Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 1 Review
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Last night’s Game of Thrones season opener was not entirely what I was expecting from the series. Everything from the storytelling to the visuals seemed muted to me comparing to seasons of the past. Today we are going to go over the episode. We may leave some stuff out or not compare things to the books here. This is a show only review. You can expect the same for the next 5 reviews as well.
The show starts off with no cold open this season but a new revamped intro. I have to say this was the first thing that told me something was different about the season. It was muted, less detail but serves it’s purpose by only showing the locations that the show would cover which is significantly less than seasons of the past with just Winterfell and Kings Landing. The old intro was better in my opinion but perhaps this one is different due to the amount of times they could be changing it this season and for that reason I could understand not sinking hundreds of thousands into unique intros 6 episodes.
After the title sequence we see the armies of unsullied marching into Winterfell. We get brief views of some of the main cast. Once they arrive into the courtyard of Winterfell the whole point of the episode begins. All the characters meeting up over the different time windows of being apart. I don’t want to touch on all of them here but it seemed to me that the Arya and Jon reunion was well done and the meeting of Sam Tarly and Daenerys was well done as they reflected the most emotion and well. When Sam finds out is father is dead AND his brother at the hand of Danny and her dragons he is visually disturbed and appears to lose any faith in her.
Tyrion’s character of the series especially over the last two or three seasons has become a sort of dumb ass. Perhaps it’s the amount he drinks but it seems that all his ideas are just terrible and that unless there are other motivations for his character, he simply trusts all the wrong people and for no reason. Sansa calls him stupid when he tells her the Cersei will send up troops to aid in the battle. The North grumbles that this was even an idea that they would march into their lands to aid them.
Bran is as odd as ever leading me to say the line from Letterkenny “Wish you weren’t so fucken awkward bud”. And what is with where they filled him for the episode? In the same location the entire time. Did someone forget to roll him inside at all? Him seeing Jamie at the end of the show would have paid off better if his facial expression changed at all.
Jon and Danny and their scene of flying with the dragons was stupid and felt to me like a waste of time. I know many could argue against that point but I have seen that trope so many times before. From Disney’s Aladdin “I can show you the world”, to Harry Potter righting a Buckbeak in the Prisoner of Azkaban. Even the movie Avatar had a similar feel to it if you want a futuristic side to this repetitive scene.
Jon finding out his parentage and who he is will play a nice new dynamic for what he will do with the information that will inject the season with much needed intrigue as that is severely waning in these final episodes. Will he tell Danny right away or hide the information for now?
Further north at the Umber castle. Beric and Tormund meet up with the knights watch as they all make their way south. How the army of the night king did not see them at any point in their journey south so far is still unknown to me as the eerie dark scene of the desolated castle tells us that the army of the dead has already been there. A creepy scene right out of dead space follows where we see the spiral pattern of limbs with the new lord umber in the middle that re animates only to be set aflame by Baric’s sword.
Backtracking to Kings landing I get the sense that the budget for the show is not as high here. It feels empty and claustrophobic. very few if any extras are in any scenes in this entire set of clips from the episode. Cerci gets her golden company with no elephants. She bangs Euron Greyjoy and instructs Bron to kill her brothers with the crossbow that was used to kill Tywin.
Finally Theon Greyjoy rescues Yara and then she lets him leave to head north to aid the Starks in the fight again the undead army of the Night King.
And that covers about all the notable parts to this episode that I can think of. It was probably to me the most boring season opener that I have seen in the show for a long time. Hopefully things will pick up now that most of the reuniting has come to an end and we can get to some story and some fighting. Hopefully the story picks up in the next episode as the amount of episodes left to tell it is pretty low.
What were your thoughts on the episode? comment below and let us know!
