Jon Snow still knows nothing.
In the premiere episode of its final season, Game of Thrones brings us full circle, opening on another child weaving through the crowd at Winterfell to gawk at the pomp and circumstance of another royal procession—and Arya who parts the sea of people and lets him through. While all of the surviving Starks have finally returned to their home, no children remain, either because they are dead or because they stopped being children long ago.
Arya is no longer the little girl but an assassin par excellence. Sansa is no longer a quixotic teen but the steely Lady of Winterfell. Bran is no longer a boy but a warg and a greenseer.
For all his transformations—b***ard to Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch to King in the North to the pseudo-consort of a dragon queen—somehow it is Jon Snow who understands this the least, who arrives where he began and, in the immortal words of Ygritte, somehow seems to know nothing. He seems weirdly determined to keep his family locked in the amber of memory.
Perhaps that’s why Sansa is more than a little skeptical of his endorsement for Daenerys Targaryen as queen. “Did you bend the knee to save the north or because you love her?” she asks.
Arya, too, reminds Jon to remember who his family really is, advice delivered with just enough ice to carry a hint of threat, assuming Jon were perceptive enough to notice, which he is not.
Her warning takes on new relevance toward the end of the episode, when Sam Tarly finally tells Jon the truth about his parentage, something Bran Stark refuses to do personally because … they’re cousins instead of brothers? I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.
And so Jon learns that he is actually Aegon Targayren, the true born son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targayren, and thus heir to the Iron Throne.
Back in King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister is—as usual—embroiled in her own drama.
Even more baffling is Tyrion’s willingness to believe that Cersei is actually sending an army North to help him rather than a crossbow bolt to penetrate his skull, since his cynicism and distrust of his family, and Cersei in particular, has been a defining character trait of his since Day One and only reinforced at every turn. Naturally, it falls to Sansa to ask why he is behaving completely out of character, and he has no good answer.
To its credit, the show does capitalize on the consolidation of major characters by giving us some long-anticipated reunions.
And then there’s Jaime Lannister, who infamously closed out the series premiere by pushing a little boy out a window and paralyzing him for life. Jaime, too, has finally arrived back to where he began to find himself changed—once golden and arrogant, now graying, humbled, disfigured, both more and less than he once was. The episode closes the circle by bringing Jaime face-to-face with Bran, who sits in his wheelchair in the courtyard, now a man, or something more, or something less. They lock eyes, see each other for the first time, and say nothing about what they have lost, or how far they have come.
– This article has been edited for the sake of brevity.
– Courtesy: Wired.com
