Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: B+ | 11 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Creepy Zombies Are Coming
By Monty Ashley | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 03.31.2013
And now we get to the opening credits! This time out, the map includes King's Landing, Dragonstone, Harrenhal, Winterfell, The Wall, that meteor up in the sky, and a new place called Astapor out in the east. It's probably worth mentioning that Winterfell has a lot of black smoke coming out of it because Theon Greyjoy burned it down last season. And on our way to Astapor, we went over The Shoreline Sea, the Gulf of Grief and Slaver's Bay. It is my opinion that the people in charge of naming seas in this world are not very good at their jobs. I mean, don't all seas have shorelines? That name doesn't narrow it down at all! And who's going to want to go to Slaver's Bay for a vacation? Aside from slavers, I mean.
We're staying in the snow for the next scene, but we've moved north from wherever Sam and the rest of the Night's Watch are. It's time to check in on Jon Snow and Ygritte. They and a bunch of wildling extras have walked to a big camp with little tents. They might be yurts. A very tall person (about ten or fifteen feet) strolls by. Ygritte explains that he's a giant. She's pretty casual about this fantasy creature hanging out with all the regular people. She warns that when giants stop being shy, they get angry. This guy seems pretty relaxed. He's helping build some kind of structure, which is the sort of thing that an extremely tall person can help with. As Ygritte and Jon walk through the camp, they get some guff for Jon being a Crow. That's what people in the Night's Watch are called because they wear black. Although really it's more of a dark grey. And everyone around here is wearing a slightly lighter grey. I would have thought the wildlings would have a wider variety of clothes, but it turns out they all go with exactly the same shade of fur wrapping. Ygritte assures Jon that he's free not to join up, although she, of course, will remain free to kill him. She brings him up to a largish tent, where Jon will meet the legendary Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall. We don't know much about the geography north of the Wall, so there might be other kings up there.
Inside the tent, there's a bearded fellow eating chicken. Ygritte and Jon have been joined by the Lord of Bones, a character from last season that is not as interesting as his cool name would suggest. Boney says that they brought Jon along because they thought Mance might want to question him. Ygritte clarifies that Jon killed Qhorin Halfhand, which has given him a certain amount of credibility. The chicken-eating beardo seems doubtful, since he's seen Qhorin kill bigger people than Jon. Jon parries with a story his father used to tell him about how big people fall the same speed as small people. I like how that story about never giving up in the face of overwhelming odds can also double as an explanation of how items of different mass still fall at the same rate. Jon kneels to this man and calls him "Your Grace." Everyone has a big laugh at him for making the faux pas of assuming this guy was important just because everyone was treating him like someone important.