A Fairy-Tale Ending for the Game of Thrones Premiere

Kornhaber: Melisandre always seemed to harbor a secret, and now we know it’s that she, like someone in a Catfish episode or like many witches of centuries-old folklore, is secretly saggy. Only Thrones could pull off precisely this kind of fun, meta twist. After the show has spent so long jamming spears through handsome young prince heads in order to prove that it’s not reliant on fairy-tale tropes, it can occasionally shock simply by serving up some of the oldest magic tricks in the storybooks. What are we watching, after all, if not what the thoroughly demented Brothers’ Grimm might create on an HBO budget?
Jon’s body was dealt with first, as is fitting for its fame. While the camera closed in on the yard of Castle Black, the direwolf Ghost’s howls were heartbreaking enough to nearly distract from the question of why Alliser Thorne’s gang just left their victim laying in the open. Seems like a sanitary liability, at the very least. Davos and Snow’s bros then sat shiva for their fallen leader and plotted mutiny against the mutineers. Edd—now promoted to being one of the few Night’s Watch guys whose names you need to know—advocated a suicide mission, but Davos suggested they improve their odds by enlisting allies who he did not name but whose designation probably rhyme with “mild things.” All involved seemed motivated by a strange and likely fatal desire to stand up for justice, but maybe a reality-checked version of Jon will preach pragmatism if the old lady in red decides to raise him.Though the hype for this episode ran even higher than usual due to Jon Snow’s stabbing and the fact that it opens the first season whose story has not yet revealed by George R.R. Martin’s books, a Game of Thronesseason premiere is, in the end, a Game of Thrones season premiere. Which means this hour was always unlikely to rank among the show’s best episodes; there’s so much work to be done getting viewers up to speed and setting up future conflicts that the big plotlines don’t have time to move forward all that much. That said, “The Red Woman” managed to deliver a fair amount of action and intrigue in as it conducted a tour of the grave sites created by last season’s bloody finale.

The next corpse on display was that of Myranda, the kennelmaster’s daughter who will soon be kennel-denizen’s fodder. There is little precedent for the human sadness Ramsay displayed about her, but then again, there is little precedent for the human depravity she gleefully enabled. Ramsay’s desire for revenge would seem like enough of motivation for him to release the hounds on Theon and Sansa, but Roose upped the stakes with characteristically terrible parenting by implicitly threatening to revoke the family name Ramsay has dismembered so many people to earn. More interesting was Roose’s mention of potential war with the Lannisters; talk of battling houses is enough to induce nostalgia for Thrones’s early seasons, when the Iron Throne seemed worth sitting in.
Outside of Winterfell, Sansa and Theon practiced outdoors survival techniques, feebly. Even if her arrival was timed a bit too conveniently, it was nice that Brienne found them, if for no other reason than it allows their plotline to progress at a rate worth watching. The battle between her, Podrick, and the Bolton men was one of those classic Thrones skirmishes where the brutal choreography triggers well-earned fear that one of your favorite characters might die in random and ignoble battle. Instead, Theon’s re-humanization process continued at a rate that ensured Brienne and Podrick’s further survival. I was then moved by Sansa accepting Brienne’s offer of fealty—it felt like a well-earned moment of growing up for the Stark, and it meant the Tarth finally achieved something she set out to do.
In King’s Landing, Lena Headey earned yet another episode-MVP title simply for the shot in which her face turned from naive excitement to despair to hardened anger while watching Jaime arrive sans Myrcella. I’ve been dreading this particular corpse-centric plotline the most, simply because even Cersei doesn’t deserve to have to face another child’s death. But she took the news pretty well, all things considered, chalking Myrcella’s fate up to the witch’s prophecy that we saw in flashback at the beginning of season five. The lack of blame for Jaime was, from a viewer’s standpoint, exciting—Westeros’s weirdest couple can finally get back to collaborative scheming. Question: Since the prophecy said that Cersei’s three gold-haired children will die, does that mean she’s resigned to King Tommen becoming toast? A Cersei that’s resigned to anything bad happening to her children would be a whole new character.

If the numbness subsides and Cersei decides to go to war over Myrcella’s death, she will have newly energized enemies in Dorne thanks to Ellaria’s coup. The Dornish scenes have always seemed ported in from some other show where the writing is a little cornier and the plotting a little sloppier than Thrones usually is, and this episode did not fix the problem. Ellaria killing Doran makes enough sense, but the two Sand Snakes feistily confronting Trystane does not—why were they on the ship in the first place? I’ll admit I laughed at one of the assassins calling the other a “greedy bitch,” but it was mostly because the line seemed so out of place for this show.
The banter between Tyrion and Varys as they toured Meereen, on the other hand, felt like the logical extension of rapport established earlier. And Daario and Jorah’s exchange about hoping to live to see Daenerys’s world domination was a nice reminder of the stakes of their quest, even if we know the elder of the two guys will be—at best—quarantined in Old Valyria by the time Khaleesi reaches Westeros. Her travails with the Dothraki were tough to watch; we saw lots of this sort of sexist abuse in season one, though I do appreciate that the point here is that she’s having to reconquer her past as some sort of allegorical test. But why, oh why, didn’t she lead all of her encounters with the braided bunch by saying she was Khal Drogo’s widow? Even if it meant being banished with the other Khal widows, it would have gotten her out of physical bondage sooner, which seems to be a big Daenerys priority. Maybe that the assumption that dragons will bail you out at some point changes your decision making.
Over in Braavos, Arya, now blind, will receive that thing we’ve long wanted Arya to get: More training! Just kidding; this entire show’s run has been taken up with Arya being trained for things. Of course her cockiness about that training is what has led her to the beggarly situation she finds herself in—like Dany, she has to go back to go forward. The Faceless school, happily, hasn’t given up on her entirely, even though their version of continuing education includes stick-hits to the face that Arya still very much possesses. If the Jaqen H’ghar won’t eventually teach her how to restore her youthful visage, maybe she can complete a course with Melisandre.
Lenika, Chris, how’d you enjoy our first hour back in Westeros and Essos? Do you have anything to confess, whether of a Margaery-level sin or a Melisandre-level secret?