Y’know…if two weeks ago someone would have told me that my favorite scene of this episode of GAME OF THRONES would end up being anything but the fight between Oberyn and The Mountain I would have called them a filthy liar who lies. But surprisingly, there was something else that grabbed my attention even more than that clash of the titans. Sansa Stark’s finally beginning to play the game of thrones.

The episode started with Littlefinger “on trial” before a few of the Lords of The Vale and things were not looking good for Mr. Baelish. All indication was that Baelish would be found guilty of killing Lady Lysa and possibly lose his head when Sansa was called in to give eyewitness testimony. Seeming like the naive Sansa of old, she quickly dropped the facade that she was Littlefinger’s niece and admitted who she really was. But then she began to detail a slightly skewed version of the events leading up to Lysa’s death that made it look like Littlefinger was a saint and Lysa was a suicidal loon who lept to her death through the moon door in a fit of jealous despondence.

The look that Sansa and Littlefinger shared once it was clear that the council bought her story spoke volumes and we were given our first glimpse at just how attentive Sansa had been to the harsh and cruel lessons she learned in King’s Landing. Her transformation was almost complete when Littlefinger paid her a visit in her quarters to find out why she lied for him. Her reasons were, to her credit, self-serving and pragmatic. And when she told Littlefinger she knew what he wanted with a knowing look that would have made that harpy Cersei proud in the level of underlying manipulation, I knew that Sansa had been transformed.

And that transformation was given an outward manifestation when she debuted a new look that was like something from the Westerosi version of Hot Topic…Sansa Stark was a child no more, now she was reborn as a woman who had her own agency and was going to use her intelligence and wiles to no longer be a victim.