Game of Thrones season 7 got off to a violent but commanding start for the show’s female characters Sunday night, potentially signaling a season where the women of Westeros are destined to rule. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Maybe it was Sansa speaking out against Jon. Or Lyanna scoffing at the idea that she, as a young woman, wouldn’t fight just as fiercely for the North as her male counterparts. Or Arya reminding the crowd of men she’s just poisoned that as long as one wolf lives, the sheep are not safe. But something about Sunday night’s Game of Thrones season 7 premiere seemed to suggest this season may be one in which the women truly rule. Let’s break down all our favorite feminist moments from the episode:
Arya
Leave it to Arya Stark to kick off season 7 with a coldly calculated massacre. The girl formerly known as No One certainly embraced her family’s name in the first few moments of the episode by tricking a room full of Freys she’d just poisoned into thinking she was their patriarch instead of an assassin out for vengeance. The scene set the icy tone for the episode, and hopefully for the season. The woman Arya has grown into is used to being underestimated at this point, and has learned to use that to her advantage. She doesn’t have time for a bunch of dudes who slaughtered her family at the Red Wedding, or for feeling remorse for her own actions, as we learned last season when she went full-fledged Sweeney Todd (throat-slitting, human meat pies, and all) on the real Walder Frey and his sons.
Even when we see Arya stop for a few swigs of blackberry wine with Ed Sheehan and his merry band of fellow soldiers in the Riverlands, her confidence is striking. She’s heading to King’s Landing, she tells the men, to kill the queen. Even though they dismiss her ambitions as a joke (classic dudes), she has no doubts and it shows. And looking ahead, a Cersei-Arya showdown could get pretty epic.
Sansa
It’s been so refreshing to see Sansa’s growth in the last season. She’s gone from tortured wife to unofficial war advisor—and, in this episode, a vital voice of reason in a sea of worked-up men. It’s still unclear what Sansa’s motivations were last season when she conveniently forgot to tell her brother (?) she actually had a full-blown army ready to gallop in and save the day during the Battle of the Bastards. Whatever she was going for, it worked. Plus, it proved what we already knew but are now seeing a clearer picture of: Sansa is a more layered, complicated character than she may have initially appeared.
As she tells Jon after he mansplains the art of warfare to her, she may not have been conditioned to fight as her brothers were, but that doesn’t mean she’s not willing and capable. Her father and brother Rob, she points out, were passionate men but they didn’t always think things through. Sansa, it seems, has learned from her family’s mistakes and has no intention of repeating them.
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Episode 61 (season 7, episode 1), debut 7/16/17: Gwendoline Christie, Daniel Portman.
photo: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO
Brienne
All of the women of Game of Thrones are tough. Brienne is just a little more obvious about it. In the premiere, we see Brienne schooling Pod in swordplay, as usual. And wouldn’t you know it, a woman can’t even disarm a squire without a dude hitting on her (to be fair, we can’t blame Tormund for his crush on Brienne, just wish he’d be a little chiller about his advances). Brienne also gets lady squad points for her unwavering loyalty to Catelyn Stark and her daughters.
Lyanna
Could we love Lyanna Mormont more? Unlikely. The pint-sized pistol yet again proved she’s wise beyond her years (and beyond most of the men around her’s years, for that matter) in Sunday night’s episode. Her firm stance on the girls and women of the North being just as important in the fight to defend it as the boys and men is, of course, common sense, but it’s also a pretty bold statement in a room full of bearded testosterone.
(Shout-out to Jon Snow for being an advocate for women and girls getting in on the fight, too; it almost makes up for his outrage at Sansa challenging him earlier in the episode.) We’re excited to see Lyanna continue to blossom as a no-nonsense leader in the show—although, to be honest, the fact that she’s barely hit puberty and is still the most baller person in the room makes her extra awesome.
Cersei
When Jon and Sansa receive the raven from King’s Landing, Jon is aghast at the idea that Sansa could admire Cersei. But despite all her *serious* flaws as a human, it’s kind of hard not to admire her. The woman has lost all of her children, she’s been tortured, publicly humiliated, and had agency granted to her only to be taken away again and again. And yet Cersei forges ahead, that smirking stoic look permanently painted on her face. The fact that she is actually the queen again aside, Cersei exudes power and influence. Now that she no longer has her children to protect, she also no longer has weaknesses that could get in the way of her quest for total domination.
Next: Game of Thrones season 7: 5 predictions for episode 2, Stormborn
Daenerys
No matter how many dothraki soldiers or other haters try to keep her down, Daenerys has always been able to rise above (like, literally, she has three flying dragons). In Sunday’s episode, she was at her noble best, returning to her homeland with her beautifully-plaited head held high, and an armada there to back her up. Closing the episode with Dany asking “Shall we begin?” felt like the perfect way to wrap up an episode, and start a season, full of women moving toward their rightful place at the Game of Thrones table.