Every season of Game of Thrones has reserved the big, dramatic event for episode nine of each season. Ned got his head chopped off in episode nine of season one (um... spoilers I guess), the Battle of the Blackwater was in episode nine of season two, and the Red Wedding was episode nine of season three. In last night's episode we got a pretty good idea of what's going to go down in the penultimate episode of this season. It was foreshadowed all over the place, most especially in the image below.

Spoilers after the jump!

Barristand Selmy is still dead. Anyone hoping that Barristan Selmy would make a miraculous recovery this week had their hopes crushed and dreams destroyed at the opening of the show. Barristan is most certainly dead, and various book nerds were probably screaming at their screens about how the show was “wrong” how “he’s not supposed to die,” even though the show has deviated from the books plenty before this.

Grey Worm, on the other hand, pulled through and had a touching moment with Missandei as he pulled back into consciousness. He said some warrior guy stuff about failing his men and Barristan, but really the scene was about a dude who was sculpted to be a mindless killing machine turning into an actual human, and he and Missandei finally smooched. Despite all the sex and nudity on this show, there are very few moments of actual affection, and this was one of them. I’m rooting for those guys. If either of them die, I’m chucking my laptop through a window.

In reaction to all of the hubbub with the Sons of the Harpy, Dany decided to remind the heads of the various families of Meereen that she is a mom of dragons (happy mother’s day, Dany!) and her kids can spit fire and eat people, and she allows her children to snack on a former slaver. It was great and morally satisfying because, after all, slavery is dumb and dragons are cool.

However, Missandei (for some reason) talked Dany out of solving her problems with fire and violence, and instead she’s going to marry the heads of one of the Meereen’s families for political reasons. This, once again, is the show improving on the books. In the books Dany marries the guy after a whole lot of insisting on his part, and she comes across as a flighty teenager rather than a politician. Here, she actually has agency. But still, instead of doing the awesome vengeful thing of feeding slavers to dragons, it looks like Dany is going to try to get the former slaves and former masters to actually get along. I am a little disappointed.

Dany, we tried something like that here in America. Instead of doing the practical thing after the Civil War and feeding Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to grizzly bears, we let the traitor slaveholders live. It was a disaster. Good luck, Dany. Don’t Andrew Johnson this up.

Someone please kill Theon. He’s brainwashed and broken, and it would pretty much be an act of mercy. Last night Ramsay Bolton kept trotting him out like the dickless meat puppet he is and, even though this is better than earlier scenes that were just nasty torture porn, these interactions are unpleasant to watch because it’s the show saying “Hey, remember all that torture porn?” Yes, Game of Thrones. Yes we do.

We also got to see something somewhat close to actual porn, with Ramsay shagging his girlfriend who was having a sad about him marrying Sansa. Ramsay tried to tell her all about how it’s for political reasons and such but still: sads. And then Ramsay threatened her and she seemed into it. Creepy.

Later still, Ramsay, Sansa, Roose and Walda (Roose’s wife, one of the Frey daughters) had a really awkward double date where Ramsay demonstrated that he’s completely incapable of civility. He made an awkward toast about “unity” or some nonsense, trotted out Theon and made him apologize for killing Bran and Rickon (which he didn’t actually do) and then said that because Theon was the closest thing Sansa has to a relative, he should give her away at their wedding. Also, Roose and Walda are having a kid, and Ramsay was miffed about it because that meant that he’d no longer be the special only child.

The show has certainly invested a lot in making the Boltons the new house that we’re supposed to hate, but I’m hoping that some of that scorn and vengeance will loop back around to the Freys at some point. They’re the ones who actually hosted the Red Wedding, and Walder Frey is every bit as nasty and bile-filled as Ramsay. The show’s building up to a showdown with Stannis and the Boltons at the end of this season where either Roose or Ramsay will probably get to die dramatically, but it should remember to tie up loose ends and eventually get to Walder Frey’s comeuppance. The North remembers, after all.

Stannis Baratheon, King of Grammar Also in the North, Jon Snow freed Tormund Giantsbane and told him to lead the Wildlings. Jon wants something of an alliance with the Ice Hippies because, after all, the White Walkers are coming, and every so often Game of Thrones reminds you that this is a show with zombies in it. Zombies who are supposedly a huge threat to Westeros, but who are not moving very quickly on this whole apocalypse thing.

Jon and the Wildlings are going to get on some boats, but the highlight of this episode’s time in the North was Stannis being pedantic about the usage of “less” and “fewer.” That right there was a pretty perfect summation of who his is and what he’s about. Shadow assassins and burning people alive are all well and good, but if you really want to show that someone’s a dick, make them a pedant about grammar.

Stannis and his dudes are moving against the Boltons in what will probably be the big battle in episode nine of this season. Notably, Brienne and Pod were also lurking around Winterfell, so they’ll probably meet up with Stannis, and Brienne could very well try to exact revenge on the man who killed Renly.

Notably, Melissandre is going with Stannis. Without giving too much away, a thing happens at the end of A Dance With Dragons that Melissandre could potentially fix. But, if she’s going with Stannis as opposed to staying at the Wall, that makes her unable to possibly do the thing. Interesting.

A view on the past. The episode closed with Tyrion and Jorah rowing through the ruins of Valyria, a fallen empire that I’ve always imagined as Westeros’ analogue for ancient Rome. Some kind of unexplained doom came to Valyria, and its ruins are still shrouded in smoke and mist. Jorah, knowing that pirates avoid those waters, decides that sailing through smoky waters is a great idea.

While making their way through the ruins, Tyrion and Jorah catch a glimpse of Drogon and, for Tyrion, it’s the first time that he’s ever seen a live dragon. The whole sequence was all about how very old things, magical, fantastic things, were coming back into the world. Game of Thrones is sort of like the opposite of Lord of the Rings in that way. In LotR, magic fades and leaves Middle Earth, and the world passes into the hands of humans, hobbits, and non-magical people. Game of Thrones is very much about the distant and strange past resurfacing, and this sequence really embodied it. Ancient stuff and old things are coming back.

And then Tyrion and Jorah got attacked by Stone Men, guys with grayscale, the same disease that Shireen has. Tyrion appears to have escaped unscathed (after Jorah saved his life) but Jorah appears to now be on borrowed time, and more or less doomed to become a crazed human golem. Sorry, Jorah. You've had kind of a terrible life, and now it's just getting worse.