Is There No More Wildfire Left?

Published August 31, 2017 · Updated July 6, 2022

Gentlemen,

Before I get to my thoughts on your GoT S7E7 Deep Dive, let me first express my sincere thanks for your podcasts. When I began watching American Gods, I searched for a podcast to supplement my viewings and found yours. I very much enjoyed it; your commentary was smart, focused and insightful. I especially appreciated your willingness to criticize the show where you saw reason to. I may not have always agreed with those critiques (though I usually did), I respected them for being well-reasoned and substantiated. One can’t ask for much more. As AG wound down, it was mentioned that you did a cast on Game of Thrones and I made a mental note to start listening when season seven began. I found your spread of weekly shows equally interesting. So thanks very much.

My belated thanks offered, let me turn to the business at hand. I listened to your Deep Dive on the drive to work this morning and have a few thoughts.

Big D was speculating on whether Euron’s fleet is armed with cannons. To the best of my recollection there have been no gunpowder weapons of any sort in the series. That would be a game-changer. However, Euron’s ships, as well as the Slaver fleet that assaulted Mereen a couple of seasons ago, are shown using catapult-like weapons (surprisingly accurately) to hurl flaming projectiles at other ships and land structures. Given the wights’ vulnerability to fire, those would work nicely against the army of the dead, should they come within the very limited range of the weapons.
Is there no more wildfire left? It would be the perfect weapons against the wights and in some ways less risky to employ than Daenryes’ dragons. I seem to recall that the formula to make it was lost long ago, and both Tyrion at Blackwater Bay and Cersei with the Sept of Baelor had to rely on old, existing stocks. If so, Sam needs to hit the books; if he can find a cure for greyscale, perhaps he can dig up this recipe.
As for Arya using Baelish’s face to get close to Cersei, this seems very unlikely. Littlefinger was killed before a room full of witnesses, all of whom would know that any subsequent appearance of Littlefinger would be some sort of trickery. Given how quickly news travels in the show and Qyburn’s network of spies, I can’t see news of his death not getting out, and not getting out quickly. The nobles from the Vale alone have plenty of reasons to quickly communicate the event back to The Eyrie to arrange the change in leadership. Had Arya killed Baelish in secret, which I thought was likely, then this might have worked, but now it seems farfetched. Thanks again.

Severian

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