Game of Thrones returns to HBO Sunday night with Season 3 picking up right where we left off.
Spoiler warning.
When you have a story as sprawling as Game of Thrones with a cast that only continues to grow and plot lines sprouting up like magic beanstalks all over the place the first episode of a season can feel a whole lot like tying up loose ends.
That s basically where we find ourselves in the opening of HBO s third season of Game of Thrones the adaptation of fantasy author George R. R. Martin s best selling Song of Ice and Fire saga. When we left off in Season 2 we ended on a dramatic note with many unresolved storylines and questions yet to be answered.
Not much has changed after one episode of Season 3 but we can begin to see the pieces moving again realigning themselves as the war between the various Houses of Westeros continue to battle in the wake of Stannis s defeat and Renly s assassination. The powerful Houses of the South once sworn to Renly have formed an uneasy alliance with the Lannisters with Margaery Tyrell sliding gracefully from Renly s cold bed to an engagement with the boy king Joffrey.
Actually Margaery s role is expanded for the show. She s both older and more present and I suspect will serve as more than one character from the books. She s a skillful politician to be sure cavorting with orphans and making sure Cersei and everyone else know who happens to be paying for the sudden influx of food and riches to the city.
Cersei falls directly into her trap oddly enough noting how they had previously been attacked when traveling through the poor part of town. Margaery was welcomed with open arms even though no knights surrounded her.
Meanwhile Rob Stark marches ever closer to King s Landing happening across the ruins of Harrenhal and the slaughter left for him there by Gregore Clegane the Mountain. His mother Catelyn remains in disgrace for her freeing of Jaime Lannister a character whom we sadly did not encounter in the Season Premiere.
One of the best moments of the episode took place between Tyrion and Tywin Lannister. Tyrion affronted by his father s failure to visit him while wounded after the battle of Blackwater Bay goes to demand Casterly Rock the seat of House Lannister. Tywin responds with as much cruelty as we ve seen from him yet all but denouncing Tyrion as his son and certainly denouncing him as heir.
Oh and one more thing he adds as Tyrion storms silently from the room. The next whore I find in your bed I ll hang.
Jon Snow meets the King Beyond the Wall Mance Rayder one of the first new faces we ve seen this season. I couldn t be happier with the casting as the excellent Ciaran Hinds will be playing Rayder. Hopefully he plays a more substantial role earlier on in the show than he does in the books.
We also have a brief scene between Sansa and Littlefinger as he plots and plots some more and our damsel in distress hopes and wishes for a way to escape. No Aria this episode unfortunately though in such a short span of time we can t fit every major character.
The episode ends with Dany arriving in Astapor one of the slaver cities where the renowned Unsullied are trained and sold. Later Dany is almost assassinated by a young and very creepy assassin only to be saved by Barristan The Bold Selmy.
I promise I won t delve into the books much while writing about the show but I m not terribly happy with how they ve handled Selmy s introduction. In the books we are left to wonder about who Whitebeard is and why he knows so much. For various reasons this is exceedingly important to later events (which I won t spoil.)
He arrives with another character as well Strong Belwas who while not a major figure by any means is still one that I had hoped would make it into the show.
Sometimes I find decisions in television adaptations to be quite baffling. The sixth Harry Potter movie for instance took the incredibly dramatic ending of the book and turned it into a rather boring anti climactic and wholly unremarkable fight scene for the movie.Game of Thrones took a marvelous first encounter between the Crows and the Others and turned it into a cliff hanger for Season 2 s finale that bore almost no resemblance to the panic and drama found in the book.
And now we have an important meeting between Dany and Selmy that has lost all its mystery. Will we get any of the backstory we so desperately need at this point out of Selmy Since so little was conveyed by Ned Stark during Season 1 we need someone like Selmy to convey some of the important details unless for reasons bizarre and unimaginable the show has decided to avoid the backstory altogether.
Concerns and quibbles aside I think the first episode of Season 3 did exactly what it needed to. We re back up to speed on the broader conflict and the various minor character conflicts and positioning for power. The ball hasn t really been moved forward at all but our feet are on sturdy ground to move forward.
It s a solid start to a solid show and if all the stars align the very best book in the series A Storm of Swords will shine throughout both Season 3 and 4 gracefully making its bloody way to our television screens and thus to our hearts.
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