Game of Thrones recap: Season five, episode one

SPOILERS. Game of Thrones returned with plenty of the usual stunning twists. But the main feature of the episode was rather less cerebral.

THIS story is dark and full of spoilers. Read no further if you want to avoid juicy details from this season’s first Game of Thrones episode.

Freaky flashbacks, a surprisingly hot reappearance and one very important arrow. All that and more in this week’s Game of Thrones recap.

Game of Thrones’ deepest secrets

The new season begins with two girls sneaking through the muddiest, squelchiest forest in Westeros. It turns out that one of these girls is a young Cersei Lannister. The other appears to be someone far less important from the Westerlands (thanks to reader Chris), and she is clearly scared beyond her wits, partly because their little sojourn has not been endorsed by Tywin’s all-powerful stare.

“You don’t need to be afraid of my father,” Cersei says. Lying is already one of her favourite pastimes.

“I shall extract your brain through those lovely nostrils and feed it to Gregor Clegane,” says creepy child Cersei.

The girls approach a creepy-looking hut. What’s inside? A pimply-faced Craster, perhaps? That would explain the anonymous girl’s increasingly panicky demeanour.

“We shouldn’t go in,” she whines. “Of course we should,” Cersei responds. Much like her older self, she is inexplicably keen to walk into a situation that any halfwit would know to avoid. Thankfully, the only person inside the hut is a witch, from whom Cersei intends to glean her future.

“This is my father’s land. My land. Tell me my future or I’ll have your two boring eyes gouged out of your head,” she says. Charming and humble as ever. Specifically, she wants to know whether she’ll become queen.

“Oh yes, you’ll be queen. For a time. Then comes another. Younger, more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold dear,” the witch says.

It’s a blatant reference to Margaery Middleton, and it infuriates Cersei, who tries to murder the witch with a Tywinesque stare. She fails, because she’s Cersei, and Cersei fails at absolutely everything.

“Have you heard the one about the boy king and the poisoned glass of wine? Classic!”

“Dude, you’re not even funny.”

The scene cuts to Cersei in the present day. She’s on her way to view Tywin’s body, which is being guarded dutifully by Jaime. As she draws alongside him, he appears to contemplate another round of kinky, incestuous corpse-side sex, but thinks better of it.

“They’re going to try to take it away, all of it. All of them, out there, our enemies. They’re waiting in line to see if he’s really dead and as soon as they see the stones on his eyes they’ll set to work on tearing us apart,” he says. But Cersei’s more interested in doling out blame for the past than worrying about the future. She knows Jaime set Tyrion free on the night he murdered Tywin and escaped King’s Landing.

“Tyrion may be a monster but at least he killed our father on purpose. You killed him by mistake,” she says, smacking Jaime right in the feelings.

“Soooooooooo ... fancy a root?”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Narrow Sea, Tyrion is whingeing about his extended stay inside a dwarf-sized crate.

“I still don’t know why I had to stay in this f***ing crate once we set sail,” he says.

“I saved your life. If they catch you, they catch me. I cannot say I feel overly guilty about leaving you in that f***ing crate,” Varys replies. They’re officially the show’s newest and best odd couple.

“Unwashed hair. A dirty beard. Varys, I appear to have transformed into a medieval hipster.”

Tyrion and Varys are now in Pentos, at the home of Illyrio Mopatis. If you cast your mind back to season one, you’ll recall that Illyrio was the amply bearded man who arranged for Daenerys to marry Khal Drogo. Think of him as a really bad celebrity matchmaker.

Varys finally reveals his true allegiance — he’s been a secret Targaryen supporter this whole time. He tries to engage Tyrion in a weighty conversation about the future of the realm, but Tyrion is too busy skolling wine.

“The future is s**t. Just like the past,” he says. Knowing George R.R. Martin, truer words have probably never been uttered.

“Go on chrome dome, I’m totally listening.”

In Meereen, one of the Unsullied is visiting a brothel, but he and his long lost penis are not interested in sex. This guy just wants to lie down, close his eyes, and listen to a woman hum terribly. Fair enough.

Sadly, anyone who dares to relax for more than three consecutive seconds in this show is bound to be brutally murdered. As the Unsullied absorbs his companion’s torturous warbling, a masked figure quietly slits his throat. Blood spurts everywhere. Game of Thrones is back, baby.

Those pecs are certainly unsullied, know what I’m saying?

“Look. At. Me. Lethal AND stylish. This mask is made of pure gold, you know.”

There’s a simple upshot here. The resistance to Dany’s rule is growing, and her most loyal, genitally-challenged supporters are in mortal danger.

Missandei is justifiably worried about her crush, Grey Worm, so she strolls into the boys’ locker room — isn’t there a school rule against that? — to find him.

The Unsullied soldiers inside are all armed with spears (of one variety, at least), but Missandei is armed with something much more dangerous: an awkward question. She’s wondering why so many Unsullied are visiting the city’s brothels. Grey Worm claims he doesn’t know, with the unmistakable shifty eyes of a gen Y boyfriend insisting he’s never watched porn.

Their conversation over, Grey Worm grabs his own spear and walks away, in search of some private time.

“Not that I’m jealous or anything.”

“For the bad humming, obviously. Isn’t that what brothels are for?”

At Castle Black, Jon Snow is training a kid to fight properly, because he’s a deadset legend with obvious daddy issues, when he’s rudely interrupted by Melisandre. Stannis wants to speak with him.

The elevator ride to the top of the Wall is uncomfortable to say the least. Jon asks whether Melisandre is cold. She rather immodestly tells him she’s smoking hot. Then this happens:

Melisandre: “Are you a virgin?”

Jon: “...................... No.”

Melisandre: “Good.”

I think it’s fair to say that Melisandre’s fires are burning for Jon. She must have seen his abs in Pompeii.

“Doesn’t she even know about bros before hoes?”

“Ah, good, a man of experience. So, where’s the nearest wildling sex cave?”

Stannis is planning to retake the north from Roose Bolton, which is an interesting prospect, because his army is not even close to big enough. Yes gentlemen, size does matter. He wants the wildlings to join his cause — and needs Jon to convince Mance Rayder to sign up. Apparently Jon is seen as a wildling sympathiser, even though he just won that massive battle against ... the wildlings. Go figure.

“They were born on the wrong side of the Wall. It doesn’t make them monsters,” Jon says. Ah. Actually, I can see where the sympathiser thing comes from.

Stannis is offering to pardon all the wildlings and make them citizens of the realm, if Mance pledges fealty to him. If that doesn’t happen, the King Beyond the Wall will be burned alive. Seems like a fair offer.

“You’re a real bastard Jon Snow. You know that, right?”

In the Vale, Littlefinger has managed to get rid of Robin, who is essentially Joffrey with less self-awareness. Lord Royce is going to teach the boy how to fight, though he isn’t exactly optimistic.

“He swings a sword like a girl with palsy,” Lord Royce says. His words are blunt, and hopefully Robin’s sword is too.

Littlefinger and Sansa, who’s still sporting a devilish black hairdo, ride away in a carriage. They pass Podrick and Brienne on the road, just as those two are discussing ... their search for Sansa. It would be an agonising moment if Sansa weren’t enjoying her new evil persona so much. She doesn’t want to be rescued anymore.

THUG LIFE.

Back in King’s Landing, Loras the Knight of Flowers is earning exasperated glowers from Cersei with his lame commiserations over Tywin’s death. How lame, you ask? Loras stutters the line “He was a force to be reckoned with” twice in the space of 15 seconds.

While escaping, Cersei runs into Lancel Lannister. Remember him? He’s the skinny cousin she once used for booty calls. Well, he’s shaved his Legolas hair, turned hot and become some sort of fanatical monk. Now he wants Cersei to forgive him for ... being sexy?

“I led you into the darkness,” he says. “I tempted you into our unnatural relations.” The lad is kidding himself.

It’s the best makeover since Neville Longbottom.

“You look ... different. Still interested in incest, by any chance?”

Meanwhile, Loras has made his way to bed, where he’s sharing some intimate moments with a male companion. It gets awkward when Margaery Middleton barges in. She and Loras proceed to chat about the implications of Tywin’s death — specifically, that Loras will almost certainly not be marrying Cersei anymore. That means Cersei won’t be leaving King’s Landing anytime soon.

Loras: “You’re trapped here with Cersei Lannister as your mother by law.”

Margaery: “Perhaps.”

Loras: “Perhaps?”

Margaery: “Perhaps.”

Margaery is either plotting something, or struggling to grasp the finer details of Westerosi marital law. And she really should be an expert in that by now.

“Ooh. Looks like you’re a force to be reckoned with too.”

“Those are some tasty buns.”

Over in Pentos, the supposedly pragmatic spymaster, Varys, is being unspeakably idealistic. He reckons a day may come when the powerful “do not prey on the powerless” in Westeros, and thinks Tyrion could help usher in that new world with his political instincts, and something called compassion.

“Compassion, yes. I killed my lover with my bare hands. I shot my own father with a crossbow,” Tyrion says.

“I never said you were perfect,” Varys responds. Eventually, he convinces Tyrion to accompany him on a trip to Meereen, where they will try to join forces with Daenerys.

“Hey! If it weren’t for me, you never would have been locked in that crate for weeks. Be thankful.”

However, judging by her sex hair, Dany does appear to be sufficiently enjoying her current male companions. During a bout of naked, post-coital conversation, Daario decides to give her a lecture on leadership.

“You’ve made thousands of enemies all across the world. As soon as they see weakness, they’ll attack. Show your strength,” he says.

Daario wants her to let the dragons loose again, even though they’re way beyond her control. Or as Viserys would have said, he wants to WAKE THE DRAGON!

“A dragon queen with no dragons ... is not a queen,” he says. Clearly valuing his advice, she decides to visit the two dragons locked inside Meereen’s pyramid, just to gauge their mood. It’s fair to say they’re in tantrum mode.

Cracks are appearing in Dany’s muscular leadership.

Finally, to the Wall, where Jon tries to convince Mance to pledge his allegiance to Stannis.

“You brought them (the wildlings) together to save them, because none of them will survive the winter, not if they’re north of the Wall. Isn’t their survival more important than your pride?” he asks. But Mance doesn’t budge, even when Jon tells him he’ll be burned alive.

“I don’t want people to remember me like that, scorched and screaming. But it’s better than betraying everything I believe,” Mance says. Personally, I think staying alive would be nicer, but we weren’t all born to be martyrs.

“Burning? Good. Some heat at last. I’ve been freezing me nads off for freaking decades.”

Everybody has to stand in the courtyard of Castle Black and watch Mance’s fiery demise, because apparently no one has anything better to do. There isn’t much of a night-life up north.

As the flames rise around Mance, Jon stalks off in a huff, but Stannis and Melisandre are unmoved. Gilly buries her face in Samwell’s chest. Shireen shuts her eyes, and Tormund’s are wide with horror. Mance begins to writhe in pain. Then, suddenly, an arrow hits him in the heart, bringing a rather welcome end to his life.

Stunned, everyone turns to look at the shooter. It’s Jon.

“Shot through the heart ...”

“... and you’re to blame ...”

“... you give love a bad name.”

We’ll be back with another recap next week. In the meantime, tell us what you thought of episode one in the comments section below, or on Twitter: @SamClench