“Game of Thrones†fans, always on morgue alert, can relax for one week.Â
Nobody died in the Season 8 premiere. One major murder would have been a sensational way to kick off the series’ final six episodes but director David Nutter and scriptwriter David Hill mostly played it safe in this table-setting episode, using the first hour to gather the various armies that hope to attack the Night King, whose destruction of the Wall at the end of Season 7 was one of this show’s most amazing sequences.
The arrival of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) at Winterfell is both a homecoming for the beloved King in the North and a reckoning, with Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) at his side, that the power dynamics have shifted. Hill efficiently establishes Sansa’s (Sophie Turner) instant distrust of the Mother of Dragons and Dany’s realization that, unlike the easily led Jon, Sansa is unlikely to “bend the knee†to the queen. This rivalry should drive future episodes as Jon’s girlfriend and sister keep a wary eye on each other.
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The best surprise of the hour came during a scene when Sam (John Bradley) meets Dany and Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen). She feels in Sam’s debt for finding a miracle cure for Jorah’s greyscale and he admits that he stole a few books from the Citadel so he might need a pardon.
When it comes out that Sam is the son of Randyll Tarly, she reveals that she was forced to execute his father and brother Dickon for refusing to accept her as their queen. A shaken Sam leaves them and then runs into Jon, and the news comes tumbling out: the revelation of Jon’s true parentage and that he is the true heir to the Iron Throne.
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Download the season 8, episode 1 HERE