This image released by HBO shows Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in a scene from, "Game of Thrones," premiering its sixth season on Sunday at 9 p.m.
Five quick thoughts about what I’ll call “A Song of Corpse and Crone,” the sixth season premiere of “Game of Thrones,” which aired Sunday night on HBO. The episode followed an epic 4-minute “Previously on...” segement, a length of time that is a sure sign you’ve got too many plot balls in the air.
If this were 2011, I would next write something like “spoiler alert,” but really, if you’re trying not to find out about the show, you stopped reading before this sentence, correct? The five thoughts:
1. The Great Jon Snow Death Tease continues
Kit Harrington, the actor who plays Snow, is listed early in the credits. Ooh, that’s promising for his long-rumored return from his seeming murder at the end of last season. And the episode is called “The Red Woman,” and anybody who’s been paying half a wit of attention knows that this woman, aka Melisandre, aka the Stevie Nicks of the Seven Kingdoms, is supposed to be the one to use her witchy wiles to revive him.
But we first see Snow dead in the snow, his bloodstain possibly forming a portentous dragon shape. Then, as his mates brandish vengeful swords around him, he spends the rest of the episode on a table, never uttering those words we all recall from Monty Python’s take on the skill set of the medieval medical examiner: “I’m not dead yet.”
Snow is, so far, still dead. Harrington’s acting credit was for a persuasive bit of lifelessness. Comedy is hard. Dying is easy. We’ll have to wait and see how hard staying dead turns out to be.
2. The Stark brood bend but they do not break
While Jon Snow, bastard Stark child, prepares for his post-mortem fate, everybody with skin in the thrones game thinks the three legitimate Stark heirs are dead or close to it, paving the way for open warfare in the northland that the family ruled. But no. Sansa, who somehow survived her cliffhanger lovers’ leap with Theon/Reek, is on the lam from loving hubby Ramsey Bolton, and -- holy deus ex machina! -- Brienne of Tarth jumps in to save her just as Ramsey’s men are about to bring her back. In a touching scene, Sansa accepts Brienne’s pledge of duty and service with noble words from ages gone by, and a moment of chivalry and honor returns to this bloody godsforsaken world.
Little sister Arya, meanwhile, is being retrained by the good folk from the House of Many Faces, who, it must be said, should be only your last resort as a daycare provider. Looks like they’re teaching Arya to fight blind, which I presume will make her even tougher and more deadly (and potentially harder for TV producers to write compelling scenes for; thanks, George R.R. Martin).
And then there’s Bran, good in morning muffins and great to see back as a character. Based on the preview of next week’s episode, which I only watched out of a sense of duty, it looks like the paralyzed visionary shapeshifter is about to make his return. We love you, Bran, but go easy on the dream sequences, please, because they are dream sequences.
3. This may not be the best time to holiday in Dorne
Sure, the land is sunny and the people so delightfully “earthy,” as the more politically incorrect Westeros travel guides have it. But there is, um, a bloody revolution going on in Dorne, one that is likely to lead to an all-out war with the Lannisters and the remaining might of Westeros.
Before killing their uncle in a local coup, the Sand Snakes, the hot-headed royal bastard sisters of Dorne, assassinated in-law and Lannister daughter Myrcella -- so sweet, so dead -- with a poisonous kiss at the end of last season. And now Jaime Lannister, her dad, rallies Cersei, her mom and his twin sister, to do what it takes. “Bleep prophecy. Bleep fate. Bleep everyone who isn’t us,” Jaime says, in a version of a speech that didn’t persuade my first post-college girlfriend to stay with me. “Everything they’ve taken from us, we’re going to take back and more.” And a Lannister, it goes without saying, always pays his debts.
4. Daenerys blah blah blah
I’m interested in her dragon magic and slave freeing, but, truth be told, I’m not that interested. It mostly seems like the series is stringing Dany along, finding plot complications for her across the Narrow Sea, until it's time for her to mount her dragons or ships or whatever and try to reclaim the Targaryen rule over Westeros. That is what it’s all going to be about, right? If not, I’m going to continue to look on this plotline as most Americans look on international news.
5. Send in the crone.
The episode’s kicker, its concluding moment, is a big naked reveal about Melisandre: Her real self isn’t as bodacious as all her previous naked shots might have led you to believe. In a plot twist that A) isn’t all that surprising and B) is straight out of the Brothers Grimm, she takes off her jewelry and disrobes in her bedchamber, and her face and body change before the eyes of everyone who wrote lustful tweets about Melisandre to something less than the Playboy ideal. Joke’s on them, sort of. But, really, this is only proof of her powerful magic, and it brings us back full circle to cries for the resurrection of Jon Snow. And while she’s at it, why not bring back Myrcella, too? They can have an undead marriage, and “Game of Thrones” will have some new tangents to fight for screen time leading us to next season’s opener and a “Previously on...” segement that takes up the entire hour.
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