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Game of Thrones: Dragonstone

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Let’s all sit back and have a bit of wine, shall we? ‘Er, maybe not if Arya Stark is serving it. Welcome to the HBO Game of Thrones: Season 7 premier recap!

I know I for one was on the edge of my seat before the show even started, but how about opening with Arya killing off the entire nasty Frey family? We start off seeing Walder Frey gathering his whole family to celebrate. He touts their victories at the Red Wedding and makes sure to mention that “any Frey worth a damn” was in attendance at this second feast in a fortnight. Frey’s words turn sour as he begins to recount how the Frey’s slaughtered a pregnant woman, slit the throat of a mother of five, and several other injustices they committed against the Starks. Those of us watching remember that Arya slit his throat at the end of the last season, so as they pour the wine – not the goat piss they normally drink – it’s easy to see what is about to happen.

walder frey

Of course, that makes it no less awesome. Arya spares the young girl that Walder has taken as his last wife and as the men in the room lay dying, she makes sure to tell her to spread the tale of what happened there: that the Frey’s left a wolf alive. She strides out of the room, head held high, smiling in her best Cersei Lanister smile.

After the opening showing new places on the map, including Daenerys’ family’s castle, we’re dumped into a ice covered wasteland, small plumes of dark fog in the distance. As the fog grows, a figure appears in the middle. Finally! Finally it’s the Night King in all his horned, blue-eyed glory, riding at the head of his army on the back of a badass skeletal horse. (For you World of Warcraft Undead players, here’s your favorite horses brought to life.) The army march-lumbers past, showing some epic wildling walkers as well as some more fucking crazy skeletal horses. And then, the best of it all – giant walkers. Holy shit – I don’t think ‘badass’ even covers it.

giant walker

Fade to a brighter part of the ever cold ‘beyond the wall’, and there is Bran and Meera, waiting to be let into the Wall. Who else is there to meet them but Eddison. After noting they are wildlings, Meera tells him this is Bran Stark. He questions that, until Bran lets loose a tale of the white walkers, how he knows Eddison has seen them and that Eddison has seen the army – which is marching toward the Wall. Well, that’s enough to get them quickly ushered in the door.

the wall

Now let’s take a gander at what’s happening at Winterfell. Jon and Sansa are seated at the head of the table, trying to pump up the lords and men around them for the fight that is coming their way. While discussing how horrid and unstoppable the white walkers are, Jon lets everyone in on a little secret: the Wall’s protection sucks and has for a century. Somehow, this is a surprise to everyone else who’s apparently oblivious to the fact they’ve been sending rapists and murderers to serve up there, but I digress. Jon immediately tells them they’re going to train basically everyone that can wipe their own butt how to fight – even the girls. Badass Brianne smiles at this. Stuffy lords get all pissy and then Miss Mormont stands up and tells them that’s bullshit and she isn’t going to let some man fight for her. That settled, Jon continues, they have to find dragonglass, mine it and make a shitton of weapons.

Boosting the self esteem of the wilding’s new leader, Jon charges Tormund with protecting the Wall and holding it as long as they can. Then as if a kick in the nuts, he starts talking about the first castles that will fall when the undead army breeches the Wall. Wow dude, way to boost some confidence and convince people to fight for you. Jon continues to go through the castle families, to which Sansa has a different opinion. She voices in front of the whole room that the families that live in those castles should be tossed the fuck out because they’re traitors. Jon disagrees, stating that the men who ran those families died on the battlefield for Ramsay Bolton. He’s not going to hold their families accountable for the actions of their fathers. The two kids who are now the head of the families swear loyalty to Jon and off we go.

kid oath

After the pep talk, Jon gets pissy at Sansa for questioning him in front of the men. She tells him he’s being a butt and should listen to her. Of course, she also kisses ass a bit, telling him he’s a good leader.

Then we’re brought to the floor of a castle, being painted with the map of the Seven Kingdoms. Who is walking on said floor, watching the poor dude paint it, well Ms. Hateful Helen herself – Cersei, the Queen Mother. Jaime appears and they begin to chat about how, gee, he’s just not all up on the sisterly love since he got back. She asks if he’s afraid, he says: “Should I be?” Then they go through the rundown of how all their incesty kids are dead, how their father knew how to gain allies and how they currently have none now that Cersei basically killed everyone’s leaders. She doesn’t give a shit, and tells him she’ll get their allies somewhere else. Down on the balcony overlooking the bay, here comes the Ironborn’s new king, Euron Greyjoy and a huge armada. Jaime asks what dude wants in return for helping her and she tells him Greyjoy wants a queen.

cersei map

The next scene in the throne room is truly hilarious. I didn’t care for Euron Greyjoy before, but now, he’s pretty damn funny. He tries to woo Cersei with talk of the biggest armada in the world, which you can tell kind of gets her going. He throws some excellent barbs at Jaime – including telling Cersei that she should try killing her brother sometime because it’s awesome. She refuses his proposal of marriage and he tells her he’ll win her heart with a priceless gift. I’m assuming it’s supposed to be her ‘little’ brother or the like, but we’ll see.

greyjoy

We then are treated to literally the grossest scenes in the GoT history: a montage of poor Sam emptying chamber pots (complete with whole pieces of shit in the pots), pouring food that looks just like the shit, scrubbing said chamber pots, putting away books and gagging. What’s not to love about that? I felt horrible for poor Sam. I mean, wtf HBO. Of course, as he’s putting away books, he sets his eyes on the ‘restricted area’, just like in Hogwarts’ library. I’m assuming there’s plenty of magic shit locked up, just when they need to find it.

poor sam

Sam then begs the Archmaester to let him study in the restricted area since he’s the only one who’s seen and killed a white walker. After a bit of back and forth between them, the Archmaester tells Sam he actually believes him because his obsession with the white walkers could only be because Sam’s telling the truth. Oh, did I mention they speak over an autopsy of a dead maester? Yeah, narsty. After this, Sam steals some books after lifting the keys to the restricted section and pockets some books to take home. He and Gilly read through some until they find the information about the dragonglass being the whole mountain under the Targaryen keep. He sends the information in a raven to Jon. As he’s finishing rounds feeding lepers, who grabs him? Ser Mormont! Yay! Dude is still alive!

deveros arm

deveros

Back to Winterfell where we see Brianne training Podrick and beating him up nicely. ‘Ole Tormund begins to make googly eyes at Brianne. Littlefinger appears while Sansa is watching Brianne train and tells her again he wants to marry her, without being so direct. She blatantly dismisses him when Brianne walks up.

sweet eye

In a nice little forest in the Riverlands, Arya comes upon a group of Lanister soldiers who offer her some food. Who do we see but Ed Sheerhan singing a sad little tune about how awesome women are. She eats with them, sees how kind they are, and when they ask why she’s going to King’s Landing, she says: “To kill the queen.” Laughter ensues.

Who do we catch up with next? Well the Hound of course. He’s traveling with his band of Lord of the Light worshippers. They come up to the house that he had robbed while with Arya and they go inside to find the man and his daughter dead. While telling their leader he’s a POS and should be dead, Mr. topknot tells him to stare into the fire. Low and behold, the Hound finds religion as he sees the Wall, the castles at the edge of the Wall falling and the white walkers attacking. He also sees an island shaped like an arrowhead. After everyone’s asleep that night, he buries the man and the girl.

From this point until the end of the episode, we get to watch Daenerys arrive at her family’s keep. The slow walk up to the keep, her tearing down the Baratheon banner, seeing the massive throne and finally ending up at the table shaped as a map of the Seven Kingdoms, she recaps the whole of this coming season by saying: “Shall we begin?”

dany home

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Posted by on Sunday, July 16th, 2017. Filed under Dark TV, Headline, Images. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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