Even their appearances feel naturally opposed, Turner’s sleek, streamlined elegance lending her exchange with the diminutive and icily imperious Clarke an almost stylized feeling, as though the two were animated characters drawn to evoke feelings of just-concealed rudeness and disdain. Turner and Clarke occupying the same space is thrill enough, the two actresses playing off one another with instant chemistry. The chilling detachment with which Daenerys speculates as to what she’ll do if Sansa (Sophie Turner) refuses to respect her is one of the episode’s most effective tension-builders. Watching these people we’ve come to know and love over the last decade butt heads over titles and castles and centuries-old vendettas is a picture of squabbling idiocy so extreme it would feel preposterous if not for its clear connection to our own society’s response to global warming.
The show’s long-running exploration of human pettiness has never felt more painful.
“He would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes,” the spymaster Varys (Conleth Hill) said of the now late and unlamented Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aiden Gillen) way back in season four. Aside from a disturbing sequence set far to the north at the Last Hearth there isn’t much dread to be had, which leaves even the episode’s most beautiful images slightly hollow. The most ambitious, sprawling story in television history is in its endgame, and we’re unlikely to see anything quite like it ever again.Īs Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) attempts to consolidate her power at Winterfell, ancestral seat of House Stark, and in King’s Landing Cersei (Lena Headey) plays a nihilistic game of chicken with the apocalypse, gambling that it will wipe out her enemies for her, the army of the dead marches inexorably toward its last battle with the flawed and fractious living. If there’s a whiff of sentimentality to the episode’s parade of happy reunions and dragonback joyrides, it’s offset by the thrill of finally watching the whole thing come together. “Winterfell,” the premiere of Game of Thrones ’ six-episode final season, is much like the show’s previous table-setting season openers, shuffling the winnowed-down cast into their new positions and setting up the season’s conflicts.
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