Game of Thrones Retrospective: “Winter Is Coming”

Directed by: Tim Van Patten
Distributed by: HBO

Written by Anna Harrison

70/100

Season One, Episode One: “Winter Is Coming”

I first read “A Song of Ice and Fire” over a decade ago, after the first five books had been published but long before the show they inspired had finished. I had heard, of course, about “Game of Thrones,” and knew before I even cracked the spine of George R. R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones”—metaphorical, as I read via an e-reader—that the erstwhile main character was executed at the end of book one and that the Red Wedding tore out the hearts of anyone who watched or read it. 

Being one of those annoying people who have complexes about reading the source material before watching the adaptation, I simply had to read Martin’s work before dipping my toe into the show. I devoured them with a passion I had scarcely felt since my “Harry Potter” days, and then attempted to watch the show. Since I already knew the broad strokes of what would happen, and was probably (definitely) insufferable about it, I got bored somewhere in season three. As the show progressed, I kept up with deviations in plot by reading recaps online and simply following pop culture, as “Thrones” had become its own beast by then.

To position myself as hip and fresh, I watched the last six episodes of season eight with the rest of the world. This was a mistake, as I immediately was so incensed that I proceeded to reread the entire series and found myself trawling fan theories and essays, and my books became covered in (virtual) highlights. I also watched the show in its entirety during this time as my mom wanted to see what all the fuss was about, though I staunchly refused to watch the final six episodes again. Everyone needed a Covid hobby, and “ASOIAF” was mine. 

Of course, there is a glaring gap in my “ASOIAF” obsession: the series is unfinished.

George R. R. Martin was a lower-level television writer and producer (he worked on the 1980s “The Twilight Zone” reboot and was a writer and producer on the Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman “Beauty and the Beast” show) when he published “A Game of Thrones” in 1996. He had already won several Hugo and Nebula Awards, and his vampire novel “Fevre Dream” had done well among its niche, but he was by no means a household name; even after “AGOT” was published, it took until 1998 with “A Clash of Kings” to hit the bestseller lists. 2000 brought “A Storm of Swords,” and with it the explosive Red and Purple Weddings. 

Then came the delays. A more in-depth discussion of what happened with “A Feast for Crows,” which came out in 2005, and “A Dance With Dragons,” which came out in 2011, will come when we hit seasons four and five. (In the meantime, I can direct you to some very good blog posts about the so-called Meereenese Knot and the abandoned five-year timeskip.) The same year that “ADWD” was published, “Game of Thrones” aired its first episode. Eight years later, the show would draw to a close; fourteen years later, there is still no “The Winds of Winter.” 

But this is not about how or why Martin has not published “Winds” or “A Dream of Spring” yet. This is about “Game of Thrones” specifically as an adaptation: the good, the bad, and the complete and utter misunderstanding of the books’ themes and characters.

So. We start with “Winter Is Coming,” an episode that came after much grief and labor.

David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the showrunners, were granted the rights to Martin’s work after they correctly surmised that R + L = J, meaning Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon Snow. Deducing that R + L = J is not exactly rocket science and perhaps Martin should have asked something like, “What do you think is going on with Skagos?” But… c’est la vie. What’s done is done, I suppose. So along came HBO and with it, a failed pilot episode with a cameo from Martin himself, featuring Tamzin Merchant as Daenerys, the role that would go on to make Emilia Clarke famous, and Jennifer Ehle (the best Elizabeth Bennet) as Catelyn Stark. 

By all accounts, this $10 million pilot was a disaster and nearly incomprehensible to those not versed in “A Song of Ice and Fire” lore. But after going back to the drawing board (I cannot speak for Merchant’s abilities, having only seen her briefly in “Pride and Prejudice,” but I imagine Ehle could have gone toe-to-toe with Michelle Fairley), Benioff and Weiss managed to make a competent first episode accessible enough for new and preexisting fans alike—it might be somewhat laborious, but how could it not be, given the massive and sprawling storyline it must set up in just sixty minutes?

In this first episode, we must introduce dozens of new characters, each with strange fantasy names and their own sprawling families; explain the history of this new land, including a successful rebellion that took place years earlier and is not shown on screen; and establish the customs of an entirely different culture across the sea from the culture we were just thrown into, including a wedding full of rape and murder. Not to mention the ice zombies called White Walkers who live north of the Wall, the giant ice… wall… that separates Westeros from the land of the freefolk. Oh, and there are also giant direwolves and dragon eggs. To top it all off, the episode ends with incestuous sex between the Queen of Westeros and her twin brother, and the latter of whom then promptly attempts child murder.

Easy, right?

This is only about seventy pages of the book “A Game of Thrones,” meaning the show roughly covers one page a minute; while scenes have been condensed, chopped up, and thrown around, much of the dialogue is nearly verbatim from Martin’s work. Still, even lifting lines directly from the page, what “Winter Is Coming” accomplishes is something akin to a miracle.

“AGOT” is by far the most straightforward of Martin’s “ASOIAF” books, but that does not diminish what “Thrones” (the show) accomplishes in season one and in this very first episode. Setting up the world of Westeros is no small feat: in this episode alone, Benioff and Weiss establish Houses Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, and the remnants of House Targaryen, not to mention cultural customs and norms such as the Faith of the Seven and the old gods, and leave enough mysteries to make the audience want more. Martin’s sprawling world can be hard enough to follow on the page—what’s the difference between the Starks and Karstarks, where does the Reach end and the Riverlands begin?—and the screen makes it even more difficult, but Benioff and Weiss, against all odds, manage to lay a proper foundation. 

They are helped, of course, by those assembled around them; when you get Sean Bean to play your main character, it lends a certain amount of gravitas to the proceedings, even if he’s saying words like “White Walkers” or “winter is coming,” whatever that means. In his hands, Ned Stark becomes not some stranger in a strange land, but just as human as the viewer. He has a family he loves, duties he must perform, and regrets that dog at him, as we all do. 

Surrounding Ned are his wife, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), and their children: Robb (Richard Madden), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams), Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), and Rickon (Art Parkinson). His alleged bastard, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), lurks on the sidelines, loved by his father and half-siblings but condemned to the outskirts of proper society. Winterfell itself, the Stark ancestral home, first appears on screen with a text card explaining its name and function, but the location is so distinctive—a gray, squat fortress in the middle of a foggy moor—that no one needs a title card after that first introduction. From now on, every time a scene cuts to Winterfell, the audience will know; the place isn’t just generic computer-generated castles in nondescript locations, but landmarks with their own personalities. Winterfell favors function over form, and while it is not beautiful, there’s life and happiness within its walls, emphasizing Ned’s own style of leadership; when we later arrive at King’s Landing, by contrast, it will be more vibrant, labyrinthine, and flashier than Winterfell, much like the politics and politicians of southern Westeros.

Because Benioff and Weiss take time to set up the Stark family dynamic, the arrival of the Baratheons and Lannisters feels as hectic and chaotic to us as it is to Winterfell. King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) and Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), with their more opulent costuming and plethora of servants scuttling about, stand in (stark) contrast to the Starks, both in their personalities and their compatibility as a couple. They, along with their children—most notably Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson)—and the Lannister brothers, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), feel out of place at Winterfell, but no less realized than the Starks. The costumes by Michele Clapton fill in the blanks for us even when the characters don’t speak: the Starks dress in their house’s gray, with fur to keep the chill at bay; the Lannisters favor brighter colors, such as the red and gold of their banner, and eschew practicality in favor of fashion. (That said, both the Starks and Winterfell are much more vibrantly colored in the books. While that contrast serves the audience well here, over the seasons, everything will slowly devolve into the same drab palette. For now, though, we are safe.)

Robert has come to offer Ned the position of Hand of the King following the death of the last one, Jon Arryn, who once fostered Robert and Ned together at the castle known as the Eyrie. Ned will eventually accept, of course, since he has to kick off the plot somehow, but first he and Robert spend some time reminiscing while dropping breadcrumbs about the fate of Ned’s sister and Robert’s ex-fiancée, Lyanna Stark. Though we do not see Lyanna for several seasons yet, again the casting does wonders here. Thanks to Bean and Addy, the loss of Lyanna becomes a real and gaping hole in the two men, not just some throwaway line. To Robert, she is a construct more than a person, the idealized woman kidnapped by the evil Rhaegar Targaryen who would have loved him and borne him children if not for that; for Bean’s part, he must convey grief over her death while hinting that, perhaps, Robert was wrong about Lyanna, and that there was more to her abduction than meets the eye, and he does so effortlessly. All of these high and mighty characters—the King, the Queen, the Warden of the North, the Kingslayer, the Imp—are more than just their titles, and just as full of wounds and joys as we are. They have hopes and dreams, they love, they tease their siblings—they just have some weird names and traditions, that’s all.

Some of this seems obvious—of course costume designer Michele Clapton would want to differentiate the noble houses, you dolt—but it still bears mentioning, for without the basics of production design, costuming, and the like, “Thrones” would have only been a blip in HBO’s programming schedule. It doesn’t matter how intriguing Westerosi politics can be if viewers can’t easily differentiate Jaime from Ned or Robb from Robert.

Yet even with the introductions of Ned, Cat, Robb, Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, Robert, Cersei, Tyrion, Jaime, Joffrey, not to mention supporting characters like Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) or Rodrik Cassel (Ron Donachie), there are still more characters to establish. Across the Narrow Sea in Pentos, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) gets ready for her wedding. Her brother, Viserys (Harry Lloyd), is quick to remind her that her marriage to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) will bring Viserys the army that he needs to return to his Westerosi homeland and reclaim the throne that the Baratheons stole from his father all those years ago. (He also seems to be a big fan of the brother-sister incestuous marriages that the Targaryens practiced for years. More world building! Yay.)

Unfortunately… the Dothraki do not feel nearly as fleshed-out as the high lords and ladies of Westeros. Martin drew inspiration from “Mongols and Huns, certainly, but also Alans, Sioux, Cheyenne, and various other Amerindian tribes… seasoned with a dash of pure fantasy,” but throughout the series and especially after “A Game of Thrones,” the Dothraki characters are among the weakest in Daenerys’s story. The show is even worse in this regard, reducing the colorful clothing of the Dothraki—who are a rich people due to all of their plundering and whatnot—to plain leather and a bit of body paint. This was likely done to contrast with the finery of Westeros, but has the side effect, whether intended or not, of reducing the Dothraki to mere savages (here is a good essay on how the show’s costuming serves to flatten the already-thin Dothraki). Then, of course, there is the violence and sex on display at the actual wedding, and Drogo himself, the hulking, dark-skinned barbarian quite literally come to pillage your village and rape your delicate, white-skinned women. As the series progresses, Drogo becomes more sympathetic thanks to the sheer power of Momoa’s charisma, but the racial politics will become worse and worse.

So, too, will the show’s treatment of its women characters. Oh, the offenses in this first episode are rather minor, sure, but they are indicative of an issue that will come to the fore in later seasons, especially after Benioff and Weiss run out of source material to adapt. I’m not even talking about the excessive female nudity on display in this first episode, which is tame compared to the titillation that will come (ha, ha) later—though stripping Emilia Clarke for her very first scene is insane, and even worse now that we know how uncomfortable she felt about it—rather, I mean the handling of Catelyn in this episode shows a deep lack of understanding of the source material.

A quick overview: Catelyn Stark, née Tully, is the daughter of Hoster Tully, the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. If you watched “House of the Dragon” season two, you got a glimpse into the political importance of the Riverlands, one of the most fertile portions of Westeros. Unfortunately for the Riverlands, it has no natural defenses, unlike the land north of the Neck (see this map here—thanks, Reddit), and so has been beset by war for almost its entire existence. The Tullys must survive through sheer politicking, and Catelyn knows this better than anyone; while she accepts a woman’s role in Westerosi society, she is often the keener political mind at Winterfell, and later will serve Robb in a similar capacity. (Catelyn haters who claim she started the war by abducting Tyrion at the Inn of the Crossroads, die by my sword. You have no media literacy and hate women.)

Thus, when King Robert comes to Winterfell and asks Ned to serve as Hand, Catelyn pushes for him to go. In fact, when Ned wants to refuse Robert, Catelyn says, “You cannot. You must not.” Consider this scene from Catelyn’s second chapter in “A Game of Thrones:”

She makes salient points here, and for those who argue that Robert would have never ordered harm to come to Ned’s children, we are talking about the same man who will order the assassination of Daenerys, a child herself, in a few months. Cat rightly sees the position of Hand as a political advantage, and knows the danger that refusing could bring.

But what does she do in the show? She begs for Ned to stay and laments that he will take her girls away, and Ned becomes the one pushing to go to King’s Landing. “He’d have to leave home,” she cries. “He’d have to leave me.” And, of course, “I won’t let him take you.”

Huh? Who is that talking? Certainly it’s not Catelyn Stark, is it?

In the vacuum of the show, it’s a fine scene, but knowing the context from the books, it leaves a sour taste. Suddenly, Cat goes from a capable political actor of her own to simply The Mom. The plot of the books forces Benioff and Weiss to give Cat some more savvy down the line, but their misstep here is not the last time they will strip the women of “ASOIAF” of their nuance. It’s far from their worst offense, but to have this happen in the very first episode of the show indicates a greater misunderstanding of the source material that will impact everything else down the line. 

But not all changes from the book are bad. In fact, some are necessary—especially the ages of our main characters. In the books, Daenerys starts out as a thirteen-year-old, and Robb Stark, the eldest of Cat and Ned’s children, is only fourteen; even the survivors of Robert’s Rebellion (Jaime, Cersei, Ned, Cat, etc.) are only in their early-to-mid-thirties. With the feats the Stark children and Daenerys go on to accomplish, their ages begin to strain credulity in later entries as we read about eleven-year-old Arya and her assassin training. 

See? I can compliment some of the adaptation choices. I can even admit that a strict, beat-for-beat adaptation of Martin’s work would make for poor, overlong television. Yet as “Thrones” continues—and thus as Benioff and Weiss begin to run out of source material—it becomes more and more evident that they misunderstood the themes and character work of “ASOIAF.” For now, this first episode displays only the tiniest hint of what will cause the downfall of “Thrones,” and as a piece of television, it lays a sturdy foundation for the rest of the season and what will become the most Emmy-winning scripted show of all time.

But, as the Starks say, winter is coming, and with it, a whole host of problems to dig into.

Stray Observations:

• Fun fact: Dany’s chapters from “AGOT” were published as their own novella, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novella.
• The deserter Will (Bronson Webb) whispers, “Forgive me, Lord,” which is either a weird reference to Lord Stark or a very large worldbuilding error, as the only Lord is the Lord of Light, whom he would know nothing about.
• Some first episode weirdness: Arya’s name gets consistently pronounced as if the speaker is trying their best to pretend that “r” isn’t there at all. This doesn’t happen again. Tyrion is also a platinum blonde, presumably to match Cersei and Jaime more, but in later seasons, his hair color is just normal Peter Dinklage hair color. No one knows how to pronounce “Daenerys.”
• I’m sure this will come up again in more detail, but part of the reason why the characters’ ages feel off in later books is because Martin planned for a five-year time jump in between “A Storm of Swords” and “A Feast for Crows” before abandoning it for various reasons. Thus, when Jon Snow gets shanked by his own men in “A Dance With Dragons,” he’s still only sixteen.
• The Starks find direwolf puppies after the puppies’ mother gets gored to death by a stag. House Stark’s symbol is a direwolf and House Baratheon’s is a stag, but I’m sure this doesn’t mean anything.
• Lysa’s letter implicates the Lannisters in Jon Arryn’s murder when it was, of course, her own hand that poisoned him (at a certain someone’s urging).
• Jorah Mormont makes his first appearance here, played by Iain Glen. Iain Glen is a very, very handsome man. Jorah in the book is not. More on those differences later.
• In the books, all of the Stark children except Arya (and Jon) have the distinctive red hair of the Tullys, like their mother. In the show, only Sansa gets that trait, and everyone else is varying shades of brown—and I mean everyone, as even Theon Greyjoy, Ned’s ward, whose book counterpart is canonically really hot (until all the torture) and has sleek black hair.
• Though “House of the Dragon” tries to convince us that the dragon eggs Dany receives are the ones Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) sent off to Pentos, they are probably the eggs that Elissa Farman stole before Rhaenyra’s time.
• In Martin’s original outline for “ASOIAF,” Jaime winds up killing his way to the throne for a brief spell. His introduction through Jon’s point of view might be an echo of that first plotline: “They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and whispered ‘Kingslayer’ behind his back. Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed” (Jon I, “AGOT”). Anyway, I love Jaime and I can’t wait to write about him more, especially in season three.
• Tyrion does a backflip when he talks to Jon at the Winterfell feast in the books. I’m very serious. First books are fun! (Tyrion never backflips again.)

“Game of Thrones” Season One Trailer

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