Game of Thrones is a good show, there’s no questioning that. And when it’s firing on all cylinders, like this week, it’s a great show.

It’s difficult at times to discern the direction of this season of Game of Thrones. Season two was all about a war, and all the action drove toward the climactic Battle of the Blackwater. This season, that war (like so many real wars) has disintegrated into an aimless, pointless debacle. It’s hard to even remember there’s a war on, since we haven’t seen an on-screen battle in ages.

It may actually be Danaerys that points the way to the season three thematic cornerstone: slavery. Her story has become the most interesting in the show. Military strategy, political backstabbing, dragons, conquest, and general awesomeness.  She’s currently roving about the Free Cities, sacking strongholds and freeing slaves. Because there’s no system of kings and their bannermen from which to draw armies, military forces in the Free Cities are almost all mercenary companies. One such company is the Second Sons, who bear a broken sword on their banner.

The Second Sons are under contract with Yunkai to protect it. Dany wants to take the city, slay the masters, and free the slaves. She meets with the captains of the Second Sons, including the coarse Mero (absent his signature red beard) and the dashing Daario Naharis (absent his tri-forked blue beard). This condenses things from the novels, as they were actually captains of several different companies, not just the Second Sons. And indeed, Mero doesn’t die until much later, under very different circumstances.

The result, though, is that Daario, who professes to fight for beauty, is so taken with Danaerys that he slays the other captains and brings the Sons over to Dany’s side. Her army grows, and now she has cavalry. I love how her personal power is depicted. She doesn’t rave and scream. She doesn’t make grandiose pronouncements. She responds to Mero’s disgusting suggestions with an even stare and threatens him softly, with an amused smile. She faces Daario naked in the bathtub, never shirking his gaze. Indeed, she manages to seem totally in control of that situation despite her vulnerable circumstances.

Now let’s see if we can drive this slavery theme into the ground. I’ll bet there are slavery metaphors all over the place if we look hard enough. Tyrion puts a fine point on it when he tells Sansa before their wedding, “You won’t be a prisoner after tonight. I guess it will be a different kind of prison, though.” Freedom has its costs, after all. Dany will probably learn that soon enough. If a good proportion of the Free Cities’ economy is based on slavery, what do you suppose will happen when Danaerys dismantles it? Which doesn’t suggest that slavery shouldn’t be ended, but you’d better have a plan in place to fill the resulting vacuum. Hopefully something better than Reconstruction.

Tyrion and Sansa’s wedding is seriously the worst wedding ever (nod/wink/giggle). The groom gets hammered, his dad gets pissed, the best man is about as charming as a walking taint, and the bride mopes. Cersei’s bitchiness has grown tiresome now that she has absolutely no power of any kind. She can raise her hackles and hiss all she wants, but she’s been declawed. Margaery completely distracted me with that wry twist of a smile that hints at thoughts best left unspoken in polite company.

Post-wedding, Tyrion plans to consummate the relationship as per Tywin’s demands, but Sansa’s young age and reluctance stops him cold. “I won’t share your bed until you want me to,” and he collapses onto a couch. In the morning, Shae acts very bitchy, then beams when she notices the lack of blood on Sansa’s sheets.

Briefly, Arya travels with the Hound. She tries to kill him while he sleeps, but he talks her out of it. He tells her he’s taking her to her mother and brother at Edmure’s wedding, and reveals to her some of his good side, though she seems doubtful. Interestingly, though Arya’s story traveled a different path than in the novel, she is reaching the same destination at just the right time.

Back at Dragonstone, Gendry gets the royal treatment. Stannis releases Davos from the dungeon so he can counsel against Melisandre killing the bastard. Melisandre’s scene with Gendry was excellent. She seemed very charming at first, talking with him about her own impoverished youth. Her sensuality rises to the surface though. Worshipping the Lord of Light seems to take many forms. For the Brotherhood, it is about death and resurrection. For Melisandre, it is definitely Sex Magick. She could obviously get blood from Gendry with leeches without getting him super turned on and going down on him first. But that’s not how she rolls. Nothing under the robes, you know.

Samwell and Gilly trudge through the woods. Near a weirdwood tree they find an abandoned shack to shelter in for the night. Crows begin to gather nearby as Sam fails to light a fire. Gilly bristles under a perceived class divide, irritated by Sam’s inability to make a fire and inability to not use big words. Their conversation about baby names is interrupted by a cacophony of crows outside. Sam investigates and see the tree covered in hundreds of crows. Through the woods a lone figure walks toward them. A White Walker.

This scene was so awesome and scary. That figure stalking purposely through the trees, Jason Vorhees style…hell yes. Then it destroyed Sam’s sword with its icy grip and tossed him aside with superhuman strength. The dragon glass in Sam’s pocket turned out to do the trick, turning the Walker into a pile of ice shards. Shame Sam didn’t think to retrieve the weapon before they fled.

Love (and lust) makes people do foolish things sometimes, and on Game of Thrones, the consequences are never minor. Tyrion, for instance, is clearly deluded about his relationship with Shae, both in terms of it actually working out as he sees it (her living happily in a house in King’s Landing), and in terms of Shae being happy about it. She acknowledges all the b.s. in his reasoning in both regards, noting that Tywin would kill her as soon as he found out and that she refuses to have children who can never see their own father.

Speaking of fathers, Gendry and Melisandre are sailing back to Dragonstone (fantastic overhead show of their vessel moving through the wreckage from the Battle of Blackwater). She points to the Red Keep and reveals to Gendry that he is the bastard son of Robert Baratheon. Now, my memory of every detail of the novels is not perfect, but I don’t believe Gendry has ever been made aware of his true heritage. This episode was written by GRRM himself, so that’s interesting.

We’re treated to some sexy time with Robb Stark and his wife, delayed by the weather on the road to Edmure’s wedding. Robb’s shirt has been increasingly unbuttoned the last few weeks, so lingering view of a naked Stark was inevitable. Queen Nurse looked very cute in that fur bed as well. As she writes a letter to her mom, Robb’s queen reveals that she’s pregnant. That child would almost certainly usurp Sansa’s claims on Winterfell (such as it is), especially if it’s a boy. However, will there be any Stark bannermen loyal enough to take up the scion’s cause when he eventually comes of age? That’s awfully far into the future.

It’s tough to say if Jon Snow’s love for Ygritte will steer him wrong. Actually, it’s tough to say how much he really loves her. There’s clearly some attachment there, but one doesn’t get the feeling Jon is quite as “I’m yours and you’re mine forever,” the way Ygritte is. There’s some kind of silly love triangle angle being played out between them and the composite character whose name I’m unsure of (he’s two or three characters mushed together). I’m pretty sure Ygritte has no interest in that dude.

One storyline without a romance angle: Arya’s She gets one of the most badass lines in Game of Thrones history when she denounces the Lord of Light, and when asked who her one true god is, replies: “Death.” So much anger and bitterness in such a young girl. Arya escapes from the Brotherhood by simply bolting out into the woods, which seemed a bit too easy. Then she’s neatly caught up by The Hound, which also seemed a bit too easy. Maybe if we’d spent a little less time watching girls give cruel handjobs to Theon, we could have had things make a little more sense elsewhere.

I have to say that showing Theon’s torture, especially showing this much of it, is a mistake. It ruins the pacing of the episodes. It adds nothing to the story. This week’s softcore porn scene was titillating, and that blonde girl was very nice to look at, but of course the whole thing was horribly uncomfortable to watch anyway. Which was the point, but it’s not as if there’s some dire lack of discomfort in Game of Thrones already.

Sansa, though less annoying than when she was totally deluded about the life of a princess, is still a whiny moron getting tossed about on the political waves. She bemoans her life, and though she’s suffered through some terrible things, keep in mind she’s a princess. Well-fed, housed in castles, taken care of by servants her whole life. So she should really shut the hell up. Margaery continues to be awesome, telling Sansa that being experienced at sex is a good thing, and that Tyrion has a reputation for certain skills. Sansa of course can’t imagine that a noblewoman would know about sex simply from being a bit slutty, so she asks, “Did your mother teach you about that stuff?” Margaery: “Yes, Sansa. My mother taught me.” Classic.

My favorite scene this week was Tywin “counseling” Joffrey. Just as I said last week, Charles Dance having a scene with anyone is solid gold. Here we see that Joffrey is completely ineffectual as king, and that Tywin is really ruling the kingdom. He’s making deals and decisions that Joffrey knows nothing about.

Bran’s storyline just sort of flaccidly flops along. Tonks tells us a sad/scary story about her husband coming back as an ice zombie. Bran sits. Hodor Hodors.

Jaime makes an illogical yet very honorable decision. I might say it was in the name of love. Probably not romantic love, but a sort of honor and respect. When he leaves Harrenhal, Brienne calls him Ser Jaime. Not Kingslayer. Not Oathbreaker. It clearly moves him. When he realizes Locke won’t ransom her, he engineers his return Harrenhal for a rescue and a rousing action scene against a large, angry bear. Jaime outmaneuvers Locke and is able to leave Harrenhal again, this time with how “tow-headed plank” with him.

Dany arranges a meeting with a representative of the slave masters of Yunkai. What was originally a slippery way to acquire a loyal army of former slaves has become an anti-slavery crusade. She doesn’t need to conquer Yunkai. Indeed, the Masters are afraid of her, giving her a pile of gold and as many ships as she wants if she’ll leave their city be. That’s pretty much exactly what she’s wanted all along, but she really wants to free all the slaves. And since she’s the Mother of Dragons, she gets to keep the gold anyway.

There’s some great visual effects work going on again. First there’s this stunning shot of Yunkai. I can’t tell if it’s digital or a matte painting or what.

And the dragons, even as they grow up, and even in close up, are still amazing and utterly convincing.

It probably seems redundant to say that a given episode of Game of Thrones is filled with betrayal. It’s sort of Game of Thrones’ thing. But this week, everyone got betrayed. There was seriously a lot of betrayal.

Jon Snow and the wildlings are preparing to scale the Wall. Ygritte gets a little clingy, telling Jon after one night in a hot tub that she’s his woman and that she’ll cut his cock off if he ever betrays her. She also keenly observes that loyalty to their various causes is bullshit, since they’re just expendable soldiers in someone else’s war. The only loyalty they need is to each other. Tormund Giantsbane comes by to offer some tips on ice climbing, since they have a 700-foot wall of ice to climb. It’s an epic climb, complete with a Cliffhangeresque action scene (because Rattleshirt betrayed them). When they get to the top of the wall, they get a view of how beautiful Westeros is.

Samwell sucks at building fires, but is good at singing babies to sleep.

There’s a mostly pointless scene with Bran and company that exists mostly to remind us that they still exist. We do get a “Hodor,” out of it though.

Roose Bolton deals with Jaime and Brienne (in a hideous pink dress almost certainly chosen specifically to humiliate her), offering to send Jaime to King’s Landing in return for Jaime telling Tywin that it wasn’t Roose’s fault that Jaime’s been unhanded. Why is Roose so concerned with what Tywin Lannister thinks, when Roose is warring against the Lannisters? Jaime agrees but insists Brienne accompany him. Bolton turns him down.

Olenna Tyrell tries to dissuade Tywin from marrying Cersei to Loras Tyrell, and we desperately need to see more scenes with these two characters fencing. The combination of actor Charles Dance and the character Tywin Lannister seems to provide a perfect flint for other characters to strike themselves against. There are always sparks.

There’s a lengthy scene of Ramsay Snow torturing Theon. This isn’t really a divergence from the novels (these things happen, just “off-camera”). I honestly don’t know what we gain from seeing this firsthand. It really chewed up a big chunk of time this week that could have been better spent elsewhere. Would it not be more effective to show these things in brief flashbacks later?

Something does diverge from the novel this week, and in a major, major way. To be clear, I’m not obsessed over the show matching every detail of the novels, but I like to compare them as a way of discussing story structure. Storytelling in different media requires different methods, so obviously things must change to tell an effective story.

In this case, Melisandre’s journey away from Dragonstone has lead her to the Brotherhood Without Banners, where she seeks someone of royal blood, because such blood is required by her god, the Lord of Light. In the novels, she seeks out one of Stannis’ cousins, a bastard sired by Robert Baratheon (but acknowledged by Robert, since the boy’s mother was a noble).

Here, however, an old storyline is woven into Melisandre’s story. Gendry the blacksmith is also one of Robert Baratheon’s bastards, one of many brown-haired children once running around King’s Landing. This is how John Arryn and later Ned Stark confirmed that Joffrey is, in fact, the product of incest (not a single one of Robert’s children has blonde hair).

Melisandre, who we assume knows of Gendry’s parentage through her fire visions, pays the Brotherhood for him over the protests of Gendry and Arya. This eliminates a character entirely (the random cousin), and gives us a bit more in-depth theology. But Hot Pie seems to have taken Gendry’s place in the story, which could have small but subtle effects down the line. It’s a lot like peering into an alternate universe. “What if, instead of Gendry working at the inn as a smith, Hot Pie stayed there to work as a cook?”

In a confrontation with Arya, Melisandre describes another vision: darkness, with eyes looking back at her. Eyes of different colors, and Arya takes them. Consider Arya for a moment. She hasn’t been ill-treated herself at any point (not that life’s been easy). However, literally everything she cares about has been taken away from her.

Robb Stark tries to make a deal with the Freys. They’re still pissed because he went back on his agreement to marry one of Walder Frey’s daughters, but the Frey’s seem easily appeased. They want Harrenhal and its lands (the same joint Littlefinger wants, incidentally). Robb has no long-term interest in Harrenhal, so he agrees. The Freys want one more thing. A wedding. Edmure Tully (he of the unheroic victory at the Stone Mill and capturer of the now-dead Lannister cousins) balks but finally agrees. It’s settled. But Frey is “wary of long engagements,” so the wedding must occur within a fortnight. Robb, Edmure, and his troops must all head to the Twins for the festivities, even though they’re in the middle of a war.

There’s betrayal aplenty in King’s Landing. Tyrion and Cersei debate who’s getting the worst deal in the arranged marriage department, and Cersei reveals that it was Joffrey who ordered Tyrion’s death during the Battle of Blackwater. Tyrion goes to Sansa to awkwardly reveal that he’s her husband to be, and all her visions of escaping to Highgarden sail off into the distance.

Then we have Littlefinger, who’s sitting near the Iron Throne counting the swords. He gives what is honestly a pretty terrible, overwrought speech about ladders and chaos and metaphors and ambition. But whatever. Because he found out that Ros gave Varys information, Littlefinger gave Ros to Joffrey, who wanted to use a human as crossbow target practice. So Ros is dead and Joffrey and Littlefinger are forever cemented as the truest, blackest, vilest villains in a story with all too many shades of gray.

“The Final Chapter” opens with Hardy and the FBI review footage from the attack on the center, they ID one of the followers, Alex, and also make the connection that Carroll has brought to life some of Poe’s better known literary creations. But the real treat is when Hardy turns to see none other than a “Poe-Head” walking briskly up the sidewalk toward FBI headquarters. His look mirrored my thoughts exactly on the matter. The creepiest thing is when the mask is taken off, it is a kid under it. It turns out that Emma paid the boy $20 to put it on and go to them. There’s a phone number written on the inside.

Agent Parker luckily has her cell phone on her and picks up when Hardy calls. Her pitiful cries are heart wrenching as she tells Hardy she’s in a coffin, buried alive; another one of Poe’s signature plots. The FBI can’t trace her signal, so Parker tries to recount what she remembers of the route they took her on.

Meanwhile, Claire wakes up and finds that she’s in a, wait for it, a lighthouse with Carroll. I saw this one coming as it alluded to Poe’s last unfinished novel, and Carroll’s one pubbed novel. Even Claire nails his predictability with the lighthouse. Carroll thinks he’s so damn clever. Pffft. Carroll believes that seeing her death will do Hardy in for good. After Claire smarts off to him again, we get to see his even more deteriorated mental state with his childlike behavior. He throws her into a darkened room with a mysterious figure. I also have to mention that Carroll has undergone quite the transformation from episode one until now. His handsome good looks are now a flop sweat covered, mind addled, blood stained mess. His mental decline has mirrored his physical decline. Yet Hardy looks as good as he did on day one, minus the hangover, of course.

Hardy and the team come up on an abandoned car with a knifed tire in the forest where they are looking for Parker. It turns out to be a trap as Alex lies in wait, decked out in camo and sporting a sniper rifle as the gunfire begins. Hardy soon takes Alex down and they get him in custody.

The guy in the room with Claire, Neil Meyer, tells her the story that a couple of kids broke his ankle and threw him in there. Claire tells him it was Carroll who did it.

Hardy and Weston take Alex to do a little questioning to find Parker. We get to see a determined and violent Hardy attack Alex, forcing him to tell them where Parker was. I like this Hardy. In fact, I want to see him push this further.

Claire and Neil try to find a way out, but Carroll comes back to take Claire with him, carrying his trusty gun. Claire tries to convince him to let Neil go, but Carroll wants to kill him instead. Claire talks him out of it, and Carroll starts talking about their lost love.

Hardy and Weston take Alex with them as they race to find Parker. Hardy gets Parker on the phone and she wants them to tell her friends and family goodbye for her. It’s a tough scene, and you can see how hard it is on everyone’s faces. Parker absolves Hardy of the blame for her death because she knows he will take it on himself. They quickly get to a place that appears to be a freshly dug grave. It still doesn’t feel right, but they soon find a wooden crate, and once opened, it is indeed Parker. She’s stopped breathing, though, and Hardy desperately performs CPR on her, but she’s already gone. Alex mocks them with a bloody smile, and Hardy loses it, shooting him square in the face.

In the bottom of Parker’s coffin was Joe’s book. Hardy skims it and finds that everything was written, down to Hardy’s attempt to revive Parker. But in the story, Weston died when Alex shot him in the woods, so the story can be changed. The story says for Hardy to go to an abandoned building, alone. Hardy forces Weston to stay back, shooting the ground to make his point.

Back in the lighthouse, Carroll asks Claire when she knew that he liked to kill people. She said it was when he was arrested. She also admits that she loved him before all of that, and that she should’ve seen it coming. As Claire is a crying over her guilt, Carroll tries to show her that it’s not her fault, that she is the victim and he is the killer by dragging Neil out of the room and stabbing him multiple times until he’s dead. Hell of a way to prove a point.

Hardy makes it to the abandoned building and finds Emma there. She tells him to follow her directions because this is the real deal and she has been instructed to shoot him if she needs. Another follower comes up behind Hardy and injects him in the neck, leaving him unconscious. When he wakes up, he’s in the dimly lit lighthouse with Claire and Carroll. Carroll says the book is still being written. Carroll goes on to compare himself with Hardy, believing them to be the same. Hardy reigns him back in by asking about the ending of the book, but Carroll wants to know when Hardy fell in love with Claire. It’s always about Claire. Jealousy has been eating Carroll up since he’s been incarcerated it seems. We find out how Carroll has perceived Hardy’s involvement in his case from the beginning. Again, it’s all about Claire. His jealousy-fueled rage has him pointing an ice pick at her eyes. Hardy tries his damnedest to bait Carroll into attacking him instead. After he takes jabs at almost everything about Carroll, the ball is dropped when Hardy trashes Poe. What happens next is a fumbled attempt at going for Hardy that leaves Claire escaping and Hardy and Carroll fighting in the boathouse and find themselves in another dark room. These dark room action scenes are in almost every episode now it seems. A fire is started when the many barrels of fuel are spilled and Carroll gets trapped. Hardy retreats and Claire shows up in time for the both of them to watch the building explode in a ball of fire.

The episode concludes when the sun is up and the FBI are crawling all over the lighthouse property. Both Claire and Hardy insist on a positive ID on the partial remains that have been found. They also have seven of the followers in custody, but we’ll never really know how many there were all together, so the possibilities are endless. Hardy plans on taking Claire with him. Later that night, through dental records, the FBI identifies the remains as Carroll, and Claire and Hardy have a much needed and long awaited embrace. We see a very upset and incognito Emma watching the news report of Carroll’s death. She runs away in tears, I would guess, heartbroken. Hardy hears a knock on the front door, but it’s only FBI who have been assigned to watch him and Claire, bringing them food. Or is it? He hears another noise, but there’s no one there. When Hardy turns around, crazy ass Molly is in his apartment. Hell bent on carrying out her chapter, she stabs Hardy and when Claire comes in, rushing to Hardy’s side, she stabs her, too.

It was a helluva ending for the season, and it leaves me wondering, is Carroll really dead? I think I’ve been programmed to doubt everything around Carroll. Also, I have to wonder how this will end for Hardy and Claire. Will they kill Claire off to harden Hardy even further? I’m not quite sure how I feel about Parker’s death. They tried to develop her character, but only a little bit. She only became more human and emotional near the end, so I wasn’t as committed to her. She was important to Hardy, though, so I see it as another way to toughen him, make him edgier. Hardy’s losses were many this season, and I hope to see him come back rougher, grittier and more aggressive. He always had a bit of a soft side to him that never rubbed me the right way. If Claire dies, or is at least mortally wounded, it will surely change him. And perhaps one of my most favorite moments through the season was tonight when Hardy admitted to being sick of Poe. He said it! It was like that line was written for all of the fans that have stuck with the show. They heard our complaints and cleverly wrote in a caustic reply in a witty retort by Hardy. Brilliant!

Goodnight to Hardy and goodnight to Carroll, and, of course, goodnight to all of you amazing people out there who have read my recaps throughout this season. Thank you and I will see you again soon.

In the Brothers Without Banners’ secret hideout, Sandor Clegane and Beric Dondarrion prepare for a trial by combat. Beric takes up his sword and somehow causes it to burst into flame, which seems like dirty pool since everyone knows that the Hound has serious pyrophobia. Game of Thrones doles out magic sparingly (you’ve got zombies in the north and dragons in the south, but very little overt magic has occurred in Westeros itself), so the flaming sword looks cool and is perhaps a bit startling. In the novels, some characters seem to think it’s really just a bit of a parlor trick, more for show than anything. But there’s some serious magic ahead.

Clegane fights through his fear of fire admirably and slices into Dondarrion with a brutal hack. It cleaves Dondarrion’s shoulder, splitting his torso open, and he drops, seemingly dead. One of the brothers leaps upon him and recites a prayer to the Lord of Light. Moments later, Dondarrion stands and speaks. The Lord of Light has passed judgment. The Hound is deemed innocent of the charge of murder (for now). Clegane, who is really just brutally amoral rather than evil, manages to avoid getting daggered by Arya.

Campfire talk inevitably turns to the many deaths of Beric Dondarrion. He bears many scars from having died and been brought back several times, though each time takes a little bit of himself away. No parlor tricks there. Where he’d been split open, hours later he’s merely scarred. Meanwhile, Arya’s little band has dissolved completely, now that Gendry plans to stay with the Brotherhood, while Arya is taken to be ransomed to Robb.

Back at Dragonstone, we learn how truly screwed up Stannis’ home life is. His wife is a religious zealot and staunch supporter of Melisandre, even to the point of being overjoyed that Stannis has slept with the priestess because “nothing done in the service of the Lord of Light can be a sin.” Then he stops by a lonely tower cell to visit his daughter, Shireen. Shireen seems very sweet, but suffers from greyscale, which has left her face disfigured. Stannis tries to wreck the only glimmer of cheer in Shireen’s life by telling her that her friend Davros is a traitor.

Shireen doesn’t believe it though, and sneaks down to the dungeon to meet with Davros. She offers him books to occupy his time, but he confesses he can’t read. She begins to teach him against his protests (he’s worried she’ll get in trouble, but Shireen says, “What’ll they do, put us in cells?”). Sad. Sweet. Sweetly sad. Oh, but also terrifically creepy. Shireen’s eerie song (“The shadows come to stay…”) is a mashup of songs sung by a jester named Patchface in the novels. Not only does Patchface sing weird rhymes that seem to forebode looming tragedies, he seriously freaks Melisandre out. I’m a bit sad we lost that character, because there’s opportunity there for some very unsettling images.

Perhaps this week’s strongest segment came from Jaime and Brienne. Roose Bolton receives them at Harrenhal and they are made guest/prisoners. Jaime’s infected stump is treated painfully by a disgraced maester. He joins Brienne in the bath, a pivotal scene that melts their icy relationship somewhat. It’s also a wonderful scene that shows off what a brilliant epic A Song of Ice & Fire truly is. Jaime’s story of how he killed the Mad King Aerys Targaryen II certainly shows the complexity of his character. He’s done unforgivable things like father his own sister’s child and try to murder Bran, but in committing what by any standard was a heroic act (killing the Mad King), he has been branded his whole life as the Kingslayer and the Oathbreaker.

But more than that, this scene shows off how we are seeing a glimpse of a world that existed before we got here and will exist after we’re no longer watching. Robert’s revolution happened years before page one of Game of Thrones, but those events spin directly into this grand epic we’re all watching now. I think that’s important to remember for people looking forward to “how it ends.” George R.R. Martin has crafted this world for us to look in on, but you can be damn sure he’s not going to neatly tie up any loose ends, kill the bad guys and end with a wedding. Even when the final novel is finally written, you’ll find yourself wondering, “What happens after that?”

Something interesting also happens with Brienne in the bath. Until now, Game of Thrones has presented us with two kinds of female characters: princesses and warriors. You can be either like Sansa, or like Arya. You can’t be both. Notice how we never see Daenerys naked anymore, now that she has political power.  A writer I respect remarked on Twitter during season one, “All of the women with power in Game of Thrones wield it through sex, so do they really have any power at all?” I’m fairly certain he thought he was being progressive, but what a weird thing to say, to pretend that sexual power doesn’t exist, or that it is somehow illegitimate. Our society still has a hard time dealing with this stuff, where we think, “This is terrible that women have to use sex as a source of economic power,” without ever considering that they might choose to.

Anyway, Brienne has very much been a warrior. The show has gone out of its way to make her seem plain and unsexual. Seeing her freshly scrubbed; seeing her naked; and most of all, seeing her display some genuine caring for Jaime, all seem to offer the possibility that one needn’t be sacrificed in return for the other. That perhaps a woman can have power both martial and sexual.

One might even refer to that as “the Ygritte way.” Not much happened north of the Wall, although Jon Snow would probably not see things that way, seeing as he lost his virginity with an eager Ygritte. And even showed the more experienced woman a thing or two about oral sex, giving us the great line, “You know nothing Jon Sno-OH!” There was an undertone of sadness there, however. You felt it in Ygritte’s overly visible ribs, and her plaintive desire to stay in the cave with the hot spring forever. Life is not easy in the north, even without White Walkers around.

I spent so much time talking about Jaime and Brienne, so I’m to gloss over King’s Landing politics a bit (and Dany’s section, which was just Barristan Selmy and Jorah Mormont measuring their dicks). Tyrion got the Tyrells to pay for half of the upcoming royal wedding. Petyr Baelish plays creepy uncle to Sansa, then sends a spy to seduce Loris Tyrell, significantly affecting the male to female nudity imbalance. Tywin is pissed about the Tyrells planning to steal Sansa, since she’s the key to the north and heir to Winterfell (That’s agnatic-cognatic primogeniture for the truly nerdy. It means that the line of succession only passes to the eldest female heir once all the male heirs are dead). Tywin starts arranging marriages like pieces on a board. Sansa will marry Tyrion (who is horrified), while an arranged marriage with Loris wipes the smirk completely off of Cersei’s face.

That leaves us with Robb Stark. Or based on that top photo, Sexy Robb Stark. This week he finished demolishing the northern alliance. The Karstarks break into the cell where the Lannister cousins are being kept and murder them. Robb calls this treason. Until now, it could be argued that Robb just didn’t know how to keep an alliance together. But now we see the true source of his undoing: unyielding adherence to the letter of the law. It’s why his father is dead; Ned Stark would rather die than be dishonored. He could not bend, so he broke. And Robb, knowing that killing their lord will drive off half his army, beheads Rickard Karstark anyhow. Rickard curses Robb with his final words, and these sorts of curses seem to hold some weight in this world.

But if Robb is so driven to uphold oaths and law, and behead traitors and follow the law, what of his marriage to Sort-of-Pretty Nurse? Did he not pledge to marry Walder Frey’s daughter, then choose to ignore that pledge? So basically, Robb, who many viewers might point out is one of the truest “good guy” characters in Game of Thrones, is a huge hypocrite.

With Joey’s description of the house, Hardy and the FBI are narrowing down the possibilities. Meanwhile, Carroll’s creepy cult is doing death chants while holding hands in a circle. Weird. If that’s all of the followers he has left, say, less than twenty, the odds aren’t looking too good for him. Carroll’s says today’s the day their story will finally be heard. Jacob takes Emma to the side, questioning Carroll’s plan. He thinks Carroll may be planning on leaving them, and considering what Emma did to him, who can blame him for being paranoid, but the ball of warmth that Emma is just tells him to ‘suck it up’. Carroll goes to tell Claire that her character dies in his rewrite, and she can clearly see the crazy in his eyes as he has her dragged out of her room.

Hardy thinks he’s found the house, and all of the FBI and backups storm the residence, finding only one of Joe’s followers hanging in an empty room. They’ve missed him.

Emma and Jacob enter a couple’s house with Carroll waiting inside. Carroll and his followers are so unhinged and desperate. It’s a dangerous combination.

Hardy finds a book with a handwritten note from Carroll inside. Parker and him hash out what Carroll’s plans are. Carroll wants Hardy to witness Claire’s death.

Carroll ties up the couple and tries to have small talk with them. It’s ridiculous and once again highlights his detachment from reality.

Jacob admits his doubts about the cult, and he tells Emma that the reason he joined was because he thought it was going to be just the two of them. That’s like the old Jacob we used to know.

At an outside press gathering, one of the followers starts spouting a bunch of craziness and stabs a reporter, right in front of Hardy, leaving him wrestling the girl who did it and letting an unknown follower walk right past him.

In custody, Carroll’s follower that stabbed the reporter is still quoting Poe, saying her name is Annabell Lee. This one is a perfect example of how mentally unstable these people are that worship Carroll. She tells him that the reporter’s death was meant for him. Hardy gets rough with ol’ Annabell and she tells him that Claire must die so that Hardy can be reborn.

Carroll prepares the couple a pasta dinner and continues the façade. Emma actually shows remorse for screwing up Jacob’s life, with tears and all, but I can’t help thinking she’s planning on killing him since he’s a weak link for the cult.
Claire eyeballs the wine tool and offers her help in using it when Carroll is obviously in pain. He lets her do it and begins a conversation about trust and love between his hostages. He then goes on to lecture Claire on marriage vows then tells her to enjoy her food because it will be her last supper. He’s really something. Two police officers knock on the door and Emma shoots them when they question who lives at the house. Claire sees her opportunity when Carroll turns to leave the table and bashes him over the head with a wine bottle, stabs him again and kicks him for good measure. Claire and the couple leave the house running and Carroll sends both Emma and Jacob to find her. He says he plans to call Alex and meet up with them later.

Parker and Hardy discern that Carroll may be targeting the evacuation center. The FBI canvases the center and tries to look for any suspicious individuals that might be in the cult. Hardy remembers seeing Alex outside when the reporter was attacked. He approaches him and Alex raises his arms, the lights go out, and people start attacking with hatchets. Shots are fired, and the place turns to chaos.

Claire and the couple are running through the woods in the dark, and Emma and
Jacob catch up to them, pinning Claire down. They let the couple run away, but bring Claire with them.

In the evacuation center it’s like a real life fun house with the FBI moving slowly through the darkened hallways and rooms. This seems to be a preferred trope with this show as Parker and Hardy are often prowling around dark places with crazy cult members waiting behind every corner. Alex captures Parker and another follower approaches her with a bloody knife.

Jacob and Emma bring Claire to Carroll at a dock. We see him taking the boat out as Jacob and Emma drive away to meet Alex. Jacob tells Emma they can just leave instead. He’s really made up his mind to leave and as the two of them confess their love to each other, Emma tells him that she loves Carroll, too, as she kills him. I guess he really did see his fate coming after all. I can’t help but missing his character.

At the evacuation center there have been five civilian fatalities, and nine cult members dead, along with a missing Parker. We soon find out that Parker’s been carried out to the woods and is being buried alive. The show ends with Parker’s pitiful sobs. Insert chills here.

There’s a lot on the line for the season finale next week as we hopefully get to see what happens with Claire and Parker, as well as Carroll and Emma. Let’s not leave out Ryan Hardy. He’s the star of the show, for us and for Carroll. It all revolves around him. Will he be able to save the day? And I’m really wondering what will be in store for a season two.

For some reason the first few minutes of this episode felt really abrupt and detached. I had the strange feeling I’d missed an episode. But no. It was just weird. Some girls from the kitsune sorority act ditzy and slutty and reveal that Tamsin is at the end of her valkyrie life cycle. They also mention to Bo that Tamsin is involved with a bad guy. “Voldemort bad.” Whoa, don’t cross the cultural streams, kitsune!

This episode was just all over the place, wasn’t it? I think I hit some kind of a wall with Lost Girl this week, where the abysmal acting, nonsense plot, and ridiculous costumes finally started to outweigh the fun I used to have watching this. There’s pretty much one thing that happened that prevented me from throwing my hands up in disgust, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But seriously, that…thing Bo was wearing with the shoulder windows was almost a dealbreaker.

I’m just going to give you pictures of shirtless Dyson this week to make you feel better.

In the meantime, Bo and Tamsin get captured by Isaac’s troops to get into his base. In the prison cells, Aife does the “I’m so crazy” act and tells Dyson that Isaac kept asking who the “most powerful fae” is. Instead of the truth (Bo, apparently), she told him it was Dyson.

Isaac explains his plan to Lauren: he wants her to inject him with Dyson’s stem cells so that Isaac will gain fae superpowers because that’s how scientifimagic stuff works. “This is about evolution,” he says, and therefore should have his Scientist Club Secret Decoder Ring revoked forever. Lauren also seems quite sure that this process will kill Dyson, and even seems a little evil when she says she has the chance to, “Take out the one man who stood in my way.” It was only kind of evil though, because Lauren seemed to have been sedated at some point. She mumbled her way through the episode without a single facial expression of any kind.

Oh wait, real quick, let’s try to give Isaac some backstory and motivation so he’s not just a total cardboard cutout. How about his little brother was killed by a wendigo when they were kids? Perfect!

In Lost Girl land, here’s how taking a bone marrow sample works: first, there’s the windup. Then, you slam a needle into someone’s leg. Don’t worry about aim, just jab it in wherever. That’s it! You’re a sciencer! It’s fyoo-tile to resist.

Back in Isaac’s prison, Tamsin and Bo power up with some magic valkyrie Redbull they scored from Massimo the druid earlier. They pretend fight so the guards come and let them out of the cell. That’s how guarding people works. If they do something unusual, you let them out so they can explain themselves. Instead, Tamsin does valkyrie face and tells them all to lose consciousness. They do. Aife has one of the episode’s best lines that doesn’t involve Bo admitting she doesn’t wear panties: “If your father was here, he’d kill them all, and then resurrect them and kill them again!”

Then Tamsin and Bo fight. I’m trying really hard to understand the sequence of events here. I think this is accurate. Tamsin makes a snarky comment. Bo arbitrarily decides this means Tamsin is going to betray her. Tamsin throws the druid’s magic potion, but it doesn’t appear to do anything. They call each other nasty names. They have a fight scene that makes Kirk vs. the Gorn look like Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan. Then they polish off a bottle of wine together (off camera). They get weepy. There’s a lot of, “You’re perfect.” “No, you’re perfect.” They almost kiss.

Isaac develops super speed and Jessie Spano Syndrome and stabs Aife, but Dyson suffers no ill effects from the procedure because Lauren never operated on him, surprise twist. She actually gives Isaac some other random fae’s stem cells. Dyson chases Isaac around and apparently eats him. The wolf transform FX, especially when it was just Dyson’s face getting all feral and fangy, were quite good.

So I guess this whole Isaac storyline is over? Thank goodness, because whatever promise it showed in the last episode turned into a flaccid belch of pointlessness and some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen from fully clothed performers.

Luckily, that wasn’t all that was going on. We find Kenzi being interrogated by the Morrigan and her enormous bodyguard, Bruce. The wards against violence in Trick’s chambers prevent any serious torture, and Kenzi wins over Bruce, who despite his size and deep voice has a PhD in medieval studies. He has a crush on Kenzi and recites a poem for her, explaining it was actually a magical artifact that Hale gave her, the Twig of Zemora, that saved her. I wonder what the Berries of Zemora do. Poor Zemora.

The Kenzi/Bruce stuff was pretty cute, especially Kenzi falling in love with the Ford GT. I hope Bruce sticks around. Looks like Trick is going away for a bit, as Hale, who’s getting out of politics, rescues him and sends him off with Stella to Scotland to lay low.

And then the saving grace. Vex returns! He uses his mesmer powers to torture the Morrigan. He leaps around on a bed. He says Vexy things. And my hope has been restored. All is right in Lost Girl world.

Well, mostly. Bo’s dad, The Wanderer, makes an appearance. Showing up on the road with his back to Tamsin and Dyson, just as he appears on the Tarot card, was a nice creepy touch. Tamsin drives through him, he turns into smoke, they fly off a cliff and land upside down.

Then the Wanderer accosts Bo. She’s surrounded by smoke and disappears. In her place is a Wanderer Tarot card. But now Mssr. Wanderer has a traveling companion at his side.

This episode was mostly split between King’s Landing and Craster’s Keep north of the Wall, with a few stops here and there. One stop was a brief and seemingly pointless visit with Bran and Jojen and a three-eyed crow. Yup, Bran has weird psychic dreams and the crow has some kind of mystic significance. We understand.

We check in with Theon as well, and it seems his rescue has not turned out so well. His mystery rescuer may, in fact, by Ramsay Snow himself, masquerading and even killing off his own men to make Theon’s torture that much more brutal. Along the way, Theon declares his regret at murdering children and even decides he’s truly a Stark and not a Greyjoy after all. Lot of good it will do him tied to that cross. I think I understand what’s happening here, as far as why things are so different from the novel – without spoiling anything, let’s just say that in the books, Theon goes away for a bit, and when he reappears, he’s…different. Apparently we’re going to get a closer look at what happens in between.

Jamie is being terribly abused by Bolton’s troops, made to wear his own severed hand on a lanyard. He gives up and decides to die. Brienne mocks him for being so weak and pathetic, and for failing to understand that most people have something important taken from them in their lives when they’re not incredibly rich. Jamie has shown that there’s some good in him, but it’s hard to tell if losing his hand will make him a humble man or drive him to vengeance.

Arya and the Hound are lead to the Brotherhood Without Banners’ secret cave hideout (with their heads covered – practical and a bit of a callout the Lord of the Rings, when the Fellowship must be hooded before the elves will lead them into Lórien). There they meet the Brotherhood’s leader, Beric Dondarrion, a former lord who has turned to guerilla warfare with the Brotherhood. Arya calls out the Hound for having murdered her friend long ago in season one. For the charge of murder, Dondarrion sentences Sandor Clegane to trial by combat against Dondarrion himself. What’s interesting here is that Dondarrion appears to have embraced the Lord of Light, just like Melisandre. House Dondarrion didn’t play a role in last season’s war – why didn’t they declare for Stannis? Perhaps because Beric was busy hunting Cleganes.

North of the Wall, we get some quality time with the Black Brothers (but not Jon Snow and the Wildlings). Apparently a fair amount of time has passed since the brothers arrived at Craster’s Keep, since starvation (and shoveling) has become a serious concern. The best parts of these scenes were the sardonic humor some of the brothers use to deal with the hardships they face. When one of their friends starves to death, his funeral pyre elicits the line, “I never knew he could smell so good.” It’s not only darkly hilarious, it also suggests how terribly hungry these men are.

So hungry, in fact, that some of them, not so adept at redirecting their bitterness, rise up and challenge Craster, accusing him of hiding food from them. Craster ends up murdered, no surprise there. But so does Lord Commander Mormont, which was maybe a bit more startling. In the chaos, Samwell flees with Gilly and her newborn son.

There’s little action in King’s Landing, but plenty of intrigue. For the most part, we’ve got Varys and the Tyrells weaving webs that become entwined. But first, Cersei presses her father for a greater role in Lannister affairs. Tywin cuts her down almost as brutally as he did to Tyrion, telling her, “I don’t distrust you because you’re a woman, I distrust you because you’re not as intelligent as you think you are.” He also rakes her over the coals for her inability to control Joffrey. She suggests that Tywin should, “Prevent him from doing what he enjoys,” to which Tywin responds, “I will.” That sounds ominous.

Meanwhile, we get a firsthand look at Joffrey’s creeping insanity. He giggles creepily when describing the atrocities of the past to Margaery and in general seems to adore depraved violence. Margaery plays him like a harp, because he’s also simpleminded. Incest, man. It’s not good.

Varys, though, is worried about Sansa Stark. I mean, not worried worried, but interested in her as a useful piece in the Game of Thrones. Everyone at King’s Landing seems to assume that Robb Stark will eventually be killed in battle, which means that whoever marries Sansa will have a powerful claim to control of the north. Varys doesn’t want Littlefinger, who’s consolidating his power by marrying Lisa Arryn (nee Tully, Catelyn’s sister), to control Sansa as well. As Varys puts it, Baelish is the most dangerous man in Westeros, one who’d “Burn down this kingdom to rule over the ashes.”

We also get a glimpse into Varys’ past, as he shows Tyrion how a long con really works. He tells the story of the sorcerer who snipped off his man-parts when he was a child, then reveals that he’s found the bastard and keeps him in a box, possibly with his mouth sewn shut.

He’s getting his info from Ros, by the way, who seems to have graduated to full “real character who doesn’t have to show her boobs anymore.” While I love seeing Ros, and her wonderfully expressive face makes her well-suited for a larger role, there’s a weird sort of misogyny going on here. Notice how many terrible things happened to Ros when she was a whore, but things seem to go much more smoothly for her now that it’s her “former” profession.

They also references Podrick’s legendary tumble with the three whores from last week – Game of Thrones, it was a good gag. Don’t run it into the ground.

To prevent Littlefinger’s Sansa power play, Varys goes to Olenna Redwyne, Margaery’s grandmother, who again entertains us with her dry sarcasm, belittling some young Tyrell girls for incessantly embroidering golden roses, and even mocking House Tyrell’s emblem and motto. Then she makes Varys appear uncomfortable for possibly the first time in three seasons. She grasps the Sansa problem quickly and confidently tells Varys she has a solution.

Off camera, she puts her plan in motion. We see the wheels begin to turn when Margaery approaches Sansa, charmingly befriends her, and suggests that heading to Dorne to marry into House Tyrell is a far better option than traveling with Petyr Baelish. Sansa seems to agree.

All this would have made for a fine episode, but they saved the best for last. Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, offers no quarter to slavers. I don’t entirely understand how the slavers of Astapor could be so stupid, but they traded their awesome army of superslaves for a dragon they can’t control. And it turns out they don’t have a backup army hanging around. So it went something like this: “Ok cool, here’s your army of superslaves. Run along and conquer some cities.”

“Sure! I think I’ll start with this one.”

We’ve been waiting for three weeks for Dany to reveal that she speaks the slavers’ language (Valyrian), and it was ten times as awesome as I expected. When she turns and orders the Unsullied to attack their masters, it was freaking epic and amazing. She sounded so bad ass. One of the ongoing themes in A Song of Ice & Fire is, why do all these people follow Daenerys, why are they so loyal to her? What do they see in her? And hearing her belt out those lines, I was ready to throw myself at her feet.

Consider how much she has changed in three seasons, from a meek, unsure and subservient pawn traded into a marriage with barbarians by her brother, to this: A queen. A warlord. A savior.

Greg and Jared Butler have some interesting ideas about zombie movies, and how to make one like you’ve never seen before. They just need $45K to make it happen.

The Butler brothers want to film a movie about heroic zombies in a post-apocalyptic world fighting against evil human oppressors. The zombies are immortals who’ve lived for a hundred years or more, and use various bio-mechanical bodges to hold their deteriorating bodies together. The movie is called Undying. And while I was skeptical at first (whenever someone says they want to “redefine” something, I think, “I’d rather see an old idea done well than some half-baked innovation.”), but the immortal concept is pretty interesting. You could even argue that they’re not really zombies.

Other than the killer concept, the Kickstarter pitch offers very little about the characters and the story. Mostly there’s a shopping list of cool stuff they want to put into the film: Mad Max-esque cars, a guy who does crazy bullwhip stunts, a hot blonde zombie chick, and a detailed miniature set. Those all sound like fun, but they’ll be pointless if the story sucks.

There is one thing to get very excited about: make-up effects will be handled by our favorite Face Off contestant, Eric Fox. He can be seen in the Kickstarter pitch video doing some test make-up. Hopefully if this gets funded, they’ll let Foxy run wild so he can create some outlandish zombies.

Undying is seeking a modest budget of $45,000. If that seems ridiculously low, they’re only planning an initial 10 to 15 minute film. That isn’t made very clear on the Kickstarter page. If you’re interested in helping them make it happen, you can jump in at a bunch of different contributor levels, from a digital copy of the movie to a role in the film itself.

Back at the mansion, Roderick busts in Carroll’s office and, holy crap, he’s actually crying because he knows Hardy will find out everything, including where their house is. Meanwhile, Roderick suggests they all leave the house in small groups. He’s totally cracking under pressure, but Carroll refuses to leave, saying it’s not time yet. Carroll seems to be hiding something. Roderick keeps on pushing Carroll and he takes it, all up until he mentions Claire. Carroll flips and chokes him out, only letting up at the last moment. Tell me how there couldn’t be mutiny now. Roderick feels that Carroll has lied to him and used him. Carroll stops to watch Hardy doing a press release on the news. Hardy plays hardball by stating to the media that if any of the cult followers would cooperate with the federal authorities they would receive full immunity for their crimes. The catch is they have to do it on this day only. Funny thing is, the FBI didn’t know he was going to do this. It’s a smart and gutsy move by Hardy. He’s trying to break up the cult, to turn them against each other. Carroll tries to give a quick pep talk, but his words don’t seem as enamored now.

Roderick leaves the mansion and loses his mind in the process, pushing Claire down and grabbing Joey on the way out. The two of them take off in his car, leaving Claire running after them. Poor Claire. She’s always losing Joey.

Carroll sends two men along with Jacob after Roderick. He gives them the order to bring Joey back, but kill Roderick.

Donovan is pissed that Hardy took it upon himself to do the press release, but Agent Parker helps to convince him it was the right thing to do.

Roderick has clearly lost his shit. He forces a waitress, Betty, to help him and the two of them attempt to leave the town. At a police block, Roderick is asked to step out of the car. And he shoots all of them, of course. Betty is extremely upset at Roderick’s display of crazy, and she stops the car and gets out just in time for the FBI to pull up. Hardy and Weston have Roderick finally.

What is up with Claire wearing all of the heavy makeup and black eyeliner at the house? I don’t much care for this look for her. Desperate, she tries to get Jacob, when he finds Joey, to take him far away, but he says he will do what Carroll wants him to.

In custody, Roderick wants to make a deal. Hardy wants to know where Joe is, and Roderick admits that he took Joey. Hardy doesn’t believe him, and Roderick tells him to call Carroll and find out. With Roderick’s phone, Hardy calls Carroll who is busy typing away on his novel. He’s clearly surprised when Hardy answers, and his usual smooth demeanor has turned short and choppy. Now that Roderick has a sweet bargaining tool, he wants his freedom for giving up Joey. Hardy is eager to get Joey back safe, but Donovan says no dice.

Hardy takes a risk by leaving the headquarters with Roderick in some stolen FBI clothing. But before Roderick will leave, he makes Hardy leave his weapons and cell phone behind. I think this is a pretty dumb move, but I’m hoping that Hardy knows what he’s doing.

Emma goes to Carroll, stressed about the FBI finding them and reporting that the followers feel the same. Carroll cuts off her advances, telling her that they are only having sex, it was never anything more than that. He goes on to blame Emma for Joey being taken. When she doubts his line of thinking, he hits her. He sure likes hitting people when he’s upset. Such a nice way to deal.

Roderick and Hardy end up at an old house in the dark, but it turns out that Hardy isn’t so blind about this situation after all when Weston climbs out of the car trunk. Weston calls Parker and gives her an update on where they are as Hardy and Roderick go inside the house. Hardy hears Joey in a closet and as he gets him out, Roderick pulls a gun. Weston runs inside and before he can shoot, Roderick is shot from someone outside in the dark. Hardy and Weston assume it was Carroll’s people who shot him and he was right. The two men Carroll sent and Jacob are outside in the snow. Weston and Joey split up to one side of the house and Hardy in another. Each are ambushed by Carroll’s two men and Joey finds a decaying body. With only Jacob left, he finds Joey and runs with him.

Again? This is getting ridiculous.

Hardy and Weston are outside in the woods chasing Jacob and Joey. Hardy tries to reason with him and as Jacob’s faltering, police lights and sirens are approaching. Joey begs him, crying, to be let go. All of it gets to Jacob as he runs and leaves Joey behind. Is Joey finally safe? That poor kid’s been through hell. At least he recognizes Hardy for being one of the ‘good guys’.

It’s a nice scene with Hardy carrying the small Joey through a crowd of people. Claire watches it on television in tears. Carroll is extremely bitter with Hardy now.

Emma visits Jacob who’s back at the mansion now and he tells her with big tears that they’re going to die soon. Carroll is furiously typing away at his novel when Claire comes in, ready to make a deal. She says she’ll stay under one condition – that he gives up Joey. He doesn’t believe her, but she makes a good case. Surely Claire is up to something. I don’t think she could just leave her son. She’s pretty damn convincing, though, telling Carroll she thinks she can love him again. But all is revealed when she stabs him as they are in a sweet embrace. Claire is then grabbed by some followers and dragged upstairs as Carroll falls to the ground.

Hardy gets a phone call from Carroll, who tells him their story has taken an unexpected turn. He babbles on about rewrites and how Claire is no longer the leading lady. He finally announces it’s time for Claire to die. Now Hardy is at ends. A woman asks to speak to Hardy, claiming she’s one of the followers and wants to turn herself in. But when Donovan turns, she attacks him, stabbing him in the eye before she is shot.

There’s only two more episodes left and the preview for next week looks pretty interesting, alluding to a possible suicide pact with Carroll and his followers, and that Hardy will witness Claire’s death. I don’t particularly see Carroll taking the easy way out, but maybe his wound has taken a turn for the worse. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.