Why Game of Thrones fans hated the opener

SPOLIER ALERT: If you have not seen the first episode of Game of Thrones season seven then do not read any further... Unless you want to know what happens. In that case, go ahead!

The war is over, winter has come. Jon and Daenerys have joined the great game and ‘the great game is terrifying’.

Terrifying, brutal and unpredictable. This is the promise of GoT and the show runners have delivered for six seasons. But there were some strange scenes in the season opener that may leave some fans questioning the odd choices.

The much-awaited season seven premiere began with an excellently-executed recap before picking up where we left off, with Arya continuing to work through her death list - having removed old Walder from his face, the young Stark delivered winter to the rest of House Frey with a particularly painful mass poisoning.

Very Game of Thrones.

But dotted throughout the episode were surprising moments that descended into kitsch. References to hipster top knot comb-overs, some jokey music video-style editing in the citadel, and the introduction of our new fashionista, the previously crusty Euron Greyjoy who clearly spent some time in Milan on the way to Kings Landing.

Greyjoy, resplendent in leather pants, fitted shirt with plunging neckline - he got rid of the driftwood crown in favour of a new haircut, eyeliner and beard trim - looked like he’d travelled straight from the VIP box at an intimate Ed Sheeran gig rather than his salty sojourn to the halls of the Red Keep.

Yes, Ed Sheeran. Previous seasons didn’t require enlisting one of the world’s biggest pop stars to sing a song around the campfire. It was perfectly acceptable in the past to have the rough-and-ready sell-sword Ser Bronn belt out some Dornish classics while on his travels with the left-handed Lannister.

In case the blindingly-obvious wasn’t so blindingly obvious, this episode featured an hilarious, not too subtle cameo from British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran which rather predictably consisted mainly of song while his companions spent the rest of the scene reflecting on the futility of war (this is Game of Thrones right?) and seemingly served no other purpose than to show that Arya Stark can indeed share a pleasant meal without leaving a trail of dead bodies.

Now, of course, dead bodies aren’t all the same in Westeros. There’s the dead that are resurrected, the dead who are the walking dead, dead faces that can be worn by the living, and the dead who remain dead but can still alter the present through Bran’s trips down memory lane. It is this that remains the most intriguing and unpredictable narrative-driver in Game of Thrones. Viewers will surely continue to ask the ‘Are they really dead?’ question and at this point just about anyone could actually be the face master Arya Stark.

Each week, viewers are asked to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in George R.R. Martin’s complex fantasy world. Modern cultural references and bouts of celebrity-spotting are not only jarring but unnecessarily add to the already momentous challenge of giving enough screen time to the many sub plots.

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Still, producers have put the increased budget-per-episode to good use and the show is teeming with unanswered questions, building anticipation and clearly moving towards some epic confrontations and a final battle in the North. Has Ed Sheeran’s cameo signalled the start of a new style of GoT that is not terrifying or brutal but utterly predictable?

We will have to wait and see.

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