Game of Thrones Episode 1 Season 8 Review
Game of Thrones
'Game of Thrones' Season 8, Episode ane: Dragon Rides and Bad-mannered Reunions
Flavor 8, Episode i, 'Winterfell'
On Sunday, we finally returned to an era-defining show, gone for years, that captivated the earth with its high-stakes melodrama woven from familiar human fallibility.
That testify was "Downton Abbey." Because in the long-awaited Season eight premiere of "Game of Thrones," from the grand royal arrival onward, Winterfell resembled nothing so much equally that swell Edwardian manse of swollen emotion. Charged reunions, new conflicts and old grudges played themselves out upstairs and downstairs, inside and out, between siblings and exes, onetime friends and in-laws, much of information technology rippling outward from a haughty noblewoman no ane liked all that much.
Granted, I don't recall Lady Mary ever incinerating anyone's brother, as Daenerys did to poor Dickon Tarly last flavor. And instead of the dowager countess'southward bon mots, we got Bran, but sitting in that location creeping everybody out.
Overall it was a somewhat soapy but generally very satisfying setup for the final run of "Game of Thrones," as the sides coalesced for the wars to come up. Jon and Dany's coalition of the living currently includes nearly everyone not named or sleeping with Cersei. She heads up the King'due south Landing faction, and this calendar week welcomed a mysterious new human being — Capt. Strickland, leader of the Golden Company — onto the team and Euron into her bed, while inviting more speculation well-nigh her purported pregnancy with the departed Jaime.
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Virtually anybody we similar has now made it to Winterfell, although they don't always like one some other all that much. Sansa and Tyrion reminisced almost their cheerless simply technically continuing wedlock. The Hound, Gendry and Arya negotiated their complicated triangle, with a smitten Gendry displaying all the game you'd wait from a guy who's been solo-rowing and hiding in blacksmith forges for the past few years. Jorah came in praise of Sam's heroic greyscale treatment, just Dany ruined it past admitting she had executed his begetter and brother.
And all that was before the arrival of Jaime, who, at concluding count: once shoved Bran out a window; volition be hated by Sansa and Arya (though he'd asked Brienne — too at Winterfell! — to help them); killed Dany'south ally Lady Olenna; tried to kill Dany; and by the way, made his proper name past killing her dad.
The signal is, Winterfell is a fraught place, tense with history and the clashes of strong personalities. For near of its run, "Game of Thrones" has been defined past bigness and a far-flung story structure. Simply every bit it returns for the final hurrah, it feels constrained and claustrophobic, as people discuss their differences and drib revelation bombs within tight shadowy shots.
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The constricted, almost Alamo-esque confines reinforced both the narrative notion that humanity is most to make its last stand — ideally the occupants are less doomed this time — and the thematic one that sometimes profound or painful differences must be overcome in order to solve the actually big challenges.
On Sunday, most of those differences involved Daenerys, whose revelation to Sam, if the most painful, was hardly the simply awkward issue of the putative King in the Northward arriving in thrall to the Dragon Queen.
Prototype
Considering beyond the pageantry of the royal procession and beyond the awe inspired by the beginning dragon anyone had always seen (then the second), the defining emotions were mistrust and resentment. From the narrow-eyed glares of the Northern commoners to Sansa's side-eyed ones, Jon's return to Winterfell was like that time you brought your outspoken new flame home for Thanksgiving, X a billion.
Leave it to the always excellent Lady Mormont to say what everyone was thinking. "Y'all left Winterfell a king and came dorsum … I'k not sure what you are now," she said. "A lord? Nothing at all?"
P.R. has ever been a bullheaded spot for Jon — his stark moral rectitude (pun intended) makes him oblivious to the fact that selling the right thing is sometimes as important every bit doing the correct thing. And sure enough, there he was on Sunday, sticking to the same "I'grand doing this for your own good" script that literally got him killed awhile back.
Information technology was left to Tyrion, whose failure to coach Jon on his messaging in advance was but his latest advisory failing, to attempt damage control. Only so he but said something else that will come back to haunt him.
We have the greatest regular army always and two total-grown dragons, he said. "And soon the Lannister army will ride north to join our cause."
("I used to think you were the cleverest human alive," Sansa told him after, speaking for all of us. Bring back the homo who drinks and knows things!)
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In the smaller chambers, Jon was slightly more constructive. He and Sansa resumed their bickering later before reaching a delicate détente, though Sansa remains circumspect. "Did you bend the knee to salvage the Northward?" she asked. "Or because you dearest her?"
Jon's reunion with Arya out by the weirwood tree was the nicest moment of the episode, the two outsiders of the Stark family coming together with more unguarded warmth than either had displayed toward anyone else, save perhaps their father Ned. (Have you ever used Needle, Jon wondered. "One time or twice," she said.) It made up for the trademark awkwardness of Jon's reunion with Bran, although somewhere in his three-eyed database Bran appears to take stumbled upon some self-sensation.
"Look at y'all," Jon told him. "You're a man."
"Almost," he replied.
In full general, information technology probably wasn't the homecoming Jon was hoping for. It was all enough to make you want to retreat to the countryside with your lady.
[ Read: Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams and Isaac Hempstead Wright discuss Sunday's reunions. ]
At one time there was adequately fervent fan speculation about who would ultimately ride the show'due south three dragons. Dany predictably took to Drogon a couple seasons ago and then, in an upset, the Dark King claimed Viserion in Flavor seven. That left Rhaegal, the dragon named for Jon'due south father, though he didn't realize it. (Yet.)
Sure enough, Dany coaxed Jon aboard, and after a brief bit of Dragons Ed — the neck-scale equivalent of 10-and-two being "any you tin agree on to" — they were off. Before long Jon had Rhaegal fairly under control, and the couple was enjoying a loins-stirring ride through the North.
It was all … fine. Look, I am not immune to the charms of new romance. That said, the whole sequence fabricated me think about how many times I've told skeptical, fantasy-balky friends that "Game of Thrones" is not what they retrieve it is. Because for a few minutes, every bit the strings swelled and ii gloriously maned young royals frolicked on dragons above a wintry landscape, information technology totally was.
It besides might amount to a final moment of bliss for Jonerys because the big bomb was nigh to driblet at Winterfell.
If Sam had been feeling hesitant nigh revealing Jon's true parentage to him, he was less then after he learned his new queen had torched his family. For his part, Jon seemed more upset well-nigh the besmirching of Ned's honorable reputation than most the upending of his own ideas most himself, though he could be forgiven for a certain amount of compartmentalization.
"I know information technology's a lot to take," Sam said in a hilarious chip of understatement, before driving the wedge that only figures to get wider and more painful over the adjacent few weeks. "You gave up your crown to salvage your people — would she practice the same?"
Nosotros know the answer, and and then does Jon. Perhaps Davos and Tyrion's plan to package the candidates as a ability couple will soothe brittle egos, although it seems unlikely — nosotros've seen how well Tyrion's plans work out these days. We'll have to expect for next week, at least, to learn the ramifications for that, as well as to learn how he responds to Jaime's revelation that Cersei was lying, of course, about helping out in the war against the dead. (I'm already looking forward to Sansa's reaction.)
Down in Rex's Landing, Cersei was in peak Cersei form, drinking wine, conniving with Qyburn, come across-and-greeting new mercenaries and having bored sexual activity with her problems-eyed suitor.
Wait — drinking wine? You'll recall she pointedly declined to imbibe when discussing her declared pregnancy with both Jaime and Tyrion, merely in that location she was, having a postcoital glass equally she instructed Euron to collect his things and hit the bricks. And then was that simply stagecraft with her brothers? A Machiavellian tactic designed to inspire devotion in Jaime and credulity in Tyrion?
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Perhaps, though that was a rare bit of raw anguish we saw from Cersei after Euron crassly announced his ain dad-goals. The simply things she has ever demonstrably cared almost was Jaime and her children. Was her pain triggered by the loss of Jaime? The loss of the unborn child? All or none of the above?
One vote against its existence Jaime was that she sicced Bronn on him. Bronn — whom we're repeatedly told cares simply near himself and his own enrichment, even as he'due south done all sorts of heroic stuff for Jaime and Tyrion — is now officially on their collective tail. Cersei has requested that he apply that infernal crossbow, the ultimate emblem of Lannister toxicity. (Or an instrument of "poetic justice," if you're Cersei.)
The Brothers Lannister take other concerns these days, of class, and the crossbow-for-rent subplot is probably just a means to get Bronn to Winterfell with everyone else before the big White Walker clash. Only in that location'south i person nosotros know definitely won't be at that place: Little Ned Umber.
You might recollect that nosotros met Ned concluding season, when Sansa wanted to accept castles abroad from him and some other kid, Alys Karstark, because their fathers sided with Ramsay in the Boxing of the Bastards. Those castles, Final Hearth and Karhold, also happen to be the outset the White Walkers would encounter afterwards breaching the Wall. But Jon intervened, maxim he wouldn't punish children for the sins of their fathers.
Turns out he did Ned no favors. Losing his business firm probably would have been preferable to beingness transformed into spin fine art of the damned.
We offset got reacquainted with the male child early on Sunday, when he told Sansa and Jon he needed more horses and wagons in order to get his people back to Winterfell. He no longer needs horses or wagons, having been turned into a flaming jump-scare machine at Last Hearth.
"It'southward a message from the Night King," Beric Dondarrion said.
That message would seem to be, go all your melodrama out of the manner now. Considering your real problems have only just begun.
A Few Thoughts While We Caput-Butt Our Savior
• Euron wanted to proceed Yara around to talk to because he was surrounded past mutes. (You might recall him explaining to his blood brother Balon, before he killed him, that he cut out the tongues of his crew because "I needed silence.") Only he'll need to find someone else because Theon rescued Yara and was head-butted for his troubles. (Well, that and abandoning her to Euron final season.) As always, in a prove with more than its off-white share of crazy, the Greyjoys are in a special class.
• That said, they link the various threads in interesting ways. Theon is headed dorsum to Winterfell to join the Stark cause, a fitting culmination for his continuing redemption arc. More intriguing was Euron's clear willingness to ditch Cersei if it suits him, and Yara's plan to caput home in case Daenerys needs "somewhere to retreat if they tin can't agree the North, somewhere the expressionless tin can't go." Could be foreshadowing; could be nothing.
• Fun fact: Sunday'due south premiere was the beginning post-#MeToo episode of "Game of Thrones." The testify celebrated past plying Bronn with nude prostitutes. Information technology was a "Thrones" throwback — the serial has more often than not abandoned the gateway gratuitous sex activity of early seasons — and perhaps one last kiss-off from a bear witness that'south been known to tweak its scolders. (Encounter also: the close-up of the venereally afflicted thespian in Flavour 6, subsequently complaints about insufficient male nudity.)
• My colleague James Poniewozik wrote about how every bit "Game of Thrones" has gone on, information technology has become a "dragon-delivery device," with graphic symbol and narrative evolution becoming secondary to spectacle. A related quibble: The dragons themselves have become dad joke-delivery devices. See Drogon'southward stink middle during Jon and Dany's engagement, or Jon'south quip almost how Rhaegal "completely ruined horses for me." What does a dragon eat? Sansa wondered. "Anything it wants," Dany says. And so on. It'south a small affair, only this evidence doesn't article of clothing corniness well.
• "The concluding time nosotros spoke was at Joffrey's hymeneals, a miserable affair," Tyrion told Sansa. "It had its moments," she replied. See? That's actually funny.
• I'm looking forward to seeing how Jaime's arrival shakes upwards things at Winterfell — we haven't even mentioned the Jaime-Brienne-Tormund dear triangle. (Tormund arrives side by side week.) I'1000 likewise glad the testify seems to be dispensing with the reunions and revelations fairly quickly, rather than letting them hang over these last episodes, which take plenty else to sort out before this matter is done.
• What about y'all? Was the render to Westeros everything you hoped it would be? Do Jon and Dany have any future at all? ("Nothing lasts," Varys intoned portentously.) Are we positive Lady Mary never incinerated anyone's blood brother? (She sexed a guy to death only in that location was no fire — possibly she'south saving information technology for the movie.) Delight share your thoughts in the comments.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/arts/television/game-of-thrones-season-8-premiere-winterfell-review.html
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