so I just recorded a video discussion of the episode which I'll post here when it is all done and edited...
I liked it
the bit between jaime and cersei was strangely humanizing for cersei.. I am kind of rooting for her now... just a little bit... the dialog was fantastic, about what happens to a corpse as it ages, and imagign that happening to her daughter
the dothraki stuff was kind of funny and I like how daenerys safety went hand in hand with her loss of agency..but considering the place she is being taken is the capitol of the dothraki and is LEAD by the widows of dead khals is interesting. obviously she wont be stuck there forever, and it is much more interesting than her failing at politics in mereen
tyrion and varys are one of the best pairings in the series, hilarious, insightful and so much more... I love the way varys has absolute confidence that his "birds" will find the identity of the sons of the harpy in no time... where daenerys failed in mereen tyrion and varys will fly... varys with his information network, and tyrion with his wit and strategy... it will likely be a lot like tyrion ins eason 2 when he was just wiping out coruption left and right, and it'll be fun to watch
sansa and reek meeting up with briene again was cool, and now sansa has real agency with a badass knight backing her (her first knight)... the trailers also showed briene in the riverlands (tully banners in the background) so sansa might get a whole f'n army
I also love the humbled melisandre, and how Davos is so much mroe effective working "for jon" than he was for Stannis... him answering thorne's ultimatum was f'n funny.. he was all polite and cordial, while basically implying that thorne could go fuck off
Melisandre's crisis of faith, including the catfish moment at the end is really interesting to watch too...
then there is dorne.. while the region ahs been mostly boring on the show, that shift in power took me completely by surprise, I expected it to go the opposite way when doran found out... now basically everyone with the name martell is dead... and while elleria thinks she is honoring Oberyn, she basically killed off the last of his family...
I have no love for anyone in Dorne now, I was holding out for Doran to strategically harm the throne, but thta is gone, and I think it is a good thing, it isn't necessary anymore... which also helps in giving sympathy to Cersei as she is at war with 2 shitty forces.. the faith militant and dorne... with Doran gone, and Cersei and Jaime no logner giving a fuck about keeping peace with dorne, there is no reason for the 2 groups not to have all out war... and as much as the faith miliatant was cool to give cersei some comeuppance... and as much as I hated the mountain when he killed oberyn... it'll be amazing to watch frankenmountain disassemble the faith militant.
beyond the coming war in the south, yyou have all paths set to converge in the north as well.... the wildlings, jon's buds, and davos vs the night's watch, the boltons coming to castle black for sansa, sansa possibly going to castle black to find safety with jon (she doesn't know) while briene marshals her forces elsewhere. and who else is very close to that location? oh yeah, the f'n army of white walkers who just sacked hardhome last seaosn
so on the contrary, I think there was a LOT going on
I also like that Arya is basically going to be training to be DareDragon (the westeros daredevil)
next week we get Bran's jedi training.... that might even be when we get the infamous tower of joy flashback (hasn't happened in the books, but there are scenes from it in the trailer) which could answer the question of Jon's parentage, and in doing so either reveal or crush the biggest fan theory of the entire series (that Jon Snow is actually the son of Ned's sister and Rhaegar Targaryn)... that combined with all evidence pointing towards jon being resurected is fascinating... as Jon dying has ended his vows to the night's watch, and if he is the son of Rhaegar he has a claim to the iron throne...
then you have the showrunners of the series saying that they only have about 15 episodes left in them after this season, and that tells us that some significant events are likely to occur soon... like maybe the wall coming down, or maybe daenerys finnaly coming to westeros... there is also word that walder frey may appear in this season.. which means we could get some revenge from the red wedding.
so yeah this episode had some great shocking scenes, some really cool forward momentum , and some heavy implications towards likely future events... probably the best season premeire of the entire series.... as all of the season premieres are mostly uneventful...
the biggest flaw in game of thrones IMO is that they open the seasons with regular episodes... I miss when shows like LOST opened and closed each season with a 2 hour episode... as this episode felt like it was 2 minutes long.. it flew by