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'Game of Thrones' returns, still surprises
Courtesy of HBOIt was inevitable that hype and speculation would eventually turn up in an actual television show
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Courtesy of HBO
It was inevitable that hype and speculation would eventually turn up in an actual television show.
When Game of Thrones' (GOT) season 5 premiered on Monday, our entrance into Westeros is tariffed by a 10-month gap; the previous season ended back in June, with Arya Stark sailing off into the Eastern sunset and Tyrion killing his father, Tywin. Returning now strains the brain.
While the death of Tywin leaves a vacuum in King's Landing, characters elsewhere reel across the kingdom. Plot is sequence ' this happens, then this happens ' but Game of Thrones is increasingly far-flung, a scatter graph of somehow-related persons and things.
Where is Arya going? Did that fencer guy really die? Can Tyrion please rendezvous with Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen?
But one of Thrones' enjoyments is seeing these disparate threads knotted and then cut; so after lapsing from last season, a confusing reunion is to be expected ' is not, in fact, confusing at all. Because GOT premiers are always retrograde: their job is reinstating the Westeros code of non-conduct and brutality, and saving the new stuff for later.
Amazingly, this premier still surprises, with the help of usual suspects Blood and Sex. The two collaborate in the opening scene, in a lovingly cast long-shot of one man's knife-death by way of the larynx.
He is a soldier of Daenerys Targaryen; and already we're in hot, bleak Meereen, as Queen Dragon and her castrato army go about thanklessly reforming a slave society. Daenerys wants to root out the old, though her new local boyfriend warns that tradition, especially 'human cockfighting', is the glue of this civilization. It's old-meets-new here, with some killer hipsters bringing it back by murdering that poor soldier. Cut to black.
Tyrion is back ' on land. The ship stops at Pentos and he tumbles out of the wooden box he got for cheap from Varys after killing Lord Lannister, i.e. Daddy. The Imp complains about the conditions of his stowaway, but Varys is dismissive; his bleached baldness seems to laugh at the other's filth.
After drinking some wine, then disgorging that wine, Tyrion says: 'Our future is s**t. Just like the past.'
But Varys ' again with the mocking, beatific baldness ' responds: 'A drunken dwarf will never be the savior of the Seven Kingdoms.' Probably this means he will be; or there's another dwarf somewhere sobering up, ready to one-off Tyrion.
GOT creators should never, ever ' or possibly, definitely should ' start a match-making service after this is all over. The series thrives on unconventional couplings: Jaimie-Brienne, Jon-Ygritte, Sansa-Littlefinger ' and Tyrion-Varys might be the one to rule them all.
The strength of their pairing reverses the weakness of others. Deanerys' episode is still boring; we watch because we want it to get better. Cerci is still mean: Tyrion killed Tywin on purpose, she tells Jaimie, 'You killed him by mistake.' Meanwhile Sansa and Little Finger are off on a secret mission, and Brienne and Podrick search for Starks.
At least Winterfell is interesting again, thanks to Stannis Baratheon, who's looking to conscript the Wildlings. In exchange they're promised land and freedom, a fair deal; but first the wildest Wildling, Mance Rayder, must bend the knee to future King Baratheon. This he refuses to do (because: 'respect', he tells Jon Snow), a decision whose opportunity cost is death. Snow says: fire.
'I don't want people to remember me like that, scorched and screaming. But it's better than betraying everything I believe.'
I won't spoil what happens. But there's no spoiling the series' first flashback, of kid Cersei seeking out a witch's council in Lannister wood. That prophecy is by now self-fulfilled: Cersei, it turns out, has always been mean, was always going to be queen, and always felt threatened by younger, prettier girls.
The premier brought the same series pleasures. It was good, but familiar. Holding Thrones to its own uncompromising standard, might we have expected better?
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' The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post
