Game On: The most obsessively watched show on television begins its sixth season

The Binge
Jessica Zafra

WARNING: Here be dragons and spoilers.

It ended with a corpse, and it begins with a corpse. Then other corpses. Many, many corpses.

The fifth season of Game of Thrones ended as the fifth book of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire does, with Jon Snow assassinated by his own men and left to bleed out in the snow. The book leaves Jon’s fate hanging, and while it is highly unlikely that Martin would kill off the hero of his epic, we know he could do it.

The HBO show also left Jon’s fate hanging, but its producers and star Kit Harington spent the last 12 months insisting that Jon Snow really is dead. They even told US President Obama that the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, the bastard (not an expletive) with the glorious hair and the single facial expression, had snuffed it. The more they insisted, the more they reminded me of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch: “He’s not dead, he’s pining for the fjords.”

If we go by semantics, then Jon Snow really is a corpse. His allies seem to accept the fact with equanimity — his decision to release the wildlings and give them land had angered most of the Watch. Jon’s allies take his body indoors and prepare to defend it from the flames. (Which might have proven the R + L = J theory.) At the Wall, the dead are burned to prevent them from returning as wights — ice zombies, basically. (This is a series that has not only dragons and swords, but zombies.) Davos (Liam Cunningham), now stateless following the death of poor Stannis Baratheon, points out that they are outnumbered by the anti-Snow faction led by Alliser Thorne. Their only hope for reinforcements are the wildlings, and Dolorous Edd (Ben Crompton) goes forth to summon them.

Even then we’re not convinced that Jon Snow is permanently dead. This is Westeros, where the deceased can be brought back by various means. Two of them are in the room with the body. There’s Jon’s direwolf Ghost, whose howling is out of character but justified. We’ve seen how Jon’s brother the crippled Bran can “warg” into his direwolf (a sort of inter-species possession). Jon could’ve warged into Ghost, though his ability to do so was never established on the show. More importantly, Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) the Red Witch is on the premises. Not for nothing is the season premiere entitled “The Red Woman.”

Melisandre has power. She gave birth to the shadow that killed Renly Baratheon. She used the blood of King Robert’s bastard son Gendry to curse the other contenders to the throne, and most of them have died (Where is Gendry, by the way?). The priests of the Lord of Light can resurrect the dead, and while we have not seen Melisandre do this we can assume that it is part of her skill set. But Melisandre is having a crisis of confidence. Stannis, whom she believed to be “the prince that was promised,” is dead. Before his ignominious defeat, she had advised him to sacrifice his beloved daughter to the Lord of Light. What is she now? The mirror gives a disconcerting answer.

The scene shifts to another corpse, Ramsay Bolton’s lover Myranda. Ramsay (Iwan Rheon), the least interesting villain on the show (please get rid of him soon), exhibits feelings that could be construed as human before he orders the body fed to the hounds. Ah, these cartoon villains. His father Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton), the traitor who stabbed Robb Stark to death, reminds him of his failure to keep Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) in Winterfell. They need a Stark to hold the North. Roose mentions that his new wife Walda Frey may be pregnant, and we know that Ramsay hates the idea of a fellow heir.

Sansa and Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), the heirs to two kingdoms, are doing their best not to become corpses. Having survived their suicidal leap from the walls of Winterfell, they run through the snow, pursued by Ramsay’s men. And finally the magnificent Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) gets to do what we’ve been wanting her to do since Season 4.

But the premiere directed by Jeremy Podeswa has not run out of corpses. Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster Waldau) returns from Dorne with his daughter Myrcella’s body, giving his sister Cersei (Lena Headey) another reason to deploy her “Poor me” expression. King Tommen’s bride Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) still languishes in the dungeon of the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce).

And then we’re in Dorne again. Dear showrunners, nobody cares about Dorne. Everything about it is terrible. It stopped being interesting when Oberyn Martell was killed. The Sand Snakes are an embarrassment. Forget Dorne. No amount of corpses will make it less annoying.

While you’re at it, forget Meereen, too. Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Varys (Conleth Hill) are wasted reciting exposition. True, Tyrion has to have some contact with the dragons because the history of Westeros (The World of Ice and Fire by Martin et al) suggests that his father was the Mad King, but after that, get out of there.

Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) has been abandoned by Drogon (Bad dragon) and captured by Dothraki who think she’s a weak little girl. She soon disabuses them of that notion. It’s good to see Game of Thrones, a show routinely accused of sexism, sticking up for women. The premiere is all about women: a fanatic forced to face herself, a former victim who’s learned to fight, a warrior finding her place in a man’s world, a queen bitch, and a ruler who realizes that she must be her own army.

Season five was scattershot; this new season gives us a sense of marching towards the ending. Winter isn’t coming anymore, it’s already here. And in the second episode, “Home,” that which we all expected to happen, happened. Order is restored. Game on.

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