So, I know I'm kind of late, reviewing this and all, but I do want to do it. Game of Thrones is a show that took America by storm, and Britain I think, not too sure on that one. It was such a big show during my time in high school and even still when I was in college, which wasn't that long ago. I was caught up until season eight, at which point I didn't have cable or anything so I missed out on all the events that took place.
Unfortunately, I heard that the last season was absolutely dreadful and that I shouldn't even bother... So I'm going to watch it anyway! I am a completionist at heart and once I start something, like a book or a show, I am compelled to finish it. I am going to die watching both Supernatural AND Criminal Minds I hope you know that, all for you guys and my own entertainment.
So, since my local library has all the seasons on DVD, thank the gods, I will be rewatching the first seven seasons and then the eighth for the first time. You guys will be getting my first reactions and thoughts to the season because I try very hard to keep myself spoil free when I want to read or watch something, so I have NO idea what is going to happen in season eight. I don't even have an inkling of a clue.
With that being said, let's get on with this shall we? Season one has so much happening, so I am going to try my best to not go into too many details. The gist of this season is that the Hand of the King, Jon Arryn, has passed and so King Robert Baratheon seeks out his old friend, Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, to be his new Hand.
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
In the first episode, we see rangers of the Night's Watch, a brotherhood of criminals and outcasts who protect the realm far up north. They go past the Wall, something similar to the Wall in Attack on Titan, to investigate a group of Wildlings, people who live past the Wall. One of the rangers finds them all dead and chopped up for the most part, and when he gets the other two to go back to the area, the bodies are completely gone. They end up getting found by a White Walker, a blue-eyed corpse of one of the Wildlings found earlier, and the two who didn't see the corpses end up getting killed by it. The one ranger who found the corpses, and then saw the White Walker kill his friends, ran. He became a deserter and was soon caught and beheaded for deserting the Night's Watch, but not before he warns them of the White Walkers beyond the Wall.
The one who beheaded him was the Warden of the North, Lord of Winterfell: Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, with his sons Robb, Brandon, and Jon Snow, his bastard, with him. On the way back to Winterfell, they find some direwolves, enough for each of the Stark children, so they bring them back. Jon even finds the runt, which he takes for himself.
Upon arriving, we meet the remaining Starks of Winterfell: Lady Catelyn, and the children Sansa, Arya, and Rickon.
Eventually, the Royal Family comes to Winterfell, King Robert comes to recruit Lord Stark as his Hand, to rule in his stead while he goes off drinking and whoring. They also discuss betrothing Sansa to his son, Prince Joffery, to finally unite the two houses together, as such was supposed to happen with Robert and Lyanna's, Ned's sister's, marriage, before the Rebellion.
During the Royal Family's time in Winterfell, some unfortunate events take place. It is revealed in the very first episode that Queen Cersei is sleeping with her twin brother, Ser Jaime Lannister, a knight of the king! Bran was the one who found them, in an old ruined tower together, during his climb to see past the walls of Winterfell. He was caught by them and Jaime threw Bran from the tower! This forces Bran into a coma and starts all the troubles between the Lannisters and the Starks.
Ned, Sansa and Arya ride for King's Landing, the capital of Westeros, with the Royal Family, while Bran is still in his coma. Bran is attacked in his sleep by an unknown assassin. Lady Stark fights him off, but it is ultimately Bran's direwolf who finishes him. It is then that Lady Stark investigates the tower, finding a long blonde hair. She suspects it was the Lannisters who tried to kill her son and so she rides for King's Landing to tell Ned herself, not trusting a raven to carry the message.
Backtracking to Ned and the others' ride to King's Landing, Jon Snow joins them partway, eventually branching off with Uncle Benjen, who had arrived in Winterfell much earlier than Bran's fall. They head to the Wall, for Jon to join the Night's Watch and defend the realm from what lies beyond, as Uncle Benjen is already doing. Tyrion Lannister, the Queen's brother, joins them, wanting to see one of the most magnificent structures built by their ancestors.
There is so much happening in these episodes, given that they are one hour long each, I am going to try and hit on the important points now. Arya hates Joffery because he is a whiny baby who got her friend, Mycah, killed. Joffery and Sansa are engaged. Lady Stark captures Lord Tyrion on suspicion of killing her son, Bran. Tyrion's champion for a Trial by Combat wins and he and his new companion, Bronn, set off away from the Vale, where he was taken. Lord Ned finds out that the three children of Queen Cersei's: Joffery, Myrcella, and Tommen, are not King Robert's children, meaning they are illegitimate with no claim to the throne. He also finds many of Robert's bastard sons and daughters. Arya takes "dancing lessons," really they are sword fighting lessons so she can learn to use Needle, a sword forged for her, a gift from her brother, Jon. King Robert dies and Joffery is made king, and Cersei rips up Robert's last words dictating that Ned rule until his rightful heir come of age. Also, by this time, Ned has already confronted Cersei about her children and confesses that he knows about their true lineage. Lord Ned is arrested on charges of treason and soon after is beheaded by Joffery, a very stupid move. Sansa is basically prisoner now in the Red Keep, name of the castle, and Arya has escaped, now joining many on the journey to the Wall.
That's a lot that has happened and that's only in Westeros, not including everything happening in Winterfell, at the Wall, or over the Narrow Sea in Essos! But let's try to break down everything shall we?
In Winterfell, Bran wakes up but is paralyzed from the waist down, making life difficult. He gains a new servant, a Wildling who tried to kill him for his things, Osha. Bran also keeps having recurring dreams about a three-eyed raven. Robb goes to war with the Lannisters due to the arrest and beheading of his father. They eventually capture Ser Jaime Lannister, and amazing feat in and of itself. Jaime also confesses to Lady Catelyn that he pushed Bran out of the window of the tower.
At the Wall, life has become a little difficult for Jon. He is targeted by one of the trainers constantly and makes new friends, Samwell Tarly being a key one. Instead of becoming a ranger like he wanted, he becomes the steward for Lord Commander Mormont. Jon also saves the Lord Commander from Wights, reanimated corpses who are minions to the White Walkers. He receives Longclaw from the Lord Commander as a gift because his own son, Jorah, is an exile for disgracing his house and therefore doesn't deserve the sword. The Lord Commander had the pommel of the sword reworked into a wolf instead of the bear that it once was.
Jon gets all the news concerning his family, including the beheading of his lord father and the fact that his brother, Robb, is going to war. He discovers that Maester Aemon used to be a Targaryen, in line for the throne at some point, but became a Maester and couldn't do anything while his family was slaughtered in the Rebellion. It is then decided that most of the Brothers will go beyond the Wall to investigate the Wights, considering that the ones that attacked Lord Commander Mormont were Brothers as well, before their deaths.
Now, we go across the Narrow Sea, to Essos! Finally I am done talking about all that happened in Westeros, thanks the gods! There was so much that was happening, and even though there were no words of a time skip, many months have passed since the beginning of the season. Now, we are going to be talking about Daenerys Stormborn, a Targaryen, but is considered a Stormborn because the House Targaryen is no more. Her and her older brother Viserys live in exile, in Essos. Viserys dreams of reclaiming the Iron Throne and going back home, to his rightful place. He sells Daenerys to Khal Drogo, the leader of the Dothraki, to be his wife so that Viserys can have an army to ride into Westeros with. At this point in time, I believe she is only ten-and-four.
Anyways, she is gifted to Khal Drogo, and she eventually embraces her role as Khaleesi, the Queen of the Dothraki. She receives stone dragon eggs, having become stone over the ages, and she is enamoured with them. Ser Jorah Mormont gifts them to her I believe, he also hands her some books, all these being wedding presents. He soon is in her service and stays with her throughout everything. Eventually, she learns the language of the Dothraki, learns to pleasure the Khal due to a woman her brother bought, and learns to love him and he learns to love her.
Soon she is with child and Viserys is completely fed up with the empty promise of an army, Khal Drogo not having felt like taking his Khalasar across the Narrow Sea. Viserys threatens the life of the Khaleesi and child, which in turn causes Drogo to kill him.
Jorah tries to get Daenerys to turn away but she will not, soon after her brother drops dead she says, "He was no dragon."
And so they move on with their lives and Daenerys tries to convince Drogo for them to continue the rebellion and to kill the Usurper, Robert Baratheon. It is not until an attempt on her life an her son's life, as ordered by the late King Baratheon, that he is motivated to do such a thing. The Khalasar starts ransacking and raping villages for money to buy ships to cross the sea. During an argument with one of the other men, Drogo fights him and kills him, being injured in the process. A woman steps up offering her services to heal him and it doesn't work. Daenerys begs for the witch to heal him, to save his life and she does, using bloodmagic, a very cursed magic that is forbidden. A life for a life, she loses the baby and her Drogo is not the same as he once was, just a husk of himself. The Khalasar leave, a Khal that cannot ride is no Khal. Daenerys finds out that the witch did it on purpose, using her baby's life, as revenge against the Dothraki for raping her and burning down her temple. Soon Daenerys smothers Drogo so that he is put out of his misery, and a pyre is built for him to be sent on to the afterlife. The witch is tied to the pyre, to burn for what she has done, and the dragon eggs are there too, Daenerys trying to give them to Drogo in the afterlife. When the pyre is nice and burning, she walks into it, not able to live without Drogo, but by the time morning comes, she's alive. Her clothes burnt but not her, and the dragon eggs have hatched...
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
And that is the end of season one! That was a lot to try and explain, there is so much going on in the show, panning from one location to another each episode, multiple time each episode actually. This show is amazing, if you are someone who likes medieval fiction, this is something that you will enjoy a lot!
Game of Thrones is a show that I enjoy very much, but to the point where I am obsessed with it. I feel like I would enjoy the books a lot better, but I don't know yet, I haven't had the chance to read them. But I can say that the show holds up very well by itself.
Up there was a bit of a mess, from now on, I am going to try to explain events by location, like I attempted to do so above. I feel like it would make better sense doing it in such a fashion than just focusing on just one group like I did in the beginning. Comment down below if you feel I should just explain the events of all location or just the main one, that being King's Landing. I would like to know whether or not you guys want me to cut down on my explanations.
Personally, I wish that there was more screen time for Essos. I really like Westeros and being able to explore all these places through the different characters' eyes, but I am very interested in Essos and how things there are so much different than Westeros. Westeros has an established monarchy with all little lords and ladies of different regions, but Essos doesn't have one united monarchy. To me, Essos is more of a free spirit while Westeros is very rigid with rules and structure. I think we see more of Essos in the coming seasons, which is great, but I honestly don't remember.
And that is my two-bits on that. I hope you guys enjoyed this review, it may be long but comment below and tell me whether or not you want it shortened and I'll jut focus on one location to talk about. This is a really great show, I am sad that one of the major main characters dies so soon, I was really hoping to see more of them, but it is with their death that the rest of the series is spurred on.
Thank you all for reading and please come back next week! I am not sure what will release just yet but I am planning on watching all the seasons of Game of Thrones so don't go thinking I've abandoned it! Thank you! Also, side note, stay safe and healthy, with the recent spike in coronavirus outbreaks pleas be aware of yourself and others.
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