Normally the smell of old produce can be unpleasant, but I can't tell you how happy I was to see the Onion Knight again. And it wasn't merely because Ser Davos, the fingerless former right-hand man of Stannis, appears to have as much trouble reading books as you people think I do. No, the sight of Davos being freed from the Dragonstone dungeon warmed my heart and seasoned this entire excellent episode because it was a reminder of just how wonderful Game of Thrones can be when it digs in instead of spreading out.

I've judged the past two weeks harshly not because there wasn't enough action but because there was far too much of it: the camera whooshing from here to there and back again, like a three-eyed raven on a four-day coke binge. Believe me, I understand that the epic scope of this story demands multiple perspectives and myriad narrative threads. Even someone who hasn't read a word of George R.R. Martin's prose can be suitably stunned by the sheer size of the world he's created, the way small butterfly wings of culture, history, and pride beating on one continent can cause empires to fall on another. That Game of Thrones has a tendency to feel diffuse is more a byproduct of the medium than an indictment of the maestro; it's not easy taking a Hound-size plot and cramming it into Arya-size installments every week. Having too many wonderful characters to service is a good problem, one that other showrunners would walk through wildfire to experience. But it is a problem.

Happily, "Second Sons" was all solution.

“This war has just begun. It will last for years.” The words emerged from Melisandre like so much secondhand smoke, but they could well be coming from the HBO executive boardroom. As year two of this grand, multivolume experiment in adaptation and decapitation comes to a rousing close, it’s clear that the network would be perfectly happy if peace never came to Westeros at all. Most season finales of cable dramas are, like Jon Snow, stuck playing a double game: attempting closure on the one hand and, on the other, teasing future conflicts. Game of Thrones, by contrast, goes completely Halfhand; after 20 hours of this sprawling story, only one thing is eminently clear: We’re just getting warmed up.