Thousands of nerds descended upon the Barclays Center in New York City last night for an early screening of the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere. I was one of them, of course, because I will gladly pay fifteen bucks to watch television in a sports arena. The event, officially named “Game of Thrones: The Epic Fan Experience” because HBO is grandiose like that, was honestly just as epic as it claimed to be. Due to heavy cell-phone security, I can’t share pictures or video of the screening with you, because I have none. But you can read all about it below. WARNING: Spoilers for Game of Thrones episode 401 follow.
Before the episode began, Common performed his Game of Thrones mixtape track “The Ladders” for the crowd, continually asking the audience if they came to “par-tay.”
Common left pretty fast, though, and Kristian “Hodor” Nairn came onstage to approximately twice the applause.
Maisie “Arya” Williams, Sibel “Shae” Kekilli, John “Samwell” Bradley, and George R.R. Martin himself were also there to do a Q&A session. We found out that Maisie has accidentally hit several cameras and her own face with swords on set…
…and that John’s favorite part of being on set is, in five words, “Kit. Harrington’s. Big. Brown. Eyes.”
Finally it was time for the main event, as the season 4 premiere began with Tywin Lannister melting down Ned Stark’s greatsword into two smaller swords for his sons.
Tyrion, meanwhile, meets Prince Oberyn Martell, who is taking time out of his busy whoring schedule to plot his vengeance against all Lannisters.
He’ll have to get in line, since Arya finally gets to scratch a name off her murder-list and is reunited with her beloved sword Needle.
Up at the Wall, Jon Snow (swoon) is trying to convince his superiors that yes, the Wildlings are a threat and no, they shouldn’t chop off his head.
Across the ocean, Dany has her own problems, since her dragons are getting way too big to control.
The episode ended with a preview of things to come. We can expect to see Samwell getting more depressed than ever before, Jaime trying desperately not to suck at left-handed sword fighting, and Tyrion growling that he should have let Stannis Boratheon kill his royal family.
If HBO was trying to work me up into a furious fanboy froth with this new episode, then well done you sick bastards. Everyone on the show seems to concur that there are a ton of climactic moments this season, so there’s plenty to look forward to when Game of Thrones returns on April 6th.
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