Game of Thrones: Review: Season 2 Ep 8

HBO, 20 May 2012

As King’s Landing prepares to fall under siege, Robb Stark discovers a traitor rather close to home…

Someone seems to have challenged the writers of this episode (series adapters David Benioff and D.B. Weiss)  to see how many main characters they can get to utter a certain frowned upon epithet in one episode… I eventually lost c… c… count.

While many of the characters had their moments — and Richard Madden (as Robb Stark) gets a couple of good ones with his seemingly traitorous mother, Cate, and his love interest, Talisa — Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister once more steals the acting honours, both in his scenes with Cersei and with Shae. Is this getting monotonous?Tough, it’s true.

There’s a lot of putting the pieces into place in this episode, as Theon continues to screw up his position at WInterfell, Daenerys pines for her dragons and Stannis readies his fleet to storm King’s Landing. It’s all leading to something big, and with the next episode written by author George R. R. Martin and directed by horror movie specialst Neil Marshall we may be in for something truly special…

Verdict: The calm before the storm? Let’s hope so!

Episode 8 ‘The Prince of Winterfell’: 8/10

Brian J. Robb