Only death can pay for life (Spoilers)

[Faint]

I remain convinced that Shireen will be burned alive to bring him back in the books. Benioff and Weiss, as is their custom, did not want to burden their audience with the moral quandary that would entail. 

"I had bad dreams," Shireen told him. "About the dragons. They were coming to eat me."

[TheBreastplateStretcher]

27 minutes ago, Visenya the Dragon said:

Well put. This is possible. I notice she cuts his hair and  burns some of his hair, and washes his wounds. I wonder what that was about. I wonder,  her touch is warm and when cleaning the wounds it could of helped heal them. Your thoughts?

I took the hair sample burning as a piece of Jon that she needed to offer up in the concoction. Some palm readers or fortune tellers may ask for a possession or so to get the spirits going so to speak. My grandma was a santo who could do some stuff and without going into great detail she would keep some bizarre things around for certain future use. Anyways I assume the the cleaning of the wounds may have just been a customary curtasy. I'm still indeed of the mind that it may have been the leaches that were meant accidentally for Jon from jump street. Her vision were correct most likely, just for the wrong guy. Makes you wonder how she got mixed up with stannis(RIP) in the first place. Was the lord of light's plan to use stannis(RIP) as the bridge for Mel to Jon? We'll never know I'd bet.

[OZGOD]

4 hours ago, Mr Smith said:

We've been hit over the head with this rule time and time again by both the show and the books, so why was it so blatantly ignored for the most important resurrection of the series? I always assumed Ghost would be sacrificed to resurrect Jon/return Jon's consciousness to his body. I don't know what to think now.

I suppose the other explanation is that Jon's king's blood was the key to his resurrection, but they didn't even mention it. The entire scene, while atmospheric and climactic in its direction, just seemed incredibly lazy in terms of the way it was thought out.

I guess if you want to look at a sacrifice (at least for the show, not the books), you could argue that Melisandre sacrificed Stannis and an entire army by sending them off to Winterfell to die. Though I guess she wasn't planning to sacrifice them at the time.

[Visenya the Dragon]

12 minutes ago, TheBreastplateStretcher said:

I took the hair sample burning as a piece of Jon that she needed to offer up in the concoction. Some palm readers or fortune tellers may ask for a possession or so to get the spirits going so to speak. My grandma was a santo who could do some stuff and without going into great detail she would keep some bizarre things around for certain future use. Anyways I assume the the cleaning of the wounds may have just been a customary curtasy. I'm still indeed of the mind that it may have been the leaches that were meant accidentally for Jon from jump street. Her vision were correct most likely, just for the wrong guy. Makes you wonder how she got mixed up with stannis(RIP) in the first place. Was the lord of light's plan to use stannis(RIP) as the bridge for Mel to Jon? We'll never know I'd bet.

That makes since. I am with you on this. Only thing is his scars are said to not to be there in next week preview. That makes me think she could have healed them from the heat in her hands. Beric has all of his scars. Makes me wonder.

[Tall Tyrion Lannister!]

3 hours ago, SerMixalot said:

A baby was eaten by dogs in this episode.  I wonder why no one is talking about it.  Perhaps that was the blood for Jon's life

Not only that, but you had Robert Strong  hulk smash a dudes head in and Wunwun  kill a guy right at the wall.

[Xcorpyo001]

"Only death can pay for life" is a FM belief, not one of R'hllor. And they don't even bring people back from the dead. Not in the way we'd expect.

The Red God has another one. Thoros was able to bring Beric back because he didn't expect it. I think is something linked to belief. If you perform the ritual hoping for a revival, you'll be left with a corpse. But if you do the ritual just to show your respect to the god, maybe R'hllor will decide if he wants to grant life to the one that is offered to him in this ritual. Maybe he only does it to people that still have a role to play in the fight with the Others, or maybe to some that were killed before their time, etc.

She didn't even performed the Kiss of Life. Amateurs.

[The Great Udder]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

There ought to be something along the lines of Beric, some part or parts of Jon missing or obscured

 

This reminds me of Voldemort and Horcruxes.

[bloodsteel bitterraven]

4 hours ago, Mr Smith said:

We've been hit over the head with this rule time and time again by both the show and the books, so why was it so blatantly ignored for the most important resurrection of the series? I always assumed Ghost would be sacrificed to resurrect Jon/return Jon's consciousness to his body. I don't know what to think now.

I suppose the other explanation is that Jon's king's blood was the key to his resurrection, but they didn't even mention it. The entire scene, while atmospheric and climactic in its direction, just seemed incredibly lazy in terms of the way it was thought out.

Shireen was sacrificed.

[TheBreastplateStretcher]

9 minutes ago, Visenya the Dragon said:

That makes since. I am with you on this. Only thing is his scars are said to not to be there in next week preview. That makes me think she could have healed them from the heat in her hands. Beric has all of his scars. Makes me wonder.

I saw his back in the preview... Anyone claiming his scars are gone must've seen more than the preview they aired at episodes end. But the preview I saw showed no front. So I can't answer to that. If his scars are indeed gone that would be a bit marvel comicish no? I mean ok, I can accept that melissandre is "Dorian Gray" as we saw in the mirror last week and her being all really ripe in disguise, but for Jon to lose the scars completely is a bit wolverine, with the possibility of warging into a dire wolf to boot. Speaking of which, I feel bumbed for all time I spent reading the posts for years now assuming he warged at the time of his stabbing and how we'll most likely get a ghost POV and all that jazz. I'll never get that time back.

[SamuelVimes]

1 hour ago, The Arthur Smith said:

Really hoping for this. I would seriously stretch the chalkboard if i see Jon in the next episode, smiling and happy and all that like before just...Gah!

If Jon is smiling and happy, we'll DEFINITELY know something's gone wrong with the resurrection. 

[TheBreastplateStretcher]

16 minutes ago, SamuelVimes said:

If Jon is smiling and happy, we'll DEFINITELY know something's gone wrong with the resurrection. 

If his first word is "hodor" I'm switching over to Penny Dreadfull faster than Ben Johnson.

[Ibbison from Ibben]

5 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Hit over the head with something merely repeated and never proven — and with ample evidence to the contrary.

Which six men did Thoros sacrifice that Beric might live again?

Just out of curiosity, why do you think post-Mummer's-Ford Beric was ever alive? He doesn't eat. He drinks but a little. We don't know if he excretes, but probably not. We don't even know if he breathes.

This immediately suggests comparisons to Coldhands and Robert Strong. Coldhands doesn't eat, excrete, or breathe, and only drinks a little. He has black hands from pooled blood. (Beric doesn't.) He exhibits what seems to be most of his pre-death personality. (I don't think he is being warged by BR. If he was, he wouldn't need to communicate with the ravens.) Robert Strong doesn't eat, drink, excrete, or speak. We don't know about his hands. Coldhands is aware of his own death, and never claims to be alive. Kevan Lannister speculates that Robert Strong may be "not alive".

Beric seems closer to being what we would normally call alive than Coldhands, who is closer than Robert Strong.  Beric>Coldhands>Robert Strong.  But are any of them truly alive? A better question might be, are any of them fully alive? Life and death doesn't seem to be a binary choice in this story - we seem to have a spectrum between life and death.

The assertion "Only death can pay for life" in the books comes from Mel and Mirri Maz Duur, both of whom studied in Asshai. Asshai is the place to go for mysterious knowledge. As for Thoros, he was educated at the Red Temple in Myr. The first time he brought Beric back, he was completely surprised, not only about his own ability, but about the fact that it could happen at all. He apparently never heard any stories at the Temple about Red Priests being able to do this in the past. It seems to be the first known occurrence of the phenomenon. Thoros' ability may have nothing to do with being a Red Priest, but his own inherent power - remember that the Red Temples search for and recruit those with special abilities.

Practical upshot - "Only death can pay for life" may refer to a full resurrection, with a subject that is fully functional - eats, drinks, excretes, breathes, no pooled blood, etc (don't think Jesus - a better example would be Lazarus), whereas any other "return" would be only partial.

ETA - clarity

[Cryler]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

 

 

The price of Beric's returns from death was the death of self, in other words. No surprise he was moved to die the final death to give Catelyn life -- it was an unbearable existence.

I gather it remains to be seen what cost there is to Jon's return. There ought to be something along the lines of Beric, some part or parts of Jon missing or obscured, if they want to follow what they've laid out on the show.

 

I always thought the prologue from Dance set this up. The information about a wargs second life meaning Jon's consciousness will be in Ghost so when his body gets healed/resurrected he will come back whole. They even did a little nod to it with Ghost motioning towards Jon as if to say here go home.

[Clash]

46 minutes ago, Cryler said:

I always thought the prologue from Dance set this up. The information about a wargs second life meaning Jon's consciousness will be in Ghost so when his body gets healed/resurrected he will come back whole. They even did a little nod to it with Ghost motioning towards Jon as if to say here go home.

That was how I always believed it would happen. The mechanism for bringing his body back to life would be a mechanism which in other instances have left the resurrectees a few pence short of a shilling. But it seems that Jon warged into Ghost at the point of death and resumed control of his body once it was reanimated by Mel. As you say, the prologue in ADWD gave us an insight into this.

Probably.

[Dorian Martell]

6 hours ago, SerMixalot said:

A baby was eaten by dogs in this episode.  I wonder why no one is talking about it.  Perhaps that was the blood for Jon's life

A king died as well. King blood + Dogfood= Super duper resurrection spell boosting power. Then if you factor in the commoner in KL and fat walda as well you could probably raise an undead army.........

[Ser Yorick Ampersand]

This is the most inconsistent show I've ever seen so you can't relly on what they've been telling you over and over.

[north of the wall]

I was hoping to everyone being like "ghost woke just as Jon did" because I was seriously hoping that meant he had warged Ghost. I'm still hoping Bran will get some time next ep and we find out he revived Jon/convinced him to leave Ghost same time Mel tried to resurrect Jon so that its not the red god work but the old gods. 

Anyone else?

[jbob]

4 hours ago, The Arthur Smith said:

Kinda disappointed we waste our time and effort speculating how Jon's gonna be resurrected and today, he came back perfectly.

But i hope they will show some outcomes of the resurrection for the next episode.

Did you see Beric? He was hardly that bad off. A bit of memory problems and that's about it. And that's partly due to how many times he got revived. Cat doesn't count because she went insane before she died.

[Jedi Renee]

4 hours ago, TheBreastplateStretcher said:

I took the hair sample burning as a piece of Jon that she needed to offer up in the concoction. Some palm readers or fortune tellers may ask for a possession or so to get the spirits going so to speak. My grandma was a santo who could do some stuff and without going into great detail she would keep some bizarre things around for certain future use. Anyways I assume the the cleaning of the wounds may have just been a customary curtasy. I'm still indeed of the mind that it may have been the leaches that were meant accidentally for Jon from jump street. Her vision were correct most likely, just for the wrong guy. Makes you wonder how she got mixed up with stannis(RIP) in the first place. Was the lord of light's plan to use stannis(RIP) as the bridge for Mel to Jon? We'll never know I'd bet.

Rip stannis the one true king 

2 hours ago, Ibbison from Ibben said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you think post-Mummer's-Ford Beric was ever alive? He doesn't eat. He drinks but a little. We don't know if he excretes, but probably not. We don't even know if he breathes.

This immediately suggests comparisons to Coldhands and Robert Strong. Coldhands doesn't eat, excrete, or breathe, and only drinks a little. He has black hands from pooled blood. (Beric doesn't.) He exhibits what seems to be most of his pre-death personality. (I don't think he is being warged by BR. If he was, he wouldn't need to communicate with the ravens.) Robert Strong doesn't eat, drink, excrete, or speak. We don't know about his hands. Coldhands is aware of his own death, and never claims to be alive. Kevan Lannister speculates that Robert Strong may be "not alive".

Beric seems closer to being what we would normally call alive than Coldhands, who is closer than Robert Strong.  Beric>Coldhands>Robert Strong.  But are any of them truly alive? A better question might be, are any of them fully alive? Life and death doesn't seem to be a binary choice in this story - we seem to have a spectrum between life and death.

The assertion "Only death can pay for life" in the books comes from Mel and Mirri Maz Duur, both of whom studied in Asshai. Asshai is the place to go for mysterious knowledge. As for Thoros, he was educated at the Red Temple in Myr. The first time he brought Beric back, he was completely surprised, not only about his own ability, but about the fact that it could happen at all. He apparently never heard any stories at the Temple about Red Priests being able to do this in the past. It seems to be the first known occurrence of the phenomenon. Thoros' ability may have nothing to do with being a Red Priest, but his own inherent power - remember that the Red Temples search for and recruit those with special abilities.

Practical upshot - "Only death can pay for life" may refer to a full resurrection, with a subject that is fully functional - eats, drinks, excretes, breathes, no pooled blood, etc (don't think Jesus - a better example would be Lazarus), whereas any other "return" would be only partial.

ETA - clarity

Great post !

[Maid So Fair]

Jon's hair has a life of its own.