Game of Thrones (P)Review Roundup: The First Four Episodes

Season 5 of Game of Thrones is officially here! Well, technically it was here a few weeks ago, when the show held its world premiere at the Tower of London. But now the annual round of screeners for the first four episodes has arrived, and with it comes a fresh wave of discussion about what’s to come for a show that will soon go beyond its source material. (Fair warning: there are spoilers for the first four episodes ahead!)

We’ll start with the Tower of London previews. Most of the writing that came out of the world premiere was unfortunately vague (Forbes’ Neil Midgley in particular is frustrating and obscure to the point of complete nonsense) but there were a couple things of note. Telegraph makes a rather explicit mention of Lancel becoming religious, which comes at the end of an article largely detailing a series of things that should intrigue show-only viewers and mostly bore book-readers; everything mentioned is present in the books in some solid form. So, for one, Lancel is back (hooray?) and, for two, he’s apparently found religion. Meanwhile, The Independent believes Season 5 to be the beginning of the endgame (“Ha!” I say, but that’s me) and CNET’s Luke Westaway is largely positive, noting that the episode introduces a small measure of hope into the bleak world of Westeros.

These previews were written for just one episode, though. The reviews coming out based on the first four episodes present a more nuanced picture of what we can expect at the start of this season. Interestingly, a couple reviews explicitly detail their love of the variety of female characters in the show. Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson marvels at them “despite being set in a world that marginalizes women even more than our own.” Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass (whose post is worth the read for the comedy value if nothing else) says his favorite character is Brienne of Tarth, while getting into a brief discussion about the show’s infamous “sexposition” scenes–or as Kass has heard them called, “data humps.” Pretty much all reviews and previews have praise for Cersei and Lena Headey; it seems likely that the season will revolve around her story.

Entertainment Weekly’s Melissa Maerz is the most skeptical of the bunch; she likens the High Sparrow’s devotees to “cult figures from a Kevin Williamson show” and finds the Sand Snakes to be more “B-movie bad girls” than actual badasses. Vanity Fair was also less kind to the Snakes, finding them too campy for Thrones‘ otherwise serious political fantasy tone. Given that Oberyn’s depiction in the show was ripped straight from The Princess Bride, though, I think a little campy-ness on the part of his bastard daughters is to be expected.

The A.V. Club’s pre-review was not written by either of the two regular reviewers (the site offers two reviews per episode, one for Unsullied and one for book-readers) but is remarkably optimistic. I am particularly intrigued by the hinting of a fight scene that escalates almost to Blackwater Bay levels of violence. But the biggest shocker comes from the Hollywood Reporter’s review. While Tim Goodman is mostly worried about the constraint of 10 episodes for the sheer number of characters and plots the show has, he does casually mention at the end that Littlefinger may be mixing it up with Roose Bolton, which I suspected would happen…just not so soon!

Naturally, these reviews can only paint a general picture for the general audience. As specific reviews for each episode spill out each week, we’ll be sure to highlight some of the talking points as book-readers and Unsullied alike venture forth into the unknown.

You can read our own impressions of the first four episodes here.

• Published on 04/11/2015 at 12:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:05 PM CDT