Game Of Thrones Season 8 Premiere: 12 Things You Might've Missed In 'Winterfell'

2. Lots Of First Episode Callbacks

This is the last first episode of Game of Thrones, and finds Jon, Daenerys, and all of her soldiers and entourage arriving at Winterfell. That alone gives it some structural parallels to the very first episode, Winter Is Coming, but the show goes very heavy on the callbacks and mirror images to it. It kicks off with a young boy running and pushing through the crowd, much like Arya did, before climbing a tree to get a better look of the Royal procession, as Bran did on the battlements. Even the music is the same, reusing Ramin Djawidi's The King's Arrival.

From there, we get the line-up of characters, with fewer Starks now, and Jon greeting them warmly like Robert did, before introducing his Queen to a colder reception, like with Cersei.

Within that lineup, we hear Sansa welcome Daenerys by saying "Winterfell is yours, your grace", which is what Ned said to Robert in that first episode - albeit he said it with a big smile on his face, which Sansa certainly does not.

For an episode where Jon finds out he isn't Ned Stark's son, the show paints a number of parallels between them - Jon stands under the tree in the Godswood like Ned dead, and then both go the crypts with their best friend (one bigger than the other), where they talk about Lyanna.

Then there's someone getting interruped in a brothel because Cersei is looking for them. In Season 1, it was Jaime walking in on Tyrion, and now we have Qyburn walking in on Bronn.

There's talk of weddings in both episodes: Robert plans to join the Houses of Baratheon and Stark by wedding Joffrey to Sansa, and here Davos talks of a marriage between Jon and Daenerys.

Of course, the White Walkers make their presence felt. They appeared in the cold open of the first episode, which was the first time we saw one of the strange patterns they arrange bodies in, which once again appears here. The sight of an undead child being hung up calls back to their first scene as well.

And finally, we have Jaime arriving in Winterfell and taking off his hood, like his arrival in Season 1, except really showing us just how far he's come and how much he has changed. And then it ends with Jaime and Bran, as the first episode did in such shocking fashion back in 2011.