Last night was the much-anticipated season four premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
I found myself huddled in a group of seven hunkered down in a friend’s dorm room in front of his big-screen to watch with the help of my Xfinity account – insert shout out to Comcast here.
Amongst the cheers for our favorite returning characters, whoops at the cast members we find most attractive, and interjections of “I like him” and “Hey, that’s a different actor than before,” we came to the general consensus that this was a premiere that did not disappoint…though the fact that we have to wait a whole other week for more is a major disappointment.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the premiere garnered the highest ratings for HBO since the series finale of The Sopranos back in ’07.
6.6 million tuned in to watch Thrones, and the influx of viewers to HBO GO crashed the site with many–including myself–receiving a vaguely ominous “fatal error” message.
According to this article:
“HBO Go did experience issues due to overwhelming demand around the premiere of Game of Thrones,” the network said in a statement. “The service has returned to several platforms and we are working hard towards full recovery, which we expect soon.”
Luckily, as I mentioned earlier, this gal has an Xfinity account and was able to watch it no problem. How Comcastic.
Here are some of my thoughts/highlights from the premiere for my fellow Thrones-ers:
***SPOILERS IMMINENT***
1. Opening with the destruction of Robb’s sword? That’s way harsh, Ty. (I love it when Clueless references fit flawlessly into conversation)
2. Dany’s dragons need to get out of their teenage rebellion stage and start listening to their mother again. I already worry enough about her without being terrified that her own dragons are going to hurt her for interrupting their dinner time.
3. Speaking of Dany, why did we recast the other half of her current flirtationship, Daario Naharis? Is it because he was too pretty? Because I don’t think that’s a valid reason.
(There actually was a valid reason, which you can find here)
4. Can we improve Tyrion’s life pretty quickly? My favorite character is having some serious struggles as of late. His wife is, understandably, devastated by the loss of her mother and brother–and pretty much everyone else in her family as all of her other siblings are presumed dead–for which Tyrion’s family is to blame. His girlfriend is becoming jealous and getting angry when he doesn’t want to sleep with her, and he is getting told off by mysteriously dangerous and very sexy strangers. Speaking of which…
5. As Tumblr so eloquently states:
We met a couple of brand new characters last night: Oberyn Martell, (Pedro Pascal) and Ellaria Sand, his staggeringly beautiful partner (Indira Varma).
We’re introduced in a brothel where they are picking a woman to join them in bed.
Ellaria takes the lead, dismissing the first girl as “too timid,” which bores her, and picking the second, who seems much more eager.
So here we have Ellaria as what would likely be described as bisexual.
But, wait! There’s more!
Oberyn then decides he simply must have the male prostitute as well.
So we have a bisexual couple?! So exciting! Thank god for bisexual representation on wildly popular TV shows.
Oberyn later tells my dear Tyrion that he has come to King’s Landing, not for the royal wedding of Joffrey (King Brat) and Margaery, (Another insanely beautiful human…there are just so many on this show) but for revenge against Tywin Lannister who allegedly ordered the murder of Oberyn’s sister, Elia, who was married to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, son of the “Mad King,” saying:
“The Lannisters aren’t the only ones who pay their debts.”
So awesome.
6. Needle is back and a name is crossed off the list!
Arya has been through a lot and to say that I am glad that she has her favorite weapon back is an understatement. While I don’t usually endorse teenage girls being murderers, I am always impressed with her bad-assness…bad-assery?
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So how’re you guys feeling about the premiere? Love it? Hate it? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear’em.
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Here’s a fantastic recap for you in case you need reminding of anything.
mckenna magazine 
I finally got to watch the Game of Thrones premiere last night, and I have to say I was pretty impressed with it as well. Dany is by far my favorite character, and I’m so happy to have been able to see where she is at this point, despite her dragons acting up. The bisexual couple also made me very happy, as previously I’ve thought Game of Thrones was pretty heterosexual, which makes sense considering the time period and context. So the fact that they’re getting even more LGBT representation in such a popular show is really admirable. I hope you do a review of this week’s episode as well, it’s pretty fantastic!