Well, that was certainly a Game of Thrones premiere. (spoilers going forward). I’m not going to recap these episodes, you already watched it on HBO.

“When people you ask what happened here, tell them the north remembers. Tell them, winter came for house Frey.”

What a fantastic opening opening to season 7, really. I’m hoping this sets up the theme of “the seasons of payoffs.” Speaking of setting up, that’s basically what Dragonstone was; a set-up episode for the rest of the six episodes. We get a little bit of each story, including; a nice montage of Sam during his Maester training.

I usually don’t like when Game of Thrones jumps around too much to 4,5,6 stories in a single episode, but I think it worked well in this one. The two scenes involving Arya were great, but I think The Hound stone the episode.

Sandor Clegane has always been one of my favorite characters, he’s had a real arch and great character development. The Hound, along with Jaime Lannister have both become someone we root for, after originally being people we hate. Clegane has now seems become a believer of the Lord of Light. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here. His group may have a large role to play in the war with the Night King.

I’m excited for this season. It’s going to be short (7 episodes), so let’s hope that they’ve made the most of their time. In past seasons, there have definitely been a few too many build-up episodes. Granted, they had great pay offs, but we only have two seasons to go.

I can’t wait for episode 2.

5/5

Image source – HBO.