Reviewed: GOT - First of His Name

There will be spoilers ahead so read on at your own risk...

A new king is crowned, Tommen finally took the place of his older brother. The people in attendance seemed genuinely happy, it was always evident Joffrey would be a terrible king but Tommen is the opposite of his brother. Cersei and Margaery were discussing Tommen and the possibility of Margaery and him marrying. The weird thing about his was that Cersei was actually being somewhat nice to Margaery, the constant eye rolling made it evident that they are still far from friends but Cersei is finally showing her human side. She would once again show her human side when visiting Oberyn to have him deliver a ship to her daughter who Tyrion had sent to Dorne. I do have a feeling this side of her will be short lived though with Tyrion's trial coming up.

A lot of this episode was dedicated to Sansa and I'm really glad they decided to do so. Her story has been one of the more forgettable ones since she went to King's Landing. She's now out of the capital and in the Vale with her aunt who she is meeting for the first time thanks to Littlefinger smuggling her out. I'm also really happy about this, Tyrion being jailed in the Eyrie by Lysa was great in the first season so it's nice to have her back. All appears to be well for Sansa as she meets her aunt and cousin before being shown to her chambers. It was clear that Lysa and her son Robin have not changed at all despite the 3 season absence, she is still as crazy as ever and Robin is equally creepy, credit to Lino Facioli whodoes a great job playing Robin. 

Once Sansa is gone, Lysa ends up revealing to viewers that it was actually her who killed her husband Jon Arryn after Littlefinger told her to. This was extremely surprising to say the least, it means that the entire reason behind the start of the show, Robert coming up to Winterfell and Ned going to be the Hand of the King in the capital was all because of Littlefinger, it was just another one of his manipulations. He's also clearly playing Lysa as well; I refuse to accept that this genius' end game is simply marrying Lysa Tully, the woman who loved him as a child even though he only had eyes for her sister, Catelyn. Lysa is a hilarious character though, when she finally gets Petyr to agree to marry her she immediately brings in the septon and tells Petyr how she is going to scream on her wedding night, it then cuts to Sansa squirming in her bed as she has no option but to listen.  

Lysa did seem to wise up to Littlefinger later though, kind of. Sansa was enjoying some lemon cakes as always when Lysa interrogates her about why Littlefinger seems to care so much for her and why he would risk so much to bring her to the Vale, which is still a mystery to us all for now. Lysa calms down when Sansa gets upset but as she comforts Sansa she says all will be OK because she'll be able to marry Robin when Tyrion is killed. Wow, Sansa really can't catch a break can she? I don’t think there are enough lemon cakes in Westeros to make her happy about this potential marriage.

Our update with Daenerys was brief but important as we now know she will not sail to Westeros yet, instead she'll continue to try and help the people of Slaver's Bay like a queen would. But what we don't know is where her dragons are, they've been absent since the season premiere. Speaking of brief appearances, Jaime was seen when Tommen was crowned but that was it. I was hoping to see the repercussions of his actions in Oathkeeper, but it wasn't to be. We did see Brienne though and it appears as though her travels with Pod are indeed going as good as we hoped. Brienne and Podrick aren’t the only mismatch pair traveling though and it was Arya and the Hound who had the best moment of the episode, the Hound mocking Arya and her water dancing taught to her by Syrio. The hound shows his doubts about Syrio being the greatest swordsmen of all time if he didn't even have a sword and was killed by Meryn Trant with his colourful language. I'm sure anyone who watched the scene will attest to how great this scene was. Even if their story is barely progressing, it's worth it if we can keep seeing them have these sorts of interactions.

The majority of the second half of the episode was taken up by the conflict at Craster's Keep. As expected, Locke tries to escape with Bran during the melee but he doesn't know Bran is a warg so Bran wargs in to Hodor again and brutally snaps Locke's neck, it was a bit predictable but still enjoyable. The Night’s Watch minus Locke then go about killing the mutineers, but instead of sneaking up on the drunk and unsuspecting mutineers they decide to run in screaming and end up losing 5 men, I'm no expert in strategy but it seemed a bit strange. Anyway, Jon and Tanner end up having the final battle, Tanner fighting dirty with two daggers while Jon tries to use his longsword in the confined environment of Craster's Keep. It was a great fight and its climax was brilliant as Jon gets some help from one of Craster's daughters that Tanner abused. Meanwhile Bran could see Jon fighting but Jojan persuades him to not shout Jon's name because he knows that there is no way Jon will let his little brother continue to travel north. It must have been a tough choice though, but it was symbolic that he turns down possibly the last chance to be with his family in favour of pursuing his destiny.  Despite effictively being filler material, I thoroughly enjoyed the way they went with this.

It was another solid episode to bring us to the half way point in the season. I did find the exclusion of Tyrion disapointing but with his trial starting in next week's episode they will make up for it. Stannis who we've seen very little of in season 4 as well as Ramsay and Theon both look like they could get some serious screen time next week as well. With the death of Joffrey coming so early in the season, the 3 episodes since have obviously struggled to match the intensity and drama of that episode but I'm sure they've got a few things up their sleeve in the second half of this season.

Next week's episode is entitled The Laws of Gods and Men and will be on HBO on Sunday and Sky Atlantic one day later in the UK. Here is a preview of that episode courtesy of the Game of Thrones YouTube channel.