Review: Game of Thrones — Season Eight, Episode One (“Winterfell”)

Sam Bull, Opinion Editor

The long-awaited eighth and final season of Game of Thrones was met with equally high excitement and expectations, and so far, there’s not much to conclude.

We were left with some of the show’s same characteristics that we’ve come to love over the past several years, but other elements were also added—some of which didn’t quite seem to fit.

Of course, there was fantastic cinematography, but we were also gifted an impressive hint of horror as a jumpscare revival of the seemingly dead Ned Umber in the center of an oddly Targaryen emblem-looking pattern of severed legs had us just as frightened as curious.

However, the relationship between Daenerys and Jon Snow, as highlighted by an extremely cheesy dragon-riding scene with lovey-dovey dialogue, seemed to be more like a snippet from a Disney movie than an epic fantasy show.

Despite this, the brilliantly executed combination of main characters who had never or rarely seen each other before, such as the introduction of Daenerys to the rest of Jon’s “family,” created an intensely stark (no pun intended) and somber mood comparable to the Dragon Pit scene in season seven.

Finally, towards the end, a wonderfully orchestrated scene of Jon Snow finding out his true identity as well as another of Jaime seeing Bran for the first time since Jaime pushed him out of a window displays just how well the show ends up tying all the loose ends together.