Winter has returned in the middle of the summer
We’ve heard this weather forecast for six years. Suddenly, it’s here. It refers to an exceptionally long, harsh cold season that’s been predicted, but also possibly to an existential threat — White Walkers, an ancient magical race that can raise the dead. Led by the Night King, they were believed extinct, but after thousands of years they have risen.
Still, while most of the attention on the show’s new season is about who will be gaining the Iron Throne, the White Walkers’ significance can’t be underestimated. All you need to do is look back to the very first scene in the very first episode of Season 1.
The series begins at the Wall, a massive edifice erected in the North of the Kingdom of Westeros to keep out White Walkers. The Night’s Watch, a ragtag army, stands guard. Their biggest threat isWildlings, a free people who live in the wasteland north of the Wall.
When a small scouting party finds a massacred group of Wildlings, and soon face a horrifyingly encounter with Walkers, one of whom decapitates a member of the Watch.
One escapes, though, and makes his way south to the castle of Lord Ned Stark (Sean Bean), who beheads him for desertion, discounting his story of revived Walkers.
This is just 13 minutes into the episode, and throughout the six seasons the danger of White Walkers has continued to be played down by nearly all those in power, who are more concerned about shoring up their own power.
Sadly, that reminds us of the way many of today’s existential threats have been treated. Warnings about terrorism or the consequences of global warming have too often been ignored or played down as politicians fight among themselves.
Of the final contenders for the Iron Throne only Jon Snow, who was once the leader of the Watch and has fought White Walkers, takes the danger seriously. He wants to organize against the growing threat from the North, however, as we now know from HBO’s description of Episode 3, Jon will face a revolt.
Could it be from his half-sister Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner)? She’s wanted to become queen since she was as a starry-eyed, selfish girl. She was married off twice, nearly three times, as a prize. After surviving torture and sexual abuse by a cruel husband, she now has steel in her veins. (There was a smile on her face as her tormenter was torn apart by dogs.)
“No one can protect me,” she said at end of last season. That’s something she repeats in the new season. She likes Jon but no longer relies on men. Getting the crown and some revenge along the way may be the only ways she feels safe.
Meanwhile, her younger sister, Arya Stark (Williams), is already on her own path of retribution, having slain the man who killed her brother and mother. But she isn’t done by a long shot.
In fact, the other two contenders for the throne are both survivors of the brutality of men.
In the capital of King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) holds the crown. Throughout the series, she has been seen as something of the evil queen, but Cersei, too, had been married off to a brute as well as publicly humiliated. Although she is smarter and more cunning, she has played second fiddle all her life to men. Now she will have the opportunity to show she better than them.
Daenerys Targaryen (Emila Clarke) might make a good ruler. She and her army land in Westeros in this season’s first episode. Having been married off by her feckless brother to a savage warlord, the Queen knows first-hand what it’s like to be a puppet captive. That has given her an abhorrence of slavery, and she has made it a point to abolish it. But while she has inherited the ability to control dragons, she may have also inherited the insanity that runs in her family. Getting the Iron Throne is an obsession that could spin out of control.
Along with the show’s many heavily sexualized female characters, Martin has created a number of strong female characters. The trials and sexual abuses they have endured has spurred much discussion about the plight of women in the real world. Turneris advocating for Women for Women International, a nonprofit that helps women in wartorn countries — some of whom have been sexually assaulted — develop skills to improve their financial and physical well-being.
That kind of consciousness raising, however, was an unlikely byproduct of Martin’s aim in the novels, which was crafting a rousing adventure thriller involving dragons, sex and
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