How much simpler the world seemed back in June 2016, when the sixth season of Game of Thrones was drawing to a close. After 13 months of real-world political bombshells and power shifts, and the rise of a would-be dynasty who will seemingly stop at nothing to gain and hold onto power, one might wonder whether the biggest, bloodiest, most Dragon-heavy show on television would still have the ability to shock and surprise. The answer, happily, is yes.
Originally adapted from George R R Martin’s series of books, A Song of Ice and Fire, the source material was spent by season five, and even the most ardent fans no longer know which direction the series, now its own entirely original story, will take.
The seventh season of HBO’s epic fantasy kicks off with what, at first, would seem to be a flashback. Grizzled, gout-raddled old Walder Frey (David Bradley) is congratulating his men on their nifty work in mass murder at the Red Wedding of season three, and rewarding them with a feast.
We know that Frey is dead now, his throat slit last season by Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) after she’d fed him a meat pie made of his own two sons, and it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t a flashback at all, but, instead, a Jonestown-style massacre, the assembled Freys choking to death on poisoned flagons of wine.
David Bradley as Walder Frey in Game of Thrones
David Bradley as Walder Frey in Game of Thrones
Having graduated from her gruelling internship with the Faceless Men, Arya is now unstoppable in her quest to avenge her family. And as she later reveals to a singing soldier – a slightly comedic cameo by the musical guest star, Ed Sheeran – she’s heading not North to Winterfell, but South to King’s Landing, ‘to kill the Queen’.
With just 13 episodes to go, spread across two seasons, there has been much talk of an increase in pace in this penultimate season, and a rapid ramping up of tension. However, though lush and cinematic as ever, this opening episode features no battles, no large set-pieces of the sort the show has become renowned for, but primarily sets the scene, with competing Houses and their armies all finally converging on Westeros to slug it out for the Iron Throne.
It would, in fairness, have been tough to maintain the momentum or the body count of the final two climactic episodes of season six - the Battle of the Bastards, a slaughter on a Somme-like scale, and the explosive season finale, in which Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) blew up the Great Sept of Baelor, wiping out 11 regular cast members in the process.
Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister