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

Winterfell: In the previous episode, Bran had also asked Osha about another dream image he’d seen: the ocean coming to Winterfell (which is inland) and lapping at its borders. Now we see what that meant: Theon’s forces have used their coastal attack to launch a raid inland as far as Winterfell, and succeed in overunning the town. This is rather surprising – it seems like a very long stretch for the meagre force he commands.

Anyway, Theon confronts Bran and reasons with him that Bran should declare that his people should bow to Theon’s rule, lest he be forced to slaughter them. Bran consents, but is not happy about it. He clearly feels the responsibility for his people. Bran also accuses Theon (rightly) of betraying the Starks, after they brought him up. Theon seems a bit unhinged over his divided loyalty, and in a courtyard when a loyal Stark follower spits at him, he orders the spitter’s death and hacks his head off himself.

Osha approaches Theon at night and seduces him. But it’s a ploy to get access to Bran, his younger brother, and Hodor, whom she releases and leads on an escape into the night. It looks like she’s grown fond of Bran and the Starks, and is going to be helpful to them.

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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 Stormlands: Cat and Brienne are talking to Renly Baratheon in his tent, when suddenly a ghostly black shape enters and stabs Renly through the heart. This looks like the demonic thing that Stannis’s red witch woman (whose name I learn is Melisandre) gave birth to at the end of last episode. I thought Renly would last longer than this, but he keels over dead within the first minute of this episode! Alas, the guards rush in and assume Brienne killed Renly, so a fight breaks out. Brienne kills the two guards defending herself.

Brienne is distraught over the death of her liege, but Cat convinces her to flee and avenge him later, rather than die now. Later, as they travel away from Renly’s camp, Cat says she’s heading back to Winterfell. Brienne, impressed with Cat’s bearing, decides to swear allegiance to her. This gives Cat a formidable guard and ally. Perhaps she might need Brienne before much longer.

Meanwhile, Stannis is less than sad at his brother’s death, and Renly’s bannermen look to be switching to his side now. Stannis’s lieutenant (named Davos, the one who took Melisandre to give birth), questions what is going on, and obviously mistrusts Melisandre and her demonic connections. Davos insists that the campaign on King’s Landing not be accompanied by Melisandre, and Stannis agrees. I think he’s lying though… Stannis seems to think Melisandre is well worth having around. What happens next with the demon thing is going to be interesting to see… Was it a one-off thing just to kill Renly, or is it lurking around waiting to strike somewhere else??

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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.

It looks like Joffrey’s guards weren’t taking Arya, Gendry and the others to King’s Landing… they end up in a new location called Harrenhal: The place looks like a half-melted castle. As they’re marched in, Arya’s fat friend asks what can melt stone, and Arya replies, “dragonfire”.

It turns out this is where Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane is, and each day he chooses a prisoner, apparently at random, to torture to death for information. Over the episode we see a couple get taken away. During the night, Arya recites a list of the people she wants to kill: Cersei, Joffrey, one or two others, and now she adds The Mountain. Finally, Gendry is chosen and strapped to the torture chair. But then Tywin Lannister arrives and tells everyone off for killing valuable prisoners. He asks Gendry if he has a trade and Gendry says he’s a smith. Tywin instantly recognises Arya is a girl, and says she can be his new cup maiden. So they are saved from a terrible fate, at least temporarily.

It seems everything I try to predict about what will happen to Arya next is wrong. So I’ll say she won’t cut Tywin’s throat in his sleep, find her sword, rescue Gendry, and escape from the Lannister camp – because that’s what I want her to do.

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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.

Let’s pick up from last episode’s cliffhanger, North of The Wall: The recap highlights before the opening credits reveal enough that I can now see that it’s the wildling farmer guy carrying a baby into the woods. We don’t see exactly what happens to the baby, but when Jon comes around with a bloodied face he tells his commander that the wildling – whose name is Craster – appeared to be giving a newborn son to some creature/thing. One guess what it was… [cough]white walkers[cough]. Commander Mormont tells Jon to mind his own business, they need allies like Craster north of The Wall. Jon accuses Mormont of knowing all along and Mormont gives him a guilty silence.

Craster has had enough of Jon’s snooping and orders the Watch to leave at first light. Samwell tempts fate by talking to the pregnant daughter again, and then forces her to accept a small thing – I think it’s a thimble, because he tells a story about how his mother used to do sewing with it. She conceals it and goes about her farmwork. Prediction: No doubt this will come back to bite Samwell and the Watch in some way in the future. I imagine Craster will find it and banish his daughter to the forest or something. Or maybe he’ll use it as an excuse to betray the Watch.

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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.

I forgot to mention last time that Tyrion had reached King’s Landing and assumed the role of acting Hand of the King, after showing the written order from Tywin (whom Joffrey had earlier appointed Hand of the King in absentia, probably thinking he’d never show up and so wouldn’t actively meddle – ha!).

And again we get treated to another new location in the opening credits map: a small group of islands with the name “Pyke”. I assume this is the Iron Islands and Pyke is the capital. But let’s begin at…

Dothraki-land: I still don’t have a better name for this land, across the Narrow Sea. Daenerys and company are dying of starvation and thirst, when one of the scouts she sent out returns. Or at least his head does, in a saddlebag on his horse. Jorah says it could have been any of a number of other Khals. Khal is the Dothraki word for “king”, and Khaleesi, Daenerys’s title, means “queen”. (I figured this out some time ago, but never mentioned it before.) A distraught relative/wife of the scout says the other Khal has denied the man his passage to the afterlife by not burning his body. Daenerys orders a pyre built and promises the man will ride with his ancestors this night.

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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.

So I opened my media viewer and looked for season 1, episode 11… and there was none. It was only after a few panicked minutes when I searched online and found that season 1 only has 10 episodes in it, that I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the first episode of season 2.

The opening credits show a new place on the map: an island called Dragonstone. I immediately thought this must have something to do with Daenerys. Maybe she takes her group of followers on a small ship to an island in the middle of the Narrow Sea and sets up a colony where she starts raising dragons. It turns out this didn’t happen at all.

Winterfell: Bran is still having weird dreams. The recap at the start of the episode reminds me of a bit from the previous episode which I think I forgot to mention last time. He dreamt that he heard Ned’s voice in the crypts where past Starks are buried, and then went down there later to investigate, and ran into his younger brother, who said he was also down there looking for their father! So something weird is going on with Ned Stark and some sort of influence from beyond the grave. I guess we might see his ghost or something at some point.

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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.

This is very exciting, because two of the predictions I made came true in this episode! We’ll see those near the end…

King’s Landing: Well, Ned’s definitely dead. The episode opens with his blood dripping off the executioner’s sword. As his head is hoisted high for all to see, Sansa faints and a guy in the crowd has grabbed Arya and shielded her eyes from the sight. This is obviously someone who knows who she is, but I’m not sure who this man is. He drags Arya off, cuts her hair, and tells her to act like a boy, then throws her into a bunch of captives and slaves apparently about to set out north for The Wall to bring recruits for the Night’s Watch. I don’t quite understand what’s going on here, except that whoever this is, he thinks he’s doing Arya a favour by hiding her and smuggling her out of the city – which is probably at least half true, since no doubt she’d be in worse trouble if Joffrey caught her.

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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.

Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey…

Well, we’ll get to that.

Across the Narrow Sea: Bacteria. Minute, invisible, bacteria! A dude with an exotic curved sword can’t fell Drogo, but the bacteria in his wound do – he falls off his horse while riding. Immediately some of his followers declare him unfit to be Khal, if he can’t stay on his horse. Daenerys shoos them away. Jorah warns her that the Dothraki don’t respect bloodlines – as soon as Drogo is too weak, or dead, someone else will claim the leadership through strength.

Daenerys realises she has to save Drogo and summons the witch woman again. Her diagnosis is not good. But she can perform a magic ritual, which requires the sacrifice of Drogo’s horse to transfer life into him. Daenerys orders it, and ends up covered with blood (again). As she leaves the tent the men outside are angry, and she collapses, declaring the baby is coming! Jorah carries her back into the tent in the hope the witch woman is also a midwife.

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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 pointy end indeed. Things are really stirring across the land.

The Wall: The Rangers have retrieved two frozen bodies, one missing the hand that Jon’s wolf, Ghost, recovered. They are part of Benjen’s patrol, but Benjen is not found. A raven arrives from King’s Landing, bearing the news that King Robert is dead, and Joffrey has claimed the throne. Jon wants to head south to aid his family, but the commander warns him against doing anything foolish. We know the penalty for desertion is death – as meted out by Ned himself in the very first episode. Jon seems torn between heading south to assist one half of his family, and north to look for Uncle Benjen. Since south would be desertion, it looks like he’ll settle for north.

During the night, Ghost goes wild and leads Jon to the commander’s quarters, where one of the “dead” bodies is lurching around. It attacks Jon and he kills it with fire after a few fruitless stabs of his sword right through its chest. Later, the watchmen burn both bodies, and Samwell says they must have been killed by White Walkers, thus ensuring they rose from the grave to threaten the living. It seems Jon will have his hands full without being able to help further south. If I were to make a prediction here, I’d guess the White Walkers will eventually overrun the Wall and Jon will be among a scant few survivors who are then forced to head south to warn/protect the lands further away.

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