Episode Review Game of Thrones 7.1 “Dragonstone”

July 22, 2017
Dragonstone
The castle of Dragonstone.
The Season 7 premiere was named for the above castle. It became an important place in two ways through out the episode but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. GoT is back! Finally, praise HBO!
Spoilers ahead…
Arya as Walder Frey at the reverse Red Wedding.
Okay, so now we got that out of the way. The best scene of the episode was the cold open before the steam punk credits we know and love. Arya posed as Walder Frey, the old guy who murdered all the Starks at the Red Wedding, wearing his face after she killed him in the Season 6 finale. She then proceeded to murder all of the Freys and marches out saying, ‘Winter came for them.’ It’s a bad ass scene and an even more bad ass cold open. The ones we’ve seen before are usually not as dramatic. But here are some more surprises from the episode…
The Hound robbing a farmer and his daughter.
The Hound continues on his road to redemption and this scene catches up to him. Leave it to GoT to remind you of one episode characters only to remind you that they died tragic deaths because of something one of our main characters did.
The Hound burying the family he sentenced to death by robbing is probably the most touching scene in the episode and his subsequent conversion to the Lord of Light by vision in the fire was a surprise but is also another step down the path for the Hound to become Sandor Clegane again, leaving his life as an out and out villain behind. I still hope he gets to kill his brother in King’s Landing though, which reminds me we didn’t get to see Zombie Mountain this episode. Maybe next one.
Jon and Sansa in Winterfell.
We caught a glimpse of the teased conflict between Jon and Sansa in Winterfell. I really hope these two have learned from their experiences and can talk to each other and explain what they mean better. It would be sort of annoying if the Starks were to tear themselves apart after they spent six plus seasons coming back together. But something will have to happen with this otherwise this late in the Game the creators wouldn’t be focusing on it. If Jon ends up needing to leave Winterfell (perhaps to go get some of that dragon glass in Dragonstone) then Sansa would be in charge and Littlefinger is too close for comfort. I’m afraid he’s going to take down someone big one last time before he bites the dust and it’s looking like it might be Jon or Sansa.

Sam is at the Citadel beginning his training to become a Maester. We start his section of episode with a shit montage and the Internet has taken it upon itself to add ridiculous songs to it, so I don’t have to!

Seriously though a lot happened in this plotline. We got to see Professor Slughorn again and he is not giving Sam that horcrux memory…I mean access to the Restricted section…I mean access to books on the White Walkers. He makes a speech about how humanity will survive while ignoring the fact that hundreds of thousands of people died during all the events he mentioned and letting Sam into the Restricted section hurts no one and could potentially save millions of lives. So let’s just get him drunk, that worked last time.

Sam stole the keys and uncovered that there’s a bunch of dragon glass (which remember kills White Walkers) hidden on Dragonstone. We also found out that Ser Jorah is at the Citadel, presumably to get treatment for his greyscale which has taken over his whole arm and it might be too late to amputate the damn thing which is sort of what I would have done at the beginning. Or at least try burning it first. I don’t know, that’s me.

So Sam is going to be important going forward. My prediction is that Sam is going to end up having to escape the Citadel with Jorah to go to Dany, (who landed at her birth place in the final scene of the episode) and convince her to give him weapons that Jon will need to fight the White Walkers. So the best thing about that statement is that Sam is basically gonna be Furiosa at some point.

Furiosa in Mad Max:Fury Road.

 

(He’s going to escape the Citadel with a guy who seems like he should be the leader but he’s not gonna be because Sam knows things. Okay, it’s not funny if you take too long to explain the joke. It’s already ruined! Ruined! You killed it. Moving on!)

 

BOLD PREDICTIONS

 

Okay, when I was watching the scene where Cersei met with Euron I got the sudden impression of a Bible story about the guy who asks the woman he wants to marry what he can bring her that she will agree to marry him. She replies the head of John the Baptist, so he beheads John the Baptist. I could look up the names for this story but I’m not gonna. You do your own Googling.

Anyway, I’m now worried about Tyrion. I thought Euron was going to focus on his niece and nephew before but I think now Tyrion is in his sights and if Dany losses Tyrion and the Greyjoys suddenly what looks like a surefire win doesn’t seem so surefire. So I think we will probably see something with this next episode.

Dany is going to be resistant to whatever the first attempt to get the dragon glass is. My guess is a raven, then Jon will go in person. Both will fail but then Sam will arrive with Jorah. I don’t think that all happens in episode 2 but that’s my guess as to where that arc is going.

The scene with Ed Sheeran had a huge fan backlash (I get it, the scene was super out of place and basically seemed to exist only for Arya to give her line about killing Queen Cersei other than to provide the camo of course) but I think there’s at least one more scene with him in episode 2. I think Arya is going to travel with him and the Lannister soldiers towards Kingslanding and that Arya’s dierwolf, Nymeria, is going to meet up with them. In the books we hear that Nymeria is running rampant with a massive wolf pack, attacking Lannister soldiers so this seems like a pretty decent bet to me that it’ll happen at some point. So get ready to watch Ed Sheeran die…

Tormand and the Wildlings are on the way to Eastwatch by the Sea (one of the three manned castles along the Wall) as are the Hound and the Brotherhood Without Banners so it seems like there will be a White Walker attack there later in the season. (Episode 4 or 5 maybe? Who knows? Unless you were in the writer’s room it’s kind of impossible to guess where exactly they’re going to drop big moments, like the Hound and Tormand fighting White Walkers, and I think that’s on purpose.)

I think that’s about it. I’ll hit anything I missed next week and I’ll also cover episode 7.2 which airs tomorrow night. Until next time, you win or you die…