Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 1 Review/Recap: Dragonstone

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Game of Thrones fans have been waiting for even longer than usual for the latest season to start up, as the usual spring release instead got pushed back to summer for the seventh season.

The wait is finally over though as we finally kicked off the penultimate season with the first episode titled "Dragonstone." This review/recap will feature a rundown of the events of the episode, so those wanting to stay spoiler free may want to wait until after watching to read.

The premiere starts off with a cold open, which is very uncommon for Game of Thrones as we normally start right away with the opening sequence. Instead, we see Walter Frey before his men at a gathering of sorts with all of House Frey.

This may seem a little surprising, as we just saw Walter Frey murdered by Arya Stark near the end of last season's finale as revenge for the Red Wedding.

Her revenge is not over yet though, as this is of course Arya in disguise as she poisons the entire House Frey before giving the best line of the episode, "Leave one wolf alive and sheep are never safe."

Arya has a segment later in the episode as well that features one of the most obvious cameos in the series to date, as she comes across a group of traveling soldiers that are singing, which includes singer Ed Sheeran.

They invite Arya to eat with them, with the scene kind of showing that not all Lannister soldiers are evil and some are just living their lives and have families as well, which is probably something that Arya really needed to see as she's on her path of revenge right now.

We then go beyond the wall to see the White Walkers being led by the Night King, with the big reveal that there are now giants that have been turned into White Walkers.

This is seen through a vision from Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright), with both him and Meera Reed finally arriving at Castle Black, where they are greeted by Edd and the other Night's Watch members.

Edd isn't convinced that Bran is who he says he is at first, but Bran then reveals he knows who he is and that he fought at Hardhome, so he lets them into the castle.

Back at Winterfell, we see the newly donned King of the North Jon Snow speaking to the lords of the North. He is very adamant about the upcoming battle that is going to happen with the White Walkers, with him saying that not only every man and boy, but also girls and women to learn to fight for battle as well, because they're going to need everyone.

Not everyone is for this, but the still amazing little Lyanna Mormont pushes everyone towards Jon's cause.

He then sets out a plan that has Tormund and the other Wildings head towards one of the fortresses by the sea to help fortify it ahead of the upcoming battle.

Sansa Stark is not fully with Jon's actions, as she believes that families that were loyal for them against Ramsay Bolton should be rewarded with the castles held by the families of Kastark and Umber, in which she speaks out against him.

However, Jon is very against this, saying the sons and daughters should not be punished for the sins of the father.

In return, he asks both the young Kastark and Umber there to pledge their allegiance to the North and House Stark once again, which they do.

After the meeting, Jon and Sansa talk privately and he explains how he isn't happy that she was undermining him. Sansa even goes as far as to say that Joffrey never took other people's ideas into consideration too, before saying he was the furthest person in the world from Joffrey. She's just concerned about him getting himself killed like Robb and others.

You can definitely see the seeds of doubt being planted though, with Littlefinger trying to push Sansa a little later in the episode in the same way.

I'm really hoping they don't go the route of having Sansa betray Jon, as the Starks are finally together again and I'd really hate to see that be ruined.

Sansa and Jon are interrupted as a raven arrives that includes a threat from Cersei to bend their knee to her or suffer the consequences, leading them to have to deal with wars on two fronts.

The action in King's Landing is pretty minimal this episode, with the first part consisting of Jaime expressing his concerns to Cersei with what she has planned. The fact the Lannister's have no allies is a big problem, especially with the entire House Frey being slaughtered.

Cersei just doesn't seem much to care, with her believing everything will work out. One really funny part has her mentioning how she's the queen of the seven realms, with Jaime saying she's barely queen of three right now.

It appears they might potentially have an ally though, as Euron Greyjoy of the Iron Islands arrives with his army of ships with a proposal for Cersei, literally. She turns him today, stating that he is very untrustworthy.

However, he says he will prove his trust and go deliver her a gift.

The easy guess here would be Tyrion, but perhaps he has something else up his sleeve instead.

I have to say that Euron's outfit he was wearing looked like one of the most modern outfits in the series yet, which was a little strange, even if really cool looking.

We then check in on Samwell Tarly with a very different and nasty montage showing him scrubbing literal crap from bedpans of people at the Citadel. While working, he notices a restricted section of the Citadel's library, of which he is denied entry by the Archmaester, played by newcomer to the cast Jim Broadbent. Similar to Doctor Strange, he of course sneaks in takes some books, which holds a map that reveals just where to get tons of dragonglass, Dragonstone, which we'll discuss a little later.

Sam writes a letter to send via raven to let Jon know this discovery, but he isn't quite done this episode.

While he is cleaning up the food trays from prisoners of some sort, he is nearly grabbed by a hand, which is revealed to be Jorah Mormont, whose greyscale has gotten worse.

He asks if Daenerys has arrives in Westeros yet, in which he responds he does not know.

One of the most somber segments of the episode surrounds Sandor Clegane, aka The Hound, and the Brotherhood without Banners as they are trying to find shelter and come across a small house. He is against staying at first, though they do anyways and come across the corpse of a father and daughter, where it looks like the father killed both before they died of starvation.

Avid watchers will remember this father and daughter as the one that Clegane and Arya stayed with and robbed of their silver upon leaving, with him saying they'd die with or without the money with winter coming, which turned out to be true.

Clegane finally sees the light, literally, as he is told to look at a fire that has him seeing the upcoming battle with the White Walkers where the sea meets the wall.

This all ends with him burying the bodies of the two, really showing how much he has changed since the earlier days of the series.

The final part of the episode featuring Daenerys, Tyrion, and crew landing at Dragonstone, the Targaryens' original home, as we get a sequence of them walking all around until they finally reach the council chamber of sorts, where Daenerys simply says "Shall we begin?" It is so great to see that they did not drag out their journey to Dragonstone, with Daenerys finally setting foot into Westeros in episode one already.

With the discovery by Sam about dragonglass being there as well, it's very likely we'll see Jon meet up with Daenerys sooner rather than later, which I can't wait to see.

Premieres typically are some of the slowest moving episodes of the season as they are simply setting up pieces for the rest of the season, but the season seven premiere titled "Dragonstone" managed to avoid that by not only setting up the chessboard for this abridged seven episode season, but doing so without getting boring.

There may not have been any major reveals or the like, but "Dragonstone" was a very strong start for the seventh season of Game of Thrones.

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