Game of Thrones delivered eight seasons of very high highs and very low lows, and it was and still is a pop culture juggernaut. After all, 2024 sees the premiere of House of the Dragon Season 2 as the first GOT spinoff and major progress has been made on the Dunk and Egg series. So, when I realized that the 13-year anniversary of the pilot – called “Winter is Coming” – was approaching, I rewatched the episode to see if it hits differently now than it did in 2011. And it sure does when it comes to certain characters!
I hadn’t yet read the A Song of Ice and Fire novels when I caught up on the first season of Game of Thrones back in the day, and really only checked out the pilot based on word-of-mouth buzz. This was my first rewatch of the first episode since reading all books and watching every season, and I discovered that some characters who I didn’t think too much of in the pilot the first time around were among my favorites by the end of the series. Read on for who the pilot rewatch changed my mind on, and why!
Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)
Now, as much as Jaime is far from one of the good guys in the beginning, I also have to credit him (and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) for hooking me on the show. While the pilot deserves to be ranked as one of the best Game of Thrones episodes and I was interested in seeing Sean Bean in a starring TV role that hopefully meant he wouldn’t be killed off of a la Boromir in Lord of the Rings or any of his other cinematic character deaths. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to invest in a show when I hadn’t even tracked the names of all the main characters… until Jaime Lannister said the immortal line of “The things I do for love” and shoved Bran Stark out of a window.
I needed to know what would happen next ASAP back in 2011! So even before my rewatch now that I’m older, wiser, and aware that I should have known Sean Bean would be killed off, Jaime was already a standout. But rewatching the first episode of the series really reminded me how much Jaime would grow over the next seven seasons, giving him one of the most complex journeys of any major character and giving Nikolaj Coster-Waldau some of the most powerful scenes, including the bath scene with Brienne when he finally confessed the real reason he’d killed the Mad King.
Am I ignoring how the second half of Season 8 nonsensically undid Jaime’s growth? Yes, I am, and I regret nothing. Knowing the nuances of his journey in later seasons also made me appreciate the moments in pilot that humanized him more, particularly with Tyrion. Jaime is definitely toward the top of my favorite Game of Thrones (and ASOIAF) characters by this point following the finale.
Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen)
Theon’s most notable contribution to the pilot of Game of Thrones was his eagerness to kill the direwolf pups, and he mostly came across as a character who wasn’t particularly likable but also wasn’t nearly as important as any of the Starks. In my rewatch, I even checked the opening credits to see how far back in the ensemble Alfie Allen was listed circa 2011. (For the record: he was 13th out of the 16 Game of Thrones cast members in the credits before Peter Dinklage got the “and” credit at the very end.)
Basically, there didn’t seem to be much to like about Theon, without knowing what was ahead… and no way of knowing what Alfie Allen was capable of. Flash forward 13 years, and I think that Theon had one of the most incredible journeys of Game of Thrones and one of the most powerful deaths out of a show that killed off most of its major characters. (Fun fact: of the 17 actors in the series premiere opening credits, 12 of them were killed off by the end of Game of Thrones.)
Theon would go through hell and back, and revisiting the very beginning when he was one of the characters whose name I didn’t catch the first time in 2011 reminded me of how great his ending was in Season 8. And there aren’t that many characters whose endings I would describe as “great” from Season 8!
Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner)
Sansa obviously wasn’t on the same level as Jaime “The Things I Do For Love” Lannister or Theon “Let’s Kill The Baby Direwolves” Greyjoy when I watched the pilot 13 years ago, but I was certainly on Team Arya when the show seemed to be setting up the Stark girls as polar opposites. If anything, Sansa felt like a foil deliberately written to make the other Starks seem a lot more fun.
By the end of Season 8, Sansa was almost unrecognizable from the young girl who dreamed of riding south to become Joffrey’s queen. She was a queen in her own right as leader of an independent North, and the pilot was just the first stage of her journey in the game of thrones. She started as a pawn before becoming a player by the end, with Sophie Turner growing into a fantastic actress over the course of the show.
Considering that the closest I ever came to quitting Game of Thrones was when Sansa was assaulted by Ramsay Bolton on camera, I certainly warmed up to Sansa while watching the first time around. Now, though, I have a greater appreciation for how her story began.
Honorable Mentions
There were some other characters who even I was surprised by my reaction to in the rewatch, but more as reminders than characters who need to be reranked. Seeing Catelyn again and the brief appearances of Jeyne Poole – a.k.a. Sansa’s friend – made me nostalgic for the A Song of Ice and Fire storylines that are much meatier for their characters. I still wish the Lady Stoneheart storyline for Cat had made it into the show, and Sansa taking Jeyne’s book storyline for the show mean big Eyrie plots being cut.
I also enjoyed seeing Ser Rodrik again, mostly because he would go on to utter one of my favorite lines of Game of Thrones, moments before his botched beheading: “Gods help you, Theon Greyjoy. Now you are truly lost.” That was a great line in Season 2 in 2012, it’s a great line in 2024, and it’s why Ser Rodrick’s demise has a spot on our Game of Thrones deaths ranked.
And I also had a greater appreciation for Viserys this time around, but not because he redeemed himself a la Theon or Jaime. No, seeing Viserys showing shades of the madness of the Targaryen family tree was a reminder that Game of Thrones did set a precedent for Dany’s flip that was more recent than the Mad King himself. Does that mean Dany’s flip wasn’t extremely rushed? It does not, but there were signs along the way, and I count Viserys’ behavior as one of them.
All in all, watching the pilot again really put me in the mood to rewatch the entire series with my Max subscription, which could be a way to get a fix of Game of Thrones in the final weeks before House of the Dragon Season 2 and as the years pass without George R.R. Martin finishing The Winds of Winter. For now, there are also plenty of viewing options on our 2024 TV schedule.