YMMV / Game of Thrones S6E7: "The Broken Man"

---

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Brotherhood members who massacre the Septon and the villagers. Were they really from the Brotherhood Without Banners, or pretenders? Or maybe they were from the brotherhood, and are actually rogues. We get an answer in the next episode.
  • Yara after her little "therapy" session with Theon in Volantis. Is she a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk whose advice basically amounted to telling a castrated torture survivor in a whorehouse to "suck it up or fuck off and die", or is she honestly trying to help Theon in the one way that she knows how to because of how out of touch Ironborn society is with the rest of Westeros, especially considering this is a setting where There Are No Therapists?
  • The throwaway line where Bronn tells Jaime not to say his House's motto - is he annoyed at not having received payment yet, annoyed at having heard it so often, or does he feel some residual guilt for abandoning Tyrion when he needed Bronn the most?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lyanna Mormont, filling the void left by Shireen for many.
• Epileptic Trees: Arya's behavior coupled with some noted odd tics (tossing the coin with her right hand despite being left-handed and her odd manner of walking) have led to tons of theories as to there being a twist behind her plot in this episode. A common theory is that it was really Jaquen pretending to be her due to some thinking the walk mirrored hers, but there are other theories as well.
  • Sharp-eyed viewers have noticed that Arya walks past someone who looks just like her in her Mercy disguise, complete with hair, though we only see that person from behind.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Brother Ray dies by hanging. Between being cast in this episode and it airing, Ian McShane was cast as Mr. Wednesday, an incarnation of the Norse god Odin in the TV series version of American Gods. Odin famously was hanged for knowledge.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Absolutely no one believes Arya is dying. They already brought back the Hound and Jon from worse.
• Memetic Badass: Lyanna Mormont. Within a day people were already joking about how if she had 3 dragons, the show would have been over 3 seasons ago.
• One-Scene Wonder: 10-year-old Lady Lyanna Mormont of Bear Island may be the single most badass little girl on this show save for Arya, and spends her five minutes of screen time handily shutting down Jon and Sansa before being begrudgingly convinced to give 62 soldiers to their cause by Ser Davos.
• Paranoia Fuel: Arya getting stabbed by the Waif. She barely survives the encounter, but she goes into shock and wanders the streets now bleeding, paranoid over who else could possibly really be a Faceless Man.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Brother Ray, the stand-in for Septon Meribald and the Elder Brother who are both still alive in the books. The fact that the show didn't fully adapt his famous Broken Men speech or minister to veterans at a hospital or interact with Brienne (considered even by detractors to be the high points of A Feast for Crows), and that he's only introduced to awkwardly give Sandor angst with a simplistic Pacifism Backfire has made many lament the missed potential of the character, especially since McShane is excellently cast.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The fact that Yara's Tough Love treatment of Theon works, rather than backfiring as it probably would in real life. When explaining their reasons, the producers said that a medieval society wouldn't have had much understanding of psychology and therapy. While true, if that wouldn't work today, why would it work for Theon? What if Theon actually attempted suicide? Imagine how much this would have changed Yara and Theon's relationship. Yara could have had an My God, What Have I Done? moment, while also making the point that recovering from severe trauma and abuse takes time, not an "inspirational" speech.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Yara's treatment of Theon and her speech to Theon on being an Ironborn was intended by the showrunners to be a legitimate Dare to Be Badass moment, but instead it comes off as highly mean-spirited and insensitive. Some also point out the Aesop Amnesia of Theon trying to be Ironborn again since it was his attempt to be that which caused problems for him. The fact that Theon is the only one who seems to care that he is a child murderer and has to remind Yara only makes her feel like a typical Greyjoy Jerkass. Also the implication that people with PTSD should kill themselves was not received well.
  • Sansa's backbiting against Davos to Jon also got this reaction from fans, especially since she mocks Stannis' achievements and Davos sticking with the Starks despite not being a Northerner and a man of the Night's Watch (which Jon points out to her). Some find this especially harsh because Stannis died trying to liberate Winterfell and restore the Starks, which should at the very least earn her polite respect, especially as it was his fighting the Boltons that enabled her to escape Ramsay. Her parroting Brienne's complaints about Stannis killing Renly, which invited this reaction from fans in the previous episodes, now results in Sansa getting the same reaction.