Winter has taken over summer for several weeks as GOT returns for its seventh season. The premiere started amazing with Arya killing the rest of the Freys. It was such a great moment to watch this awful house die off. Everyone who've died at the Red Wedding has been avenged thanks to our favorite little assassin, and now she's heading to King's Landing to kill Cersei. I don't think Arya will kill her since she has been a bit too lucky lately, but we'll see what happens. As Arya's heading to King's Landing, she meets up with some Lannister soldiers, including Ed Sheeran. Okay, I know he probably has a name for his character but for now I'm calling him Ed Sheeran.
On one hand, it was cool to see him, while on the other hand it was kind of distracting. I couldn't really pay attention to what Arya and the new characters were talking about since the camera kept directing us towards the singer. They could’ve at least dyed his hair or something to make him look different, but I digress. I know Game of Thrones loves to add singers for cameos so I’m not gonna be too harsh.
Another great young female character that should be mentioned is Lady Mormont, aka The Little Bear (she should be renamed The Badass Bear if you ask me). Her taking down the other leaders was great. I just love how we have a bunch of female characters taking control of the show: Arya, Mormont, Sansa, Dany, Cersei, Yara. I think the only kings that are left are Jon, Euron and the Night King.
Speaking of Sansa and Jon, Tension is brewing between them, but I hope it doesn't last long. The two both have reasonable arguments for what they want, but I am siding more on Jon since they do need to round up everyone in order to defeat the White Walkers. Sansa’s mention of Cersei makes me wonder if they’ll ever meet again. Their interactions seasons ago were interesting, so I wonder what it'll be like now since Sansa's much stronger and has more confidence.
In speaking of Cersei, I love her new look, the costume design for this show has always been amazing since there’s always great care and symbolic meaning put into them. Cersei wants to form an alliance with Euron, which a lot of us knew was coming. There's also a lot of speculation that Cersei will use wildfire again since she is outnumbered, but is she going to blow up the city next time and be dubbed The Mad Queen? Well, she's already quite mad herself but she's keeping her anger bottled up.
I have the feeling she’ll die this season by Jaime's hand (it's highly possible due to the prophecy). Though, I have a sneaky suspicion that Cersei might kill Jaime. I like Jaime but I think that would be a really good twist. Heck, maybe both twins die this season and the only Lannister left is Tyrion.
My favorite scene of the episode was at the end with Dany. I loved how that scene had no dialogue except for the last minute. Everything was conveyed through Dany’s facial expressions. She had finally returned to not just Westeros, but to her family’s ancestral home. It’s a moment that us viewers had been waiting years for, but for book readers it had been much, much longer. Now that Dany is finally at Westeros, Cersei better watch out ‘cause she got three fire breathing dragons and a much bigger army.
Overall, this was a good set-up episode. It was great to see these characters again and I’m excited to see what will happen. I’m a tad annoyed that there’s some tension between Sansa and Jon and hope that things don’t turn sour for them. It was also really unnecessary to prolong that montage of Sam cleaning after the Maesters and throwing up. It felt like that went on for two minutes. That lost points for me, so I’ll give this episode a 7.8/10.
