If you haven’t watched last night’s Game of Thrones premiere, you really don’t want to look at this article right now. Spoilers abound!
Game of Thrones is a show that is very much focused on history, with a multitude of characters weaving in and out of one another’s lives. Last night, fans were treated to an extensive look at Season 3 to refresh us before jumping into Season 4. I’d like to say that it was an explosive episode. However, while there was action, it was more of an expository endeavor, introducing us to a new character in Oberyn Martell and setting fans up for what should be the multitude of wild, frightening and glorious moments to come. Fans got a sneak peek at some of those moments this morning, when HBO made the preview for “The Lion and the Rose” available for fans, giving us plenty of hints (Spoilers!) about the episodes to come.
Namely, what’s coming up next week is Joffrey and Margaery’s big wedding. We saw a little bit of the preparations this week when Olenna Tyrell gleefully chucked some priceless jewelry over the balcony, declaring it unfit for a Queen-to-be. In the new preview, we get a look at some of the actual proceedings—and namely, Margaery’s dress. She’s walking down the aisle in one shot and has on a gorgeous, luxe and heavily embroidered little number that—you guessed it—is mostly backless. We also get a glimpse of the largest cake I’ve ever seen, which means that festivities should be central to next week’s episode. If that’s not enough to make you believe, the title of next week’s episode should, with the Lion standing for Joffrey’s kin and the rose representing Margaery’s sigil.
The upcoming nuptials are the biggest deal in this preview, with even Sansa and Tyrion getting in a couple of sly or horrified comments related to the big event. However, “The Lion and the Rose” won’t be totally King’s Landing-centric. Instead, it looks like we will also be catching up with Bran and his merry crew of companions as they continue North. We’ll also get a glimpse of what Stannis and the lovely/scary Melisandre are up to, since this week we only got a few comments from the spoiled Joffrey boasting about the Battle of Blackwater and Stannis’ downfall, which was really more of a setback. But I digress.
While Arya, Tyrion and a few of the other characters had big moments this week—especially with Arya reuniting with Needle only to kill a few huge men—next week the show will probably spend some time catching us up on characters we haven’t seen in a while, like Stannis and maybe Theon. It also looks like Jaime will be pretty busy trying to get his mojo back and learning how to rebalance and retrain with a sword despite the lack of a right hand.
I know a week is a really long time to wait for the next installation of HBO’s popular show, but luckily the premium cable network has already prepared the “Inside the Episode” guide for episode 1, so if you want to know why melting Ned Stark’s sword was so important and other random tidbits, you should really check it out.
If not, new episodes of Game of Thrones air on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET.
