Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

I’ve taken a couple of weeks’ break from Game of Thrones after season 2, to give me a chance to rewatch Stranger Things season 1, in preparation for the new season 2. But we’re back into it now!

The North: We left our heroes watching an army of White Walkers tromping through the snow towards The Wall. This episode opens with Samwell racing purposefully across the snow, in a scene reminiscent of both the opening of The X-Files: Fight the Future and also something out The Thing (1982). Suddenly a White Walker looms out of the snow and tries to attack him, but it is grabbed on the leg by Jon Snow’s wolf, which keeps it off Sam long enough for the Watch men to burn it. The White Walkers basically seem to be undead creatures that can only be killed by fire.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

King’s Landing: Tyrion wakes up after the battle, heavily bandaged (I knew he wouldn’t die). But rather than being given a hero’s reception for saving King’s Landing, he is in a cell. Tywin has taken over as Hand of the King, and nobody seems to want to give Tyrion any credit at all for his plan to decimate Stannis’s fleet. In fact, Varys tells Tyrion that Cersei plotted to have him killed on the battlefield. I’m not sure what Cersei has against her brother – he’s the only one who was keeping Joffrey in line. Maybe she reckons Tywin can do a better job. Good luck. Shae arrives and Tyrion figures she’ll be repulsed by his facial scars, but she is loyal and urges him to run away with her to back to Pentos, which I think is her homeland. But Tyrion is stubborn and wants to hang out where nobody likes him.

Meanwhile, Joffrey rewards Tywin and some other men who helped save the city from Stannis. One guy asks that Joffrey marry his sister, Margaery (Renly Baratheon’s widow), to cement an alliance between Houses Lannister and Tyrell. Joffrey actually seems to show some interest in a female and it looks like he wants her, but he makes a show of holding his path to marry Sansa. Cersei argues that Sansa is from a traitorous house and so the oath is null, which Joffrey immediately seizes on to express his wish to marry Margaery. Sansa turns away, seemingly upset, but does a little “Yes!” dance as she walks away. But Petyr Baelish warns her that she is now in danger in King’s Landing, and he will work to get her home to Cat and her family. I was a bit confused here, because I thought “The Hound” Clegane offered the same thing to Sansa last episode, and it wasn’t clear if they actually left the city or not. I guess not. Well, Sansa better get out of here quickly now… I can’t see Joffrey keeping her around much longer. I can’t honestly see him treating Margaery much better, either.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

There’s a lot less to say about this episode than usual, since the entire episode is taken up with Stannis Baratheon’s attack on King’s Landing. And much of it is action scenes of battle, with relatively little character interaction.

It begins on the sea at night, with Stannis discussing the imminent assault with his captain, who he plans to make Hand of the King once he has the throne. Inside King’s Landing, they know the attack is coming, and the mood is fearful. It seems nobody trusts Tyrion to be capable of organising an effective defence. Pycelle gives Cersei a small vial containing nightshade and tries to advise her euphemistically of what it will do – Cersei snaps and says she knows what it does. Bronn is having a pre-battle drink and singsong with some of his soldiers, when “The Hound” Clegane walks in and starts making threatening remarks to Bronn. This seemed a bit out of nowhere, because I hadn’t registered any animosity between them before. Maybe I missed it. Anyway, it looks certain to escalate into a brawl, but then bells ring out, signalling that Stannis’s fleet has been spotted approaching under cover of darkness. Everyone runs to defend the city.

Okay, so now it’s clear that Hound and Bronn hate each other, presumably they both survive this attack and will in the future engage in more mutual hostilities. I’d wager they have a fight at some point later in the story.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

The North: Well, Jon is captured by a band of wildlings. It turns out they captured another member of the Night’s Watch somehow, and put him with Jon. Talking, this other guy suggests that Jon pretend to turn to their side, so as to infiltrate them and get information about their plans to attack south of The Wall. Then he unilaterally stages a scuffle with Jon, in an apparent effort to make it look like this other guy is angry with Jon. This seems like a pretty poor deception, and I’ll be surprised if the wildlings fall for it. How stupid do they need to be to trust Jon? Yeah, okay, exactly as stupid as he was to trust the wildling woman who led him straight into this trap in the first place…

Meanwhile, the rest of the group are looking fruitlessly for Jon, and stumble across a carved rock buried in the snow. Samwell reckons it was placed by the gods or something. Underneath it is a cache of spearpoints made of obsidian, or as they call it “dragonglass”. Hmm. It seems this has been left here by another Watchman. Presumably these weapons will come in handy at some point, though it’s hard to imagine how a situation might arise where they are more useful than the men’s own swords. Maybe they can be used to slay dragons?? Well that would be handy against Daenerys’s eventual forces.

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Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.

The North: Jon, Jon, Jon, Jon, Jon… I knew you’d get into trouble letting that wildling woman live, and here we see exactly how. The two of them wake up in the morning and she immediately starts teasing him about his ways with women, or rather lack of them. He forces her to walk, and… she leads him straight into an ambush of her fellow wildlings. Of course. An idiot could have seen that coming – good thing Jon’s not an idiot, then.

Jon’s a good fighter, but I don’t see him getting out of this encounter without being captured. He’ll either have to engineer an escape later, or wait for his fellow Night’s Watchmen to rescue him. I don’t really have a feel for which is more likely. Probably the rescue, because that will give the commander another chance to chew Jon out for stupidity. The other option is he escapes, then finds the remainder of his patrol… dead! That would be quite dramatic, so maybe that’s a possibility.

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