Game of Thrones “Red Woman” Review: To be young

 Sansa in the cold on Game of thrones

Photo credit: HBO

Some quick thoughts on Game of Throne’s sixth season premiere right after I age a few hundred years…

“We are the only ones, the only ones in this world and everything they’ve take from us we’re going to take back and more… We’re going to take everything there is.”
-Jamie

Welcome to uncharted territory folks. Benioff and Weiss are entering the wild without the guidance of George RR Martin’s (mostly) great novels. To me this is the most exciting Game of Thrones has ever seemed. For once I have no clue where we are going and I don’t have to view the show under the lens of adaptation. It’s time to enter the realm of the unknown and the exciting and I can’t wait to follow along week by week.

That brings us to our first step into the unknown in “Red Woman.” Every season of Game of Thrones needs to start with some table setting and “Red Woman” did a nice job in laying the ground work for where are characters may end up throughout the season. For the most part though it still did not qualm my biggest complaint about the end of last season. The characters are still relatively far apart and while we are getting closer in certain regards to getting them together, its still a show that, even just in its table setting episode, is sprawling in a few too many unconnected directions. For example, I still have no clue as to the point of where we are going with Dany. The Meereen plot line from last year, which is one of the plotlines from the books that just seemed to go on forever, was at the very least made more interesting by the infusion of Tyrion, but now we again are moving away from that. Dany is off being captured by a group of Dothraki and doesn’t seem to be moving out of there with any sort of expediency while Tyrion is back wasting time with Varys. I can kind of see where they want to go with this plot arc, but I hope to see it sped up significantly.

That being said there were a lot of new plot lines and character directions to get behind. It’s a small victory but seeing Sansa and Brienne finally meet up, especially under the circumstances they did was very satisfying. I may or may not have cheered out loud when Brienne came to save Sansa, and the audience for that matter, from another plot arc of being tortured by Ramsey Bolton.

The wall also continues to be one of the more interesting arcs on the show. It looks as if Jon Snow is a character who will remain dead. It seemed to me to be a puzzling decision to kill him off as it seemed like it was kind of destroying a whole, majorly important, portion of the show. But the now full on conflict within the Night’s Watch seems like it has legs especially with the questions revolving around Milisandre. It is going to be fun to see whether or not the show can sustain this conflict while the white walkers still loom in the background.

The final reveal of “Red Woman” aka the age of Milisandre was a fun little cliff-hanger to leave on. One of the show’s many big questions over the past few season has been what the extent of Milisandre’s power is and what her real motivations are. The reveal was stunning and well done, it’s really going to be interesting to see where this leads and what her age impli. Even if both Stannis and Jon Snow are gone the wall storyline continues to develop interesting ripples.

“Red Woman” was a good table setting premiere for the show. I’m still not sure about where some of the arcs are headed but at the very least it is going to be interesting. I am very curious to see where the show will go from here and how Benioff and Weiss handle not having the books as a detailed guide.

Some other musings:

• Jamie and Cersei want all of the revenge!

• The Arya plot line is still a little baffling in terms of how it connects and where it is going, but learning how to fight blind is important I guess!

That’s it for me this week! Apologies for the delay, a mix of exams, a late Sunday work night, and Shaw on demand not having the episode up until late Monday (thanks again shaw) made this one as late as it was. I should be back to a late Sunday/early Monday schedule next week.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?