Game of Thrones Rewatch 1.1: "Winter is Coming"

Welcome to the first part in the flagship Tales after Tolkien blog series of 2016-17.
Read the next post here. -GE

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This is the first in (what I hope will be) a weekly series of re-watching Game of Thrones and each episode’s commentary.  There will be some slight recapping, but primarily analysis, and I welcome (polite) discussion.  Spoilers will abound, as will criticism and comparison to A Song of Ice and Fire.  Without further ado—

1.1 “Winter is Coming”

Writ. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Dir. Tim Van Patten

Commentary by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Original Air Date: April 17, 2011

Episode 1.1 is (aptly) titled “Winter is Coming,” and it sets up the overall plot, aesthetic, and ethos of the show, while introducing most of the major characters. Like the books, the show begins with Ser Waymar Royce, Will, and Gared heading out north of the Wall and encountering the wights and the White Walkers. This scene helps to set up one of the central themes of the book and the title of the episode—winter is coming, and it’s not coming alone.  That’s why I was so surprised to hear David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discussing how close they came to not including this scene at all.  They were going to start with the Starks, but realized that characters kept talking about the Wall, but no (non-book-reading) viewers would have any idea what they meant by “the Wall,” so they shot and included the scene while reshooting the pilot.  This scene isn’t just the prologue of A Game of Thrones; it helps to establish the central struggle of the novels, that most of the people of the southern kingdoms have no idea what kind of danger they’re in and are in no way prepared for the coming winter.  With the hindsight of knowing how much of a mess the show becomes in later seasons, this is an early red flag for trust in Benioff and Weiss’ understanding of the nuances and deeper themes of the novels.