The ‘Game of Thrones’ premiere is coming. Here’s a full season 4 refresher guide.

WINTER IS COMING.

This Sunday, we at HG are going to be tuning in to HBO to watch the long-awaited season five premiere of Game of Thrones. Dragons, royalty, and battle! Madness, chaos, bloodshed, and destruction! And Jon Snow . . . swoon. Our excitement is practically palpable.

The only problem with Game of Thrones is that the time between seasons feels like YEARS. (FYI it’s really only about nine months between the end of one season and the beginning of the next.) That means that no matter how intense and badass the episodes are, they’re bound to get a little fuzzy in our TV memories by time the next season rolls around.

It’s for that reason that we decided to make a quick-and-dirty GoT refresher guide, so you can study up in anticipation of the sure-to-be-amazing premiere. How are we going to break down this study packet? By character, of course. So without further ado, and in no particular order. Let us begin.

(Also, I warn you now: Literally this entire post is spoilers.)

Daenerys Targaryen

OK, maybe there’s a BIT of an order, because we’re talking about Daenerys first. She’s just the coolest.

LBH, Daenerys’ scenes can sometimes be bit tedious — I mean, they’re pretty much entirely on horseback — but she totally ROCKED season four. She spent the duration of the season traveling from Yunkai to Meereen, and what’d she do when she got to Meereen? She took over and encouraged the slaves to revolt.

In fact, she decided to postpone her whole invading-Westeros-for-retribution idea so she could focus on freeing slaves, and becoming queen.

Booyah.

A heartbreaking moment to remember: When Jorah Mormont, her adviser who we had kind of been hoping would turn into a love interest, admitted to something heinous: the reason he was sent to her in the first place was because he was spying on her for King’s Landing. (That explains how those folks always knew what she was up to.) He does admit to being in love with her, but Daenerys is having none of that, and she exiles him. She then takes up a super hot new lover, Daario and those two had SO much chemistry.

During all this, Daenerys has some troubles with her dragons, which are getting less tame as they get older. When one of her dragons kills a little girl, Daenerys is forced to lock them in a vault, knowing that they could become unbelievably dangerous if left to their own devices.

No, I’m not crying! THERE’S JUST SOMETHING IN MY EYE.

Tyrion Lannister

If you somehow forgot, Sansa and Tyrion are now married, all because of Tywin (after all, his kids are just his pawns). Tywin’s hoping that Tyrion will somehow be king of the North, since the Starks are dropping off like flies (sob).

But what about Shae? Yeah, Tyrion totally shatters our hearts by breaking up with her (they were SO CUTE). But it’s for good reason: to protect her from the Lannisters. She doesn’t know that, though, so she’s pretty salty about the whole situation.

Then comes the Royal Wedding: the moment we had all been waiting for, when Joffrey’s wine is poisoned during the feast, and he falls over and dies. THANK GOD. But Cersei, crazed with grief, orders for Tyrion’s arrest, claiming he was the one who poisoned Joffrey. The guards comply, because, you know, she’s the queen. So Tyrion has to go to trial.

But the courtroom is totally corrupt, so he demands a trial by combat — he gets to choose a champion to fight Cersei’s champion. Prince Oberyn (The Viper), who was introduced in season four, tells Tyrion the real reason for his visit: so he can get sweet, sweet revenge against the Lannisters for the rape and murder of his sister. He volunteers to be champion.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work out too well, since Cersei chooses The Mountain, and The Mountain crushes Prince Oberyn to a pulp (quite literally) . . . but Jaime comes to the rescue and releases Tyrion. Before Tyrion goes to meet Varys who will help smuggle him out of King’s Landing, he sees Shae in his father’s bed (TO OUR ANGER AND INDIGNATION) and gets his revenge by killing her.

Then, he kills his father when he’s on the toilet, which, IMHO, is the BEST way to kill off one of the worst characters ever.

Major victory.

The season ends with Tyrion being shipped away somewhere. We have no idea where, but we PRAY he’s safe.

Did you get all that?

Jaime Lannister

Poor, poor Jaime’s still trying to adapt to life in King’s Landing after losing his dominant sword hand. Both Cersei and Tywin snub him, viewing him as weak. Jerks. 

Later, he enlists the help of Bronn to help him get back into the swing of things. (Get it? Swing? Sword?).

When the whole Tyrion-being-accused-of-killing-Joffrey thing goes down, Jaime is convinced that Tyrion isn’t guilty, but Cersei isn’t having that. She also thinks Sansa had something to do with it, so she orders Jaime to go find Sansa and kill her. Instead, in a super awesome move, Jaime asks Brienne of Tarth, yet another strong, awesome GoT lady, to go find Sansa and keep her safe.

Also, speaking of Brienne: seems like there’s a lot of sexual tension going on there, which also seems to confuse the hell out of poor Jaime, who is totally not used to being into someone who’s not a blood relative. Perhaps that’s why he sends her away . . . who knows?

Either way, we really hope season five is a little less rough on Jaime.

Cersei Lannister

Cersei is one big ball of grief, hurt, and anger. All of the bad feelings. She’s kind of a hot mess right now. After all, she did lose her son Joffrey (even if he’s TERRIBLE), and she’s conflicted about her brother-lover, and she’s being used as a pawn by her father. Plus, she’s not even queen anymore!

We’d feel bad for her if she wasn’t such a terrible human being.

So she spent most of season four fuming, and concentrating on trying to get Tyrion convicted for Joffrey’s murder. Luckily for her, she picked the right contestant: The Mountain, who totally DESTROYS fan-fave Oberyn by literally making his face explode with his monster hands.

Yeesh.

The Mountain, however, was gravely injured in the fight. Last we saw of Cersei, she was doing everything in her power (and perhaps BEYOND her power, since it seems like it’s getting a little *~*spooky*~*) to bring The Mountain back to life.

We’re a little nervous about Cersei for this season. Her rage is like a pot of water on the stove, and we think it’s going to boil over at any second.

Sansa Stark

If Cersei’s season four can be described as “angry,” Sansa’s can be described as “fearing for her life on a regular basis.” First of all, she had to be smuggled out of King’s Landing because Cersei suspects her of killing her beloved baby boy. Secondly, she’s the only one who knows who really killed Joff: Petyr admits to Sansa that he was the one who dealt the poison. PETYR, YOU CREEPY GENIUS.

Petyr and Sansa hide away in the Eyrie, and Sansa pretends to be his niece (when really, she’s Lysa Arryn’s niece). Lysa pressures Petyr to marry her, and she gets ULTRA jealous of Sansa, who she thinks is trying to seduce Petyr. 

However, Lysa’s fears come true . . . in a way she wouldn’t expect. Petyr has obvi had the hots for Sansa since she reminds him of her mother, who he was CRAZY about for years.

So he kisses her, and Lysa finds out. Ruh roh.

Naturally, the retribution for that involves the Moon Door, but *somehow* Lysa ends up being the one who falls through the Moon Door . . .  so it seems like things might just get better for Sansa this season after all.

Arya Stark

But what about everyone’s fave badass, Arya? She’s chilling with The Hound. And by chilling, I mean running around the countryside trying to recover her lost family. 

Speaking of which, there’s a big moment when Arya arrives at The Eyrie and finds Lysa dead. Instead of crying, or looking shocked, or exhibiting any sort of negative reaction, she just laughs and laughs, as if to say, “LOL MY LIFE IS RIDICULOUSLY BAD WTF.”

Little did she know, Sansa was there under a false name . . . heartbreaking.

Tensions grow between her and The Hound . . . until they run into Brienne, who begs her to take her back to safety. Sadly, Arya doesn’t trust her, and The Hound fights Brienne in response. Brienne wins (because she’s awesome), and The Hound is dealt a clearly fatal wound. He begs Arya to kill him, but she steals his gold and runs away, letting him die a slow and painful death.

And then, she finds a ship headed to Braavos, so she uses her coin + “Valar morghulis” magic to get on the ship and (hopefully) find a new life. Seems like a lot of this season will start with characters on a ship bound for who-knows-where . . .

Bran Stark

If you haven’t noticed, season four involved a lot of traveling in general. Bran is no exception, as he and his companions (Jojen and Meera Reed and Hodor) are pretty much just going north for, like, ever.

By the way, you know how Bran does that weird thing where his eyes roll back and he dreams about animals?

Yeah, he’s not actually dreaming — he’s taking CONTROL of the animals, because he’s a Warg, as Jojen informs him. Also? He’s got “greensight,” which pretty much makes him psychic, and also creepily reminds me of The Shining.

Sadly, once they get to the Heart Tree (which is from Bran’s visions), they get attacked and Jojen dies . . . but the other three are saved by some sort of forest child, who takes them to the three-eyed raven (FINALLY).

We’re not sure what will happen to Bran, but we’re pretty sure it will involve some crazy supernatural stuff, what with his Warg-ing and greensight-ing.

Jon Snow

At the start of season four, we find Jon at Castle Black after his romping with the wildlings. He’s pardoned by Maester Aemon when he explains that he was just trying to get some juicy info about what the wildlings are up to. Unfortunately, not everyone believes that he’s on the side of the Watch, and they want to get rid of him. We REALLY hope no one does, because unfffff.

A lot of stuff happens re: the war and strategies and such, but here’s the gist: Mance Rayder, The King Beyond The Wall, attacks Castle Black . . . but not just with any ol’ army. His army has wildlings and mammoths and giants and it’s just ridiculous.

Luckily, they do hold the Castle . . . but there’s a lot of bloodshed. One of the major casualties? Ygritte, Jon’s estranged bae, who is shot right in front of his very eyes. ALL OF THE TEARS.

Unfortunately, Jon fails to kill Vance, but Stannis Baratheon, the “one true king” (or so he likes to say) and younger brother of former king Robert Baratheon, swoops in to the rescue. He captures Vance, then takes Jon back to Castle Black. Jon lets Stannis know that he should totally kill the dead, because, you know, they’ll probz rise back up and take over the Earth . . . and again, we cry all of the tears when Jon takes Ygritte’s body up north and burns it as well.

As any true GoT fan knows, there are over 100 characters, so we can’t list ’em all, but those are the mains. Now that you’re super refreshed, get ready for the season five premiere on HBO at 9PM EST, and remember . . .

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