Game of Thrones: The North Remembers, season two, episode one, review
Season two of Game of Thrones begins, and the big question is: how does it cope with a huge Sean Bean-shaped hole in its cast, after Ned Stark had his head unceremoniously removed from his shoulders at the end of season one?
Pretty comfortably, is the answer. The biggest name may be gone, but the GoT formula of political intrigue, beautiful people and scenery, enthusiastic sex and unflinching brutality is still very much in place. And several new characters have been introduced, notably Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane), brother of the late King Robert. The introduction of Stannis has brought with him Melisandre (Carice van Houten), a red-haired priestess of a flame-deity called the Lord of Light, a sort of monotheistic heresy in a land that worships seven gods, and Davos Seaworth, a former smuggler made lord.
It’s Stannis who has the main plot development of the first episode: he learned from Ned of the incestuous relationship between Cersei (Lena Headey), Robert’s queen, and her brother Jaime “the Kingslayer” Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Realising this means that the boy king Joffrey is Jaime’s son, not Robert’s, he declares himself king.
If that sounds pretty complicated, it is. If you’re keeping track, that means that there are now four self-described kings in the Seven Kingdoms – Stannis, Joffrey, Ned’s eldest son Robb Stark (Richard Madden), and Stannis and Robert’s uppity younger brother Renly. There’s also Mance Rayder, the “King beyond the Wall”, although so far he’s just a rumour. Oh, and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the daughter of the king Robert deposed two decades earlier, is still leading a raggedy band of tribesmen around in a desert somewhere in the east.
But somehow it doesn’t get overwhelming, despite the multi-strand plot. Partly that’s because the settings are all so distinct. King’s Landing, where Joffrey and Cersei rule while a chorus of slippery advisers (including a splendid Aidan Gillen, late of The Wire, as Lord Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish) weave their own threads, is soaked in Mediterranean sun; Stannis’s home Dragonstone is bleak and severe; the North, where Robb’s bastard half-brother Jon Snow has ventured beyond the Wall that separates the Kingdoms from the frozen unknown, is snow-covered, dark and frightening. Daenerys’s nomadic home is a desert wasteland. You’re never left trying to remember which bit is which.
But mainly it’s because every strand is absorbing. Beyond the Wall, we meet Craster, a local tyrant who marries his daughters (who give him more daughters: “What does he do with the sons?”, one of the Night’s Watch band who visit asks, a question that you feel will be answered). Robb has captured Jaime and has sent the Lannisters terms for peace, which include his lands in the North being declared an independent kingdom and him the King in the North; Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), the witty dwarf brother of Cersei and Jaime (and reliable scene-stealer) has survived battle and been named by their father as the chief adviser, or Hand, to Joffrey, to the utter fury of his sister. (Tyrion gets the best line of the episode, saying to Cersei: “You love your children. It’s your one redeeming feature. That and your cheekbones.”) Arya is still missing; Joffrey, learning of the “disgusting lie” of his heritage, has any possible bastards of his official father murdered.
Oh yes, the murder. The episode opens with Joffrey’s name-day celebrations, which sees a man get beaten to death with a mace in a gladiatorial bout; it closes with the murder of children, including a baby in its mother’s arms. Blood and death are still very much part of the deal here, as is nudity (a lengthy scene in which a prostitute is trained to make the right noises during sex). It’s not for children, let us say.
Where this series mainly differs from the first is in the supernatural. Season one, like the book it was based on, could have almost been set in our own world, apart from the very first scene and the very last: magic and dragons were hinted at, but barely seen. Now, Daenerys has a parrot-sized dragon on her shoulder from the beginning; Melisandre clearly has some unsettling powers; and the direwolves of the Starks are no longer puppies but CGI monsters that stand four feet high at the shoulder. The non-fantasy fantasy of the first season is on its way out, and that might be a problem for those fans who balk at the swords-and-sorcery stuff, but it’s well handled and not over-the-top. All in all, a triumphant return.
All Game of Thrones, season 2 reviews
Episode 3, What is Dead May Never Die review
Episode 4, Garden of Bones review
Episode 5, The Ghost of Harrenhal review
Episode 6, The Old Gods and the New review
Episode 7, A Man Without Honour review
