Game Of Thrones Season 8 Trailer Review: 7 Ups And 5 Downs
Death, dragons and a deep sense of dread in Westeros...
About forty years ago, season 7 of Game Of Thrones played courtesy of HBO and then along came the long Winter of discontent as we were all forced to wait to see what was happening next with the Wall in ruins, Tormund and Beric seemingly lost, Tyrion a little too invested in listening to Jon and Dany boink and the Night King's army advancing south.
It was a hell of a flex by HBO to take it away from us for so long, but the promise that rang in all of our ears was of a bigger, more stunning season than ever before to end it all and it felt a little easier to cope. Just. And now it's almost here and there's not a single person in the entire world who watches this tumultuous programme who is even close to being ready. Ironic that isn't it.
Still, it's coming and there's nothing we can do about it, with the first trailer for the final season now out in the wild...
It is an incredible effective trailer - make no bones about it - but there are definitely some issues in here. So let's get into reviewing exactly what works and what might have been done better.
First, the positives...
Ups
7. A New Feel For Arya... Which Is Bad News
For a while, Arya's arc has been about her losing her humanity, in effect. She went through hell (and we did too because of how dull some of the storytelling around the House Of Black And White narrative was) in order to become a weapon to carry out her family's various revenges and it's cost her something of herself.
In season 7, we got to see the culmination of that training (even though she never actually completed it), with the new, cold as ice killer Arya born with the murder of the Freys before it kicked off. She then spent that season being creepy and acting far more like a Faceless Man than a Stark.
But this trailer does something very clever with her: they use her as a sort of emotional totem, opening with her fleeing for her life or in mortal terror. And if someone trained to be devoid of emotions who can infiltrate a whole castle and kill off a major House single-handedly is that sh*t-scared, you know something major is up.