John and Dany hanging out in the snow on Game of Thrones
Photo Credit: HBO
A review of the final season premiere of Game of Thrones coming
up right after I inform the world that I have always had blue eyes…
“You gave up your crown to save your people, would she do
the same?”
-Sam
So, after nearly two years of anticipation Game of Thrones
is finally back. As someone who was left a tad cold by the last season of the
show tonight’s season premiere was left in somewhat in interesting position.
Would the show be able to put to bed some of the fears I have had about its storytelling
going into it? Suffice to say that is lofty to put on a season premiere especially
that of a show that has always taken its time to place set, and as perhaps to
be expected the final season premiere did nothing quite yet to answer any reservations
I had going in. Instead we got a fun table setting episode, one that worked
well to re-establish the world of the show and eased the audience back in
nicely. Questions and frustrations are for later, tonight it was just fun to
live in this world again.
If anything, tonight’s premiere remined me strangely of the
beginning of Mad Men’s final season. Both shows have/had relatively short order
to move forward a bunch of plots and give satisfying endings to a whole lot of
characters. Yet both decided, somewhat defiantly, to take their sweet time to
get there. Instead of rushing forth into battle tonight’s season premiere was content
with following the show’s usual pace of taking the beginning of the season to
do a whole lot of place setting. This was a premiere of characters reuniting
and planning their next steps in a time where the episode count on the show is severely
dwindling. This is perhaps frustrating to some, but given the fact that the
best parts of this series have been spending time with its characters interacting
anyways, this was a fine by me.
That being said let’s talk about where these characters are
at starting with John, whose question of identity was perhaps the biggest twist
of last season. Of all the character beats handled in the premiere I was
actually most on board with the way the handled John learning his true identity.
I would even go so far as to say that Sam having to break the news to his old
friend was pretty elegant. It was a nice nod to one of the more enduring
friendships on the show while continuing to develop the players at hand. It’s
hard to say whether Sam ultimately going through with revealing the truth to
John was a moment of doing what needed to be done, or was done simply because he
was a bit bitter at the fact that Dany butchered his family, but either way it
worked fairly well here. (Despite the episode sometimes doing too much of the dramatic
irony side eye which would have been far worse if the show didn’t let John in
on the secret this week)
On the John and Dany front I have mostly found their chemistry
to be wooden to say the least (I think my old adage was that they had the
chemistry of a rock and a tree) and the premiere did little to convince me
otherwise. The dragon riding scene was nicely done and showed off the prowess
of the show’s direction and effects budget, but otherwise the chemistry void
between the two continues. It will be interesting to see how the reveal of John’s
identity effects the relationship going forward, given that it seems that the conflict
set up here is the people around John trying to take ultimate leadership and
tear himself farther away from Dany. Given my frustration with the way the show
ultimately handled its bigger plot points last season though, this one is
reserved for the “we’ll wait and see” column.
The rest of the premiere, as with the bulk of the rest of Game
of Thrones, took us through a travelogue of brief moments with the rest of our
characters. Arya had a lot of reunions this episode, whether it was the slightly
uncomfortable yet sweet reunion with John (who doesn’t seem to know the killing
machine his sister has become) to moments with the Hound and Gendry. There is
still no clear place for Arya to go as of right now, and the premiere didn’t
end up making it entirely clear either, but if handled right (again see the “we’ll
wait and see” column) Arya could end up being a fascinating wild card to this
whole thing.
Sansa’s fate in the premiere was ultimately to have her
insecurity played with a little, and for the most part this worked well. Her reunion
with Tyrion was a nice exchange (although Tyrion’s character arc is worrying
me, more on that later) and for the most part she works well as one of the key
players, especially in the game of breaking John and Dany up. Sansa has quickly
come from being one of the show’s weakest characters to one of its most
interesting, and hopefully her arc is not to be lost amidst the chaos that is
coming.
On that note here is where the caution comes in. While the
premiere did a good job at re-establishing characters and bringing everyone
back to the world, I am a little reserved yet on how much of this will actually
matter or get payed off well going forward. My biggest gripes with the last season
was that when push came to shove Game of Thrones often would rush through plot
as time was running out, often at the expense of the more interesting interplay
between the characters. This is added to by my reservations with the white walker
plot which to this point is the least interesting part of the show as it strips
away a lot of the game of chess elements the show presented at its most
interesting. I am still dubious that with the little time the show has left,
and where the series seems to be ultimately going, that the parts of the show I
personally find most interesting will be payed off well, or rather that Benioff
and Weiss have any real interest in paying them off at all.
But let’s file that away in the old “we’ll wait and see” column
for now. This week it was just nice to be back with these characters.
Some other musings:
- I don’t particularly like where the whole Tyrion story is going. Throughout the last few seasons he has kind of transformed from the wittiest character on the show who was mostly held back by circumstance, to the village idiot in a lot of ways. Tyrion has long been my favorite character in both the books and the show and in general I find the show more interesting with a clever, less brooding character having an effect on the larger narrative. Tyrion has become less and less of that as the show has gone on and has been one of the characters that has been lost a little in the grander scheme of things which is a shame.
- Not too much going on in King’s landing this week, but we’ll see where the whole Gyjoy/Cerci thing goes from here on in. That being said it did give us our mandatory nudity for the episode and a much welcome return for Bronn who is still in play much to the delight of just about everyone.
- I don’t know what they can do to make Bran more interesting and less like a plot device, but his interaction with Jamie at the episode’s close was delightfully awkward. (and was turned into a wonderful Curb your Enthusiasm style clip on Twitter)
- The Night King is apparently a fan of the TV show Hannibal as his design with the young lord’s body was straight out of the playbook of one of the many serial killers from that show.
That’s all I have for this week. My work schedule is going to make it tough to
do these Sunday nights going forward but I will try my best to have them out at
the very latest by Monday morning.
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?
