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The kid scampering up a tree at the start of the hour made for a clear callback to Bran’s climbing in the series premiere (more yearbook-nostalgia feels!). Which means that details matter more than ever. After so many years of sprawl, Thrones now wants to go deep, not wide. I found myself thrilled by getting to go inside the cuckoo clock, but mostly I was reassured by the underlying implication. It’s okay to gasp: After eight years, Thrones’ opening credits could legitimately be called iconic, and to tinker so drastically is nearly in the lineage of the show’s actual plot twists. With the locations winnowed down to just the decimated Wall, Winterfell, and King’s Landing, and the newly introduced Northern outpost of Last Hearth, the camera swooped and pried into crypts and throne rooms. The shift was announced in the new title sequence, which not only relit the Seven Kingdoms in a wintery palette, but hinted at a tweaked perspective. After the disastrous Season 7 channel surfed between far-flung battlefields and contrived confrontations, Thrones looks to have re-centered itself in human relationships and a concrete time space. Yet I’d argue that this was the best Thrones episode in a long time. Instead, they got a buffet of inevitabilities (Daenerys arriving in Winterfell Jon learning of his parentage), some spooky but short set pieces (the SEAL Team Six–like rescue of Yara the pinwheel of severed arms), and one long sequence of lighthearted dragon flying that evoked Harry Potter seeking a Snitch. After a two-year gap and a dragon’s-feast worth of hype, fans probably wanted grand plot movements. This premiere might not rack up many superlatives when all the Thrones episodes are accounted for, though. (He lost his honorific by believing a promise from Cersei, the least trustworthy person in this realm and any other.) Arya titled Sansa the “smartest person,” and Sansa in turn said that Tyrion was formerly the cleverest person she ever knew. Euron Greyjoy was named “most arrogant” by Cersei Lannister in the sole compliment she could muster after the Greyjoy pick-up artist asked for postcoital feedback. How else to explain this premiere’s doling out of superlatives? Jon Snow called the late Ned Stark the “most honorable” man he ever met, which is awkward because Sam was telling him that Ned had lied all his life.
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Weiss in the wistful mind-set of a high-school-yearbook editor. Spencer Kornhaber: Game of Thrones’ ending has apparently put David Benioff and D. Because no screeners were made available to critics in advance this year, we’ll be posting our thoughts in installments.
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Every week for the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, three Atlantic staffers will be discussing new episodes of the HBO drama.