Dany threatening to burn Varys alive. There has always been the possibility of her being insane but with more and more foreshadowing, I truly think she will be the Mad Queen. Is this an obvious take? For whatever reason, I never seriously thought she would turn bad.
She did lay that threat on pretty thick. I did like that she didn't just accept Varys being on her side without reservation, since his track record is not one that would suggest loyalty. Still, her saying she would burn Varys alive in front of Melisandre, well beyond the point she was making in the prior meeting, could be a sign that the Dany might be unstable. Or maybe she just thought the Red Priestess would like to hear about the possibility of someone being burned alive.
On the theme of questioning someone's loyalty and punishing or forgiving past trangressions, I was thinking about the Sansa-Jon disagreement from episode 1. This is nitpicking, but Jon really wasn't doing the Karstarks and Umbers any favors by allowing them to remain in their ancestral castles/lands. Their names came up because they have the two closest castles to the Wall. If/when the Night King's army comes south, they'll be attacked first. It would not be a great benefit for someone who was loyal to the Starks to be "rewarded" by being placed in the path of an unstoppable army of the dead.
Some other episode 2 thoughts:
- I guess we won't see the Valyrian dragon horn. Someone watched the Desolation of Smaug and decided that the Westerosi could invent a wind lance instead.
- I don't know if there was an acceptable alternative to meeting with Dany (meet on neutral ground or send an emissary), but it had to cross Jon Snow's mind that the last time he made a decision like that, he was stabbed to death.
- In Tyrion and Dany's war plans, it's interesting there was no mention of the Dothraki. The Unsullied were going to Casterly Rock while the Tyrell and Dornish armies were going to King's Landing, but the Dothraki were apparently going to sit on the sidelines. While I understand the desire to avoid frightening people with a "savage, foreign, hored, " they're a pretty important force not to use at all and they also seem like the least likely group to accept inactivity.
