush to show up at The Wall, that’s nothing compared to how long the wait between every season of Game of Thrones feels, especially with next season’s premiere pushed back a couple of months. (Since the period between books is an actual eternity, time means nothing to them, only the night, which is dark and full of terrors they will never be finished). Well, good news, fellow lovers of all things Westeros: HBO has new(ish) footage to help make the wait for season seven a little less interminable because we now have deleted and extended scenes from last season to help tide us over during this difficult time.
The DVD and Blu-ray from season six hit stores this week, and it didn’t take long for the extra scenes to hit YouTube (occasionally the internet is the best). But warning, there is some brief nudity right before the 9:30 mark that is NSFW.
And also, we get more of THIS guy.
The first clip is both an extended and deleted scene, which follows Dolorous Edd walking through the yard of Castle Black after he had gone to fetch Ghost to help guard Jon’s body. He runs into a very smug Alliser Thorne, who is still a few episodes away from getting his comeuppance for killing his Lord Commander. It’s not a bad scene, but there’s not much accomplished here that isn’t established with other scenes involving the coming stand-off between them.
For fun, see if you can pick up on where they didn’t bother finishing the VFX effects for this one. Here’s a screen grab to help.
Did you spot it? It’s a tough one!
The second is a deleted scene we told you about last week, featuring the Queen of Thorns, Olenna Tyrell, berating her son Mace for being played by Cersei Lannister as his children were imprisoned by the High Sparrow. This is probably the most sympathetic and human that the foolish Mace ever appeared, but he’s dead now, so oh well. Valar morghulis, you know?
That’s followed by a very extended scene of “scenes” (no, not a typo), featuring the Braavosi play that Arya was fond of watching. In it, Robert Baratheon’s mistreatment of his family, his copious drinking, and his death by boar get mocked (by someone doing a decent approximation of his voice), and it ends with a very stupid and ambitious Ned (we do NOT appreciate this portrayal) being executed by a virtuous and beloved Joffrey.
It felt like a lot (too much?) of this play was shown during the season, which would explain why some of it got cut, but there’s also a couple of obvious meta jokes here, about how the entire “show” is nothing more than “violence and profanity,” and that is is “utterly gratuitous,” that don’t quite fit with the show’s tone. They are funny little wink-winks at criticisms often levied at the show, and we did smirk watching Arya tell the off-put audience members to stop watching if they don’t like it, but that type of humor would have taken away from the episode, and also felt like an unnecessary knock on some critics, which the show should be–and obviously is–better than.
Also, the portrayal of Tyrion as an evil schemer and the crowd’s genuine dislike for him do not portend good things for the real Tyrion’s return to the Seven Kingdoms (if they hate him Braavos, imagine what it will be like in the city he fled as a fugitive). It’s really lucky for him that he’ll have dragons on his side.
So out of the three, the one we wish had been included the most is the scene with Olenna and her son Mace, because it would have helped give more resonance to Mace’s death at the Sept of Baelor (because clearly that mass murder was lacking pathos), but the others were both good, just superfluous.
But what about you, do you wish any of these scenes made the cut or was the chopping block the right place for them? Cross the Narrow Sea into our comments section below to let us know what you think.
Images: HBO
