Game of Thrones: Season 6 Premiere

Lydia Niles-Steger

Courtesy of www.shortyawards.com
Courtesy of www.shortyawards.com

HBO is back at it again with another jaw-dropping season premiere of Game of Thrones which aired on April 24th of 2016. If you do not watch the show, stop reading this immediately because there are some major spoilers below, you will eventually become a fan and will regret knowing what happens.

 

The anticipation for the episode, “The Red Woman,” was even greater than previous seasons due to the fact that the show finally caught up to the book series by George R.R. Martin upon which it is based. No one knew what was going to happen this time around. Erik Kain, an entertainment writer for Forbes’ online, writes, “We book readers must simply resign ourselves to the vast differences between the TV show and book at this point. The gap will only widen.” There were no spoilers, sneak peeks, or books to get information; viewers went in blind and seemed to love what they saw.

 

True Game of Thrones fans completely understand what Jeremy Egner, an entertainment critic for the New York Times, had to say in his review of the episode: “Has it really been nine months since we saw [Jon Snow] last, taking the final, cruelest blow from young Olly and collapsing onto the ground, blood pooling behind him? It seems like he never left.” Throughout the entire 60 minutes, audience members around the world were sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for Jon Snow to come back from the dead. The collective loyalty and dedication of the viewers is very consistent.
While a majority of the viewers were pleased with the outcome of the premiere, some were disappointed. “GoT premieres are usually an hour of ‘who is that again?’ and ‘wait, how did that person end up there?’ as we dust the cobwebs off the Game of Thrones almanacs that have been shoved into the crevices of our brain,” says Tim Surette, Staff Reporter for TV.com. He felt that the episode was a bit “been-there-done-that,” and too busy for the audience to keep up with everything. It is true, Game of Thrones has almost too many plot lines going on, though Surette presents it as a bigger issue than it really is. In fact, the various plot lines is what keeps things interesting and gives the audience hope that good will join together in the end and conquer evil. We hope that the Red Woman brings back Jon Snow so he can fight off the White Walkers and strip Castle Black of its traitors so Daenerys Targaryen can take back the Iron Throne and stop the corrupt Lannisters which would stop the uprising in Dorne and restore Sansa Stark’s place as Wardeness of the North and reunite her with Arya Stark, who has recently gone blind, and her missing younger brother Bran and Rickon who have been venturing north to talk to a ghost tree while getting attacked by flame-throwing skeletons. The Season 6 Premiere of Game of Thrones sets the tone for the season – winter is coming.