The Bastard Bowl has come and gone, and it’s fair to say that it was a resounding triumph. “Battle of the Bastards” is easily one of the most exciting, brutal, and narratively satisfying episodes Game of Thrones has ever done. We not only get to see Dany lead her dragons into battle for the first time, but Ramsay Bolton, the show’s most exasperating and despicable character, finally gets his comeuppance in dramatic fashion. There’s only one episode left in season six, and it’s shaping up to be a busy one (there’s a reason it will clock in at a 69 minute runtime, the longest in the show’s history). Although “Battle of the Bastards” only focuses on two of the show’s many ongoing plots, it leaves a ton of lingering questions for next week’s episode and beyond.
10. Why Didn’t Rickon Zig-Zag?
Poor Rickon. The youngest Stark sibling was finally brought back this season after a long absence, only to be used as part of another one of Ramsay’s twisted “games” (hell, Rickon didn’t even get a single line of dialogue!) As soon as Ramsay took out that bow, you knew Rickon was getting offed, but his death still felt like a bit of a stretch. Call me crazy, but if some maniac was firing arrows at you, wouldn’t you try to make it as difficult as possible for him to hit you? An unpredictable target is much harder to hit than one that’s moving in a straight line, so why didn’t Rickon do some zig-zags to try and throw Ramsay’s aim off? Ramsay’s clearly a skilled archer, but there’s a good chance that if Rickon moved erratically enough, he could have made it out of range and to the safety of Jon’s army.
Either way, Rickon needed to die to help build even more dramatic tension within the episode, but it just would have been nice to have seen the Stark everyone forgets about actually try and make things difficult for Ramsay instead of giving him an easy target.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/game-of-thrones-review-battle-of-the-bastards.html Source: pastemagazine.com