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This Week’s Worst Person in Westeros: Euron Greyjoy

Heeeere’s Euron!

HBO

After each episode in Game of Thrones Season 7, we’ll be considering a crucial question: Who is currently the worst person in Westeros? This week, Jacob Brogan is joined by Slate staff writer Joshua Keating.

Brogan: Hi, Josh! Thanks for joining me to talk about “Stormborn.” This is an episode that climaxed with Euron, crown douchebag of the Iron Islands (I think that’s his formal title), murdering a bunch of the Sand Snakes. It’s also an episode that actually concluded with Theon throwing himself into the ocean instead of trying to defend his sister. And, of course, it’s one that features Jon Snow continuing to have literally no understanding of military strategy or the fundamentals of being a king.

Last time you and I did this dance, we declared Petyr Baelish the worst. But the world has changed since Season 6. So, I ask you today: Who is the worst person in Westeros?

Keating: I have a hard time hating Euron, mostly because of residual fondness for Pilou Asbæk’s role as lovably sleazy spin doctor Kasper Juul on Borgen. I actually laughed out loud when he landed on the deck of the ship riding the big claw-hammer thing, grinning like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I can’t say I’m going to miss the Sand Snakes that much, but it was a gut punch to see Theon go back to his old cowardly ways after things had started to turn around for him. (Though one wonders if he might have been more willing to throw himself into the breach to save Yara if she hadn’t been humiliating him right before.)

Brogan: Fair point. It was … quite the scene of humiliation too. And that shot of Euron smashing on to the deck was, indeed, the perfect entrance.

In any case, Theon wasn’t the only character who abandons one of our heroines in her time of need. Shortly after Arya makes the decision to head North, she temporarily reunites with her long-lost dire wolf, Nymeria, now leader of a pack of her own. For a moment, I thought Arya was going to join up with the toothy warband, but Nymeria abruptly bails on her mere moments later.

Is it possible that, for the first time in recorded memory, a wolf is the worst?

Keating: I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to gather from that. Arya turning left and heading North seemed to be an indication that she was abandoning the very dark path she was on and returning to her family. But it seemed like Nymeria had decided that this was no longer the Arya she had known previously. So perhaps Westeros’ pluckiest serial killer hasn’t quite returned to her old self yet.

Speaking of Starks and the show giving us mixed messages, I admit that Jon very much to be doing that thing that all Stark men do, but it’s also possible to see his point of view. He’s keeping his eye on the slowly (so, so slowly) approaching showdown with the White Walkers—which the show has hammered home to us many times is a much graver and more serious threat than the chicanery in Kings Landing. The Walkers often seem like this world’s version of climate change—the big terrifying problem that nobody wants to face because

  1. They don’t believe it’s real, or
  2. There are always more immediate concerns and conflicts that get in the way

But the show encourages the audience to think that way too, since the politics south of the wall—and the associated sex and violence of course—is nearly always infinitely more interesting than the snow zombies. The show is called Game of Thrones after all.

More resonance with current events—did you detect some Bannonian overtones to the Lannister siblings’ xenophobic appeal to their hesitant allies to protect the West(eros) from “foreign savages and eunuchs”? Tyrion saw this rhetorical strategy coming a mile away, hence his insistence that a Westerosi army be used to take the capitol. Of course, that proved to be a little too cute, as Olenna Tyrell suspected. Sometimes if you have a horde and dragons you should just use them, regardless of the optics.

Brogan: Indeed, for a show about people plotting and scheming, no one seems to be great at actually strategizing. In that regard, Daenerys is just as Trumpian as the Lannisters, in her own way. Notice how obsessed she is with absolute loyalty. As some folks on Twitter pointed out, her scene with Varys, for example, felt a little familiar, resonating awkwardly with the story of one James Comey:

That said, the resonances with past episodes were sometimes ickier than any connection to our own world. Last week, Sam’s bodily fluids/soup montage offered us one of the grossest sequences on a frequently grotesque show. But this week’s protracted moment in which he pries necrotic tissue from poor Jorah’s torso gave us something arguably worse. At least we got to see Grey Worm’s butt!

Keating: True, on a week where we saw Theon humiliated yet again and Varys put in his place, at least Grey Worm could score one for Team Eunuch.

As for worst person, with all our true Ramsay/Joffrey evildoers bumped off, everyone seems to be mostly just playing their parts as we’d expect them to. (Only Arya has some personal conflicts to work out.) I’m actually coming back around to Euron, mostly because of the degree to which he spectacularly messed up everybody’s carefully laid plans this week, and did it with such style. He would totally take it as a compliment.

Brogan: From the moment he smashed down onto the deck, I found myself wanting to know more about him, even as I kept hoping he’ll die some ugly, unceremonious death. In that regard, he’s something this show has wanted for a while: a terrible person who you love to hate.

Keating: Euron Greyjoy, you are the worst person in Westeros.

Brogan: What is dead may never die.