Reviewed: GOT: Breaker of Chains

There will be spoilers ahead so read on at your own risk...

After the extrordinary events of the Royal Wedding, this episode picks up right up from where 'The Lion and the Rose' left off, with Joffrey laying dead on the ground and his mother screaming for Tyrion to be arrested. They then realise Sansa is missing but it appears as they are too late to catch her as she has already escaped with Dontos, who led her away during Joffrey's demise. Not all is as it seems though for Sansa though as Dontos leads her on to a ship we realise it was Petyr Baelish ('Littlefinger') who was behind her escape after all. After Dontos receives his payment for aiding Petyr in a crossbow bolt to the face, Littefinger tells Sansa how he fooled her; the seemingly innocent and kind gesture by Ser Dontos (gifting Sansa the necklace as a thank you) in the season premiere turned out to be nothing but a ploy from Littlefinger to get her to trust Ser Dontos, he knew that Sansa wouldn't just run away with a stranger.

All of this means that Littlefinger almost certainly knew that Joffrey would be killed, but was that the limit of his involvement though? When thinking of suspects of Joffrey's murder last week both Littlefinger and Varys crossed my mind but I ruled them out because I didn't believe they had a lot to gain from the king's death. Littlefinger has always had a fascination with Sansa, he was madly in love with her mother after all. But would he plan a royal assassination purely to get Sansa out of King's Landing, it seems unlikely.

As expected, Joffrey's younger brother Prince Tommen will now become king. Tywin and Tommen were discussing the attributes needed by a good king in front of Joffrey's displayed corpse. They ultimately come to the conclusion that being a wise king, unlike Tommen's older brother Tywin points out, is the most important thing. With Tommen being so young (12 in the show) Tywin says a wise king knows what he knows and what he doesn't know and that he should lean heavily on his small council. This was merely Tywin's way of positioning himself to control the new king, as he had a tough time attempting to control Joffrey. Tywin also discusses Tommen's future queen, it may even be Margaery Tyrell after her and Lady Olenna mention the possibility of her marrying again.

As Tywin and Tommen exit the Sept and leave Cersei with her son's corpse, Jaime enters and one of the most bizarre scenes we've seen in the show begins. Cersei is being her usual self as she orders Jaime to kill Tyrion, Jaime has doubts over Tyrion's guilt though because he knows that Tyrion is too smart to incriminate himself. Cersei has no such doubts about her youngest brother's guilt because her son is dead and all she could think about is the threat Tyrion made to her back in season 3, she also has hated Tyrion since he was born, which was never going to help Tyrion's cause. Jaime ends up forcing himself on Cersei after they argue, actually shifting Joffrey's body at first before they both move to the floor. Cersei tells her brother to stop but Jaime ignores her and continues. So yeah, that happened, and I really don't know why. From what I understand, this scene went down very differently in the books, yes Jaime was frustrated with how hard he worked to get back to Cersei only for her to turn him away for taking too long but it didn't change how out of place it seemed.

They decided to go from that scene to Arya and the Hound who provide some comic relief in this episode, these two seem like they are destined for a spin off sit-com at times. The conversations these two had in this episode make me think that they will both end up crossing the narrow sea and going to Braavos, Arya likely believes all of her family are dead and after all, she does have friends in Braavos so it makes sense for her and of course for the Hound, who mentioned possibly joining the 'Second Sons' who we saw in season 3. I can't imagine Arya ending up at the Vale. I expect her adventures to continue, hopefully in Braavos.

As well as making sure to control Tommen, Tywin also takes advantage of Joffrey's death by attempting to secure a much needed alliance with Dorne with Stannis, Balon Greyjoy, the Wildlings and Daenerys all threats. Tywin needs all the help he can get and he knows that Oberyn can aid him on that front. Tywin invites Oberyn to the small council as one of the new King's principal advisors, as well as being a judge on Tyrion's trial. In return, Tywin offers Oberyn the chance to meet with 'The Mountain' who had raped and killed Oberyn's sister. I think I speak for all fans of the show when I say how happy I am to see that Oberyn will be sticking around. It will also be interesting to see 'The Mountain' as it has been a very long time since we last saw him in the show.

We got to see our first look at Tyrion since Joffrey's murder and yet again he is locked in a jail cell. The world's most loyal squire, Podrick Payne was paying him a visit and Tyrion was remarkably calm albeit he does has experience being in tricky situations like this. Podrick informs Tyrion that he was approached and offered a knighthood in exchange for testifying against Tyrion. Being the man he is, Pod refused but Tyrion, likely believing he is already dead for a crime he did not do effectively ordered Pod to accept or get out of King's Landing. Tyrion wanted this to be the last time he ever saw his squire, he sees no reason for both of them to die for no reason. So will this the last time we Podrick Payne? If it was he left quite an impact on many of folk in King's Landing, especially the ladies...

Now back at the Night's Watch, Sam is becoming worried about Gilly being the only women at the Wall. Despite all of the men at the Wall taking the vow, with the amount of rapers at the wall he feels the need to find her a safer place to stay with her baby. He ends up taking her to a brother/bar in a nearby town. But with the amount of people that appear to hate Wildling's in her new home, it remains to be seen how much safer she truly is now. The Night's Watch have a lot more to worry about than Gilly though, Mance Raider is coming and as Jon Snow points out; Mance has more than enough men than he needs to defeat the Crows but he just doesn't know it yet, mainly because Jon told them that Castle Black has 1,000 people defending it, 10 times more than it actually has.

As the title of the episode suggests, we end with Daenerys who has finally made it to Meereen. She is greeted by a Meereen's champion and she seeks a champion of her own, as you would expect all of the usual suspects like Jorah, Grey Worm and Barristan Selmy stepped forward but the only person she is willing to risk is Daario. Naharis outsmarts his opponent in typical Daario fashion, I'm finally starting to warm to the new actor who seemed a lot more charismatic in this episode than he did when he was first introduced in 'Two Swords', the season premiere.

After that, Daenerys gave her usual speech to the people of Meereen about how the slaves of Astapor and Yunkai now stand behind her as free men and women. The speech was impressive but it also points out to the viewer that this is the third that this is the third time she's travelled to a city and attempted to free the slaves, isn't it all getting a bit repetitive now. Daenery's segments are my personal favourite parts of the show but I have found her story to be frustrating since her brilliant episode in Astapor, sadly it seems unlikely that her story will progress as far as most fans would like in season 4 but I would welcome being proved wrong. The episode ends when Dany brings forward siege weapons that fire barrels that turn out to smash on impact and reveal the broken chains of the former slaves of Yunkai and Astapor.

It was a somewhat frustrating ending to an episode that lacked the intensity of last week's, but it would have been very difficult to have that kind of episode two weeks in a row. Game of Thrones has set itself extremely high standards so despite this being an entertaining hour of television it ends up being a bit of a disappointment. It's obvious that we will see more exciting and action-packed episodes as the season progresses.

Next week's episode is entitled Oathkeeper and will be on HBO on Sunday and Sky Atlantic one day later in the UK. Here is a preview of that episode courtesy of the Game of Thrones YouTube channel.