Episode Title: "Winterfell"
Grade: B+
Long-running TV shows build a power, a kind of weight, a history that's created through years of effective storytelling and character work. It's the history that forges a connection between show and audience. And it can propel a show forward in its waning days, even when much of the show's previous energy and vitality have leached away.
The best example of this is probably Battlestar Galactica's series finale, a mostly crummy, nonsensical episode that still managed to hit some genuine grace notes through exploring the final moments of characters we had watched go through hell for years.
"Winterfell," Game of Thrones' last season premiere, certainly doesn't reach those depths. It is, in fact, a solid, effective episode. But that effectiveness is built on the show's lengthy history, leveraged through a series of heartstring-tugging reunions in an otherwise mostly sedate episode.
Objectively speaking, not much actually happens in "Winterfell." The big centerpiece of the episode is Daenerys and Jon's entrance into the titular castle in a sequence that deliberately echoes the royal procession into Winterfell in the show's pilot so many years ago. Down south, Euron Greyjoy returns to King Landing with the Golden Company and finally gets to bed Cersei, while Theon successfully rescues Yara in a disappointing and rather eye-rollingly quick and easy operation.
North of Winterfell, Tormund and Beric - who unsurprisingly managed to survive the Night King's dragon attack in the season seven finale - stumble across a horrifying scene in Last Hearth, the ancestral home of House Umber. It's a visually striking moment, the tiny young Lord Umber impaled on the wall of his keep, surrounded by the White Walkers' trademark spiral of severed limbs.
Other than the grisly scene in Last Hearth, the biggest moment in the episode is Jon's first dragon ride, a well-executed sequence that mostly succeeds in capturing the power and grace of the massive creatures, even if it doesn't really give Kit Harrington much of a chance to sell the character's sheer terror. It's a lovely scene, a rare moment in which Game of Thrones is able to really exploit its fantasy trappings for joy and fun and not just epic-scale death and destruction.
This lack of incident should be more annoying than it is. After all, "Winterfell" represents more than 16 percent of the show's final season. We only have six episodes left in the show's run - shouldn't some things, you know, happen in every episode?
But "Winterfell" works in spite of that ticking clock. It's built around a series of emotional reunions sprinkled throughout its runtime. Some of these - hi, Theon and Yara - are not terribly effective. But when Jon and Arya meet under the weirwood tree in Winterfell's godswood it's a moment weighted with emotional resonance - you're suddenly aware of the fact that these two haven't been on screen together since the first season all the way back in 2011. There's nothing particularly special about the dialogue here, which is probably a good choice - Arya and Jon aren't really the weepy, sentimental types. But the entire scene is fraught with the emotions that come from watching these characters go through eight years of hell - we literally watched Jon die.
Arya, in fact, gets three great reunions in this episode, two in one scene. She finally runs into the Hound after leaving him for dead back in season four (she robbed him first, she helpfully points out), and they share the begrudging respect of two people who don't like each other but who at least have come to tolerate the other's existence. And Arya falls right back into her cutesy flirtatious energy with Gendry, who she forged a nice little bond with way back in seasons two and three.
Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage get an opportunity to turn in their characteristically good work in the reunion between Sansa and Tyrion - husband and wife, you may have forgotten, since we haven't seen the two together since season four in 2014 (though one doubts these two crazy kids will try and pick things up where they left off). Turner, in particular, gets to showcase how much she has evolved with her character in those five years - Sansa is no longer the cringing, frightened child outclassed by Tyrion's wit and cynicism.
In fact, everyone in the cast is pretty much working at their peaks in "Winterfell." Even Harrington and Emilia Clarke, who've always been the weakest members of the show's extraordinary ensemble, seem truly comfortable in their roles - Clarke, especially, is a lot of fun when teasing Jon around the dragons.
More than anything else, "Winterfell" goes a long way toward proving that Game of Thrones is still capable of hitting its subtle emotional beats. There's no doubt that the show has placed more emphasis on huge setpieces and spectacular battles in recent seasons. But time and history are on the show's side, and one of the most anticipated season premieres in recent memory proved that Game of Thrones knows how bring to both to bear on its own behalf.
Notes
- Sam tells Jon the truth of his parentage toward the end of the episode. I'm thankful they didn't draw that out. Jon took it pretty well, considering he was just told he had been sleeping with his aunt - but then, once you've come back from the dead the whole "laws of gods and man" thing kind of loses its power.
- Bronn is back! He gets the show's requisite female nudity scene, which...eh, they've cut back pretty dramatically on those in recent years. The three prostitutes he's hanging out with talk a lot about all of the Lannisters lost in the famous Loot Train Battle, and it turns out "that boy Eddie, the ginger" got most of his face burned off. So, if you were wondering what happened to Ed Sheeran, there you go.
- "Stay back, he has blue eyes!" "I've always had blue eyes!"
- Still, the funniest moment of the episode is Jon keeping one eye on the dragon while kissing Daenerys and the dragon warily glaring at him the whole time. We've all struggled to impress the new girlfriend's pet, Jon.
- Arya gives Gendry a weapon schematic, because videogame crafting systems are now truly ubiquitous.
- Lena Headey doesn't get a lot to do in this episode, but her sad little smile when she's told the Golden Company didn't bring its elephants is perfection.
