Game of Thrones Season 7 Premiere Review

*SPOILERS FOR THIS WEEK'S EPISODE AND ALL PREVIOUS EPISODES. ALSO INCLUDES MILD BOOK SPOILERS*

After an agonising, longer-than-usual wait, Game of Thrones has returned to our screens. As of typing this now I'm watched the show twice - once for my initial reaction and another time just to ensure I get all of the details correct (example: on my first watch I thought that the Giant-wight was Wun-Wun because of his missing eye. upon rewatch I realised that a) Wun-Wun was shot in the other eye, b) Wun-Wun did not die north of the Wall and c) Jon was probably smart enough to burn his body. So for people like myself who often jump to the most dramatic conclusion and refuse to remove their tinfoil hats, rewatches are important).

So we start on a cold open, in which we see Arya Stark officially take up the mantle of Lady Stoneheart. This is one of those moments that I knew was coming the second I saw Walder Frey's face come onto my screen, but the execution was perfect nonetheless. I've been waiting for Arya to say "The North Remembers" to someone ever since she embarked on her revenge quest, and when she announced that "Winter has Come for House Frey" it took me right back to Season 1 when Robb warns the spy that "Winter is Coming for [The Lannisters]". I love that Arya spared the lives of the women. I've been worried about the dark path that she's been going down for a while, but this shows that there is still some Stark honour somewhere in the cold-blooded assassin she has become. She won't kill those who are blameless.

After a brief scene of the Army of the dead followed by Bran's arrival at the Wall (great scenes but they speak for themselves), we go to Bran's family at Winterfell. The Winterfell scenes this episode put to rest, for me, any worry that Sansa will turn on Jon. Admittedly, she shouldn't have questioned him in public, but Jon was insistent on doing what was honourable. While it may not have been a bad decision in this case, Sansa has seen loved one after loved one die because of honour. She questions Jon and criticizes him not because she dislikes him or envies his power, but because she wants to protect him. The one thing I hated in these scenes was Littlefingers smugness at both Jon and Sansa's public disagreement, and Lyanna Mormont's small nod in agreement at Sansa's assertion that those who stayed loyal should be given new lands (I don't like the idea Lyanna doubting Jon, but I don't doubt she'll remain loyal). I enjoyed sassy Sansa's interaction with Littlefinger (and the Brienne/Tormund flirtation that preceded it, of course), but I hope it isn't all talk and she does order Littlefinger killed this season. Personally, I don't think it will lose her the support of the Vale - Robin Arryn is still her cousin, and Yohn Royce loathes Littlefinger.

Onto the King's Landing scenes. I must admit, as a lover of both Sansa and Cersei as extremely underrated characters, I absolutely adored Sansa's recognition of her admiration of Cersei. And in this episode (despite the fact she is clearly in denial about being responsible for Tommen's death), Cersei is pretty admirable. She acknowledges that she is surrounded by enemies, but she responds to her situation in a way that is calculating but never desperate. She invites Euron to King's Landing, despite his obvious lack of trustworthiness, rightfully pointing out to Jaime that no great family in Westeros is unfailingly trustworthy but when he proposes marriage she refuses, which means that she has already motivated Euron to destroy her enemies for her (in order to prove his loyalty) without having to commit to an alliance with him. It's pretty clever. The only thing I didn't like about the King's Landing scenes was Pilou Asbaek's's portrayal of Euron. Perhaps it was the writing, perhaps it was the acting, but in any case I find him pretty camp and neither amusing nor menacing, and in this scene I believe we were supposed to feel that he was both. Season 6 was too late in the series to introduce a major villain in my opinion, and his brief scenes could've been done in Season 5 instead of either Dorne or Arya sweeping floors in Braavos.

Speaking of those uneventful Braavos scenes, I have to defend Sam's chore montage in the Citadel. I understand that a lot of people thought it was overlong and slightly too graphic (to which I do kind of agree - there was no need to demonstrate how much the soup looked like the contents of a chamberpot), I will take one slightly lengthy montage over Bravoos-esque filler scenes that show Sam stacking books stretched over episodes. That said, the Citadel scenes weren't my favourite. I found Jorah's brief appearance as a jump scare pretty gratuitous and Sam's revelation that there is an abundance of dragonglass at Dragonstone fairly anticlimactic since Stannis already told us that two seasons ago. As squeamish as I am, I did quite enjoy the autopsy scene but as Jim Broadbent's Archmaester was speaking I couldn't help but feel like Professor Slughorn was asking Sam to weigh potion ingredients. But that's just me.

Onto another scene that I feel a need to defend - the Ed Sheeran cameo scene. To be honest, I feel like people are more annoyed at the overexposure of Ed Sheeran in the media recently than they are at this scene itself. I actually really enjoyed it and while I've seen people accusing the writers of 'writing a scene around Ed Sheeran's cameo' I think it is more significant than that. Having murdered the Frey's and seemingly on her way to King's Landing to cross another name off her list, Arya seems hell-bent on revenge at this moment in time. However, after encountering some Lannister men that talk warmly of their families she remembers that there is genuine contentment to be found in lighthearted conversation with other human beings (as opposed to the twisted satisfaction of killing someone who has wronged her), and I think this is what will prompt a change of direction. I honestly believe that instead of spending the season attempting to murder Cersei, Arya will spend it trying (and succeeding) to get back to Winterfell. I also think this scene is very important given that Arya has just committed the mass murder of the Freys. Ordinarily, Arya (and we, the audience) would see Lannister soldiers and believe them to be evil but they show her kindness with no expectation of reward (it's kind of the other side of the coin to the Season 2 scene where Brienne buries the corpses of tavern girls murdered by Stark soldiers). At the Twins, she poisoned every adult male Frey she could. While she left the women alive, believing them to be innocent, it never occurs to her that at least one of the men in the House of Frey may be a good person, guilty only of being complicit in a crime that their family committed, bound by duty to remain loyal to them. It's another one of the reminders that they show frequently gives us that no side is wholly good or evil.

Now we have my favourite scenes in the entire episode. Despite the fact that on paper, his traits are almost entirely villainous, I have always loved the Hound and found him incredibly complex. In this episode, his complexity deepens further. I both laughed out loud at his mocking of Thoros' baldness/topknot and felt very uncomfortable at his bewilderment at Beric's dullness. For no other reason than the blunt honesty is too similar to how I am when I've been drinking. But I digress.

While I love these scenes for the humour and character development, they did break my heart.  I was admittedly pretty slow in realising who the cottage belonged to, and it wasn't until Thoros asked the Hound if he knew the man and daughter that I realised who they were. I hated the show for a moment, just because they could've never referenced the farmer and his daughter again and I wouldn't have even  considered their fate. As per usual, the show have added in a scene that are going to make future rewatches of past seasons even more devastating. But the Hound's guilt, sadness and attempt to say the prayer that he once mocked were incredibly moving, and really showed how his time in Brother Ray's commune has made a difference in his character and way of thinking. I like the nod the the gravedigger theory in the books, too.

And finally, we get to Dany's arrival at Dragonstone. I really love her costume - I like that after years of wearing primarily blue in memory of her lost husband Drogo, she is starting to embrace her own identity in a black gown with red embroidery in the sleeves and bodice - the Targaryen colours. I'll admit, while I was watching this scene, I was impatient and slightly disappointed. I can't deny it was incredibly impactful. Daenerys touching her home soil, walking up the stairs to her birthplace and the birthplace of her ancestors, asserting her power by tearing down the Baratheon banner and brushing her fingers over the table Aegon the Conqueror would've used to plan his conquest of Westeros. But my disappointment was in the knowledge that we couldn't follow such a long period of silence with a conversational scene and I didn't want to episode to be over yet. I really liked the symbolism of Daenerys walking past the throne and heading towards the painted table - I do think by next episode we will see her sitting in it, but by ending the episode with "shall we begin?" as opposed to a shot of her taking her place on a throne in Westeros, it made it clear that Dany knows that she isn't the Queen of Westeros yet. She is prioritising her strategy and I'm glad that, for the time being, it looks like she has her head screwed on.

Overall, I really enjoyed this episode. With the exception of the opening scene, nothing overly eventful happened and anything that did happen was entirely predictable, but after an action-packed season 6 I have really missed these character development scenes. The first three seasons had many of them - Robert and Cersei talk about Lyanna in Season 1, Sansa vents to Shae in Season 2, Jaime's bath monologue in Season 3 and, of course, all of the conversations between Littlefinger and Varys. As the show speeds towards its endgame, I understand that there isn't as much time for scenes like these and as there are only 12 episodes left of the series, I suspect this may be our last episode which doesn't at some point have our hearts beating out of our chests. And while I will undoubtedly enjoy those episodes when they come, I wholeheartedly appreciate this episode for taking a deep breath before Westeros inevitably descends into chaos.