You haven’t seen Game of Thrones. You couldn’t find Dorne on a map if someone paid you. You know Sansa better as Nicole Cliffe’s dog than as a member of House Stark. When you hear “Daenerys” you start looking for Daenerys exit (sorry).
Still, maybe you’ve always wanted to watch. When Binge Mode content crosses your screen, you think, “someday.” Maybe last year you swore you’d find the time to catch up before Season 8, but you didn’t—and now, with a little more than a week before the final season’s premiere, you can’t. That ship has sailed, but there’s still a way—an unconventional, extremely controversial way—to start watching now.
In summer 2017, Game of Thrones Season 7 was on the horizon. I copy edit at The Ringer but had never watched the show. When I proofed Binge Mode copy or worked on our episode rankings, I would look for subject-verb agreement and double-check comma placement—everything else was more or less incomprehensible. Copy editing Game of Thrones content was not entirely unlike reading a technical sports piece for me (incredibly, I started working here with little knowledge of either). As the premiere approached, I dreaded another two months of content with confusing proper nouns, hierarchies I couldn’t keep track of, dramatic backstories that came and went in a flurry, and dynasties that rose and fell in a week’s time. But enough about tennis!
I took matters into my own hands—I still didn’t understand how the NBA draft lottery worked, but prestige television I could handle. I decided to jump in and start watching Game of Thrones Season 7 like the rest of the staff, so I wouldn’t be at a total loss when the copy rolled in.
Reader, it was fine.
Maybe, unlike me, your day job doesn’t involve confirming which vowels are in Targaryen five times a day. But maybe you’re sick of logging off Twitter every Sunday night for six weeks while everyone else freaks out about wolves and ice zombies. In fact, with the rise of streaming services, many critics have forecasted that Game of Thrones is the last of its kind—a serialized show millions tune into weekly, the act of watching at once personal and ubiquitous. This could be your last chance to ride the comet of collective cultural engagement. If you want to enjoy the final season of Game of Thrones, you still can. Here are a few tips to help you break the rules of television and start watching Game of Thrones the wrong way.
1. Watch as much of Season 7 as you can.
Everyone knows that season finales often contain monumental events that shape the scope of the season to come. Prior to watching Season 7 in 2017, I watched the final episode of Season 6 first. Even though I didn’t have all the context for what I saw in “The Winds of Winter,” it was epic as hell and set the tone for (and let me know who would still be standing in) Season 7.
I recommend a similar strategy for Season 8. You still have a week—I would cram all of Season 7 if you can. (There are only seven episodes—it’s doable.) That said, if you can’t handle that, the episodes to prioritize are the fourth, sixth, and seventh. If you can’t handle that (this is a guide for slackers, but you’re pushing it!), at least watch the final two episodes.
Hold on—you can just do that? You can parachute into a complex, critically acclaimed, canon-rich television drama and follow it, let alone enjoy it? You can. In fact, you’re about to really lean into the chaos in order to rise above the way you understand television (it’s kind of like a ladder).
2. Start watching another season.
While I was watching Season 7 in real time every Sunday night, I also began watching mid-Season 3 for backstory. The thought of going back to Season 1 was overwhelming, the chasm simply too large to bridge, so I chose what felt like the middlest of the middle to start watching. It was just as ridiculous as it sounded. I preferred this method to reading several dozen episode recaps because the show is awesome, and recaps are boring. Eventually, though, I just said “Fuck it” and started watching Season 1, Episode 1, meaning that I was essentially watching three timelines at the same time.
Disclaimer: If watching Thrones out of order incenses you, please stop reading. But also, I already did it—I watched it out of order and enjoyed it and there’s nothing you can do about it. Be mad! The deed is done! The past is written and the ink is dry!
Back to Step 2: Watching past seasons of the show naturally deepens your investment in the characters and stories, which I’ll elaborate on below. Start with “Walk of Punishment” and work in Season 1 chronologically as you see fit.
3. Embrace spoilers and revel in the meta text.
Now to address the ice dragon in the room. Don’t people lose their minds over Game of Thrones spoilers? Doesn’t watching a show out of order … ruin it?
Let me be clear: They do, but it doesn’t. When I started my journey, I assumed everything would be “spoiled,” but decided I wouldn’t care since I wasn’t invested in the show. What I found instead was that (a) actually, yes, this show is pretty awesome, and (b) knowing major plot points didn’t at all take away from enjoying it. Game of Thrones has enough last-second heroics, small acts of mercy, and inventive ways of murdering people that there’s no need to hang your entire gratification on a few major events.
As modern media consumers, we’re already savvy to flashback as a narrative device. Sure, I watched various families struggle over disparate timelines, and yes, I knew some people who existed in one timeline clearly didn’t survive into another. But also, that is literally the premise of This Is Us! It’s really not that big a deal. Plus, on any given day on Twitter, major outlets casually drop major spoilers alongside viewers who are still blindsided by the Red Wedding in 2019. All bets are off.
Also, knowing some major plot elements didn’t spoil the impact of others. I knew that Joffrey would kick the bucket eventually, but I didn’t know when, how, or why. I didn’t see it coming, and when it happened I felt the same mix of pleasure and revulsion I’m sure others did watching it chronologically. Lysa Arryn’s revelation to Littlefinger 20 minutes into “First of His Name” is still one of the wildest moments of the whole series for me. There was no projectile bleeding, no dramatic sword unsheathing, no deus ex machina direwolf. Just an unhinged whisper echoing off a chamber wall as Petyr Baelish sweated through his cloaks.
I don’t think this could work on a lesser show or film, but for Game of Thrones, which is so deep and well thought out, watching three seasons simultaneously offered a new way to appreciate the text. Don’t get me wrong—a great twist is thrilling. But often it’s just another machination of melodrama, and with a show as rich as Thrones, there’s plenty to enjoy without tying yourself in knots over spoilers. And I still lost my entire mind when the last few minutes of Season 7 rolled.
4. Acquire background as you need it.
Just as you must accept that you know “too much” about a given plot, you must also accept that you don’t know enough. My boyfriend (who watched the series the “right” way) was around to fill in any blanks, offer a quick character background, and answer queries like “What’s a wildling?,” “Why does everyone have to be nice to Walder Frey?,” and “Where’s Cersei’s husband?” Sometimes I had to make do with answers that didn’t totally make sense (“It was a hunting accident … kind of”), and I never really got [gestures vaguely] Bran’s whole deal, but the fumes were enough to get me from one episode to the next. I didn’t need to know where the dragons came from or how Tyrion got his scar. I just needed to know who to root for in any given sword fight (this is kind of how I got through college football season too).
Ideally you, too, have a Thrones fanatic among your friends or family who will, with pleasure, respond posthaste to a quick text. If not—spoiler alert: shameless plug incoming—The Ringer’s Path to the Throne videos on the Lannisters, Targaryens, and Starks will do a great job with the broad strokes (warning: They’ve read the books!), and The New York Times also has an attractive package to help you navigate the series.
5. Eventually rewatch the whole thing chronologically.
Breathe a sigh of relief, diehards! My tri-timeline method was never an effort to CliffsNotes Games of Thrones and call it a day. It was to get up to speed as quickly as possible for Season 7 and not feel like I was reading Greek at work (but enough about baseball!). I always knew I would fill in the blanks another day. This spring, I watched Game of Thrones from the beginning, which meant rewatching some episodes and watching seasons 2, 5, and 6 for the first time.
Of course I had seen multiple “spoilers” by this point, but there was plenty I was seeing for the first time. In Season 2, I watched Cersei, whom I had only known as a ruthless, uncompromising monarch, confess to Tyrion that Joffrey was a scary, wretched person—and that he may even be punishment for her sins. I had never seen her this vulnerable, this penitent. She seemed more naked to me than she did in Season 5. Moments like these were as thrilling as any unexpected evisceration, immolation, decapitation, or defenestration.
I have friends who would rather tear their fingernails off than watch a show out of order. That’s fine! This method isn’t for everyone. But discerning which ancient prophecy will be fulfilled in Season 8 by freeze-framing a teaser trailer and mapping out which Weirwood appears in the reflection of Dany’s eyeball at 00:02:16 is also not for everyone. No method is good or bad or better or worse, they’re just different ways of appreciating the same text.
Living in fear of spoilers or being afraid you’re not experiencing a cultural touchstone the “right” way is just another way to feel anxious. Game of Thrones is great, but it isn’t perfect, and it’s ridiculous to act like shuffling the deck a bit ruins the game entirely (hello, Star Wars). It’s 2019: Donald Trump is still president, the sea levels are still rising, and you can watch TV however you want to. Shaking off the preciousness of prestige TV didn’t preclude me from falling in love with a show, it just made me realize how conscripted my pop culture consumption—and the innate pleasure therein—had become.
Still, Season 8 will be a different beast. There are only six episodes, half of which are more than an hour long. The stakes are the highest they’ve ever been, characters with good hearts who have survived seven seasons will die, and you might find out who “wins” the Iron Throne before you learn what a Baratheon is. It’s a tall order, a journey you don’t have to go on.
That said, on my rewatch I finally understood Bran’s plotline of becoming the all-seeing, all-knowing Three-Eyed Raven, and I came up with a fan theory of my own. My serpentine viewing pattern wasn’t brash iconoclasm, but in line with one of the biggest themes of the story—not rappelling the gossamer divide between societal alliances, rising above preordained prophecies, or dating your sister—the power of seeing past, present, and future at once and deciding what you want to do with that knowledge.
To further the metaphor, watching Thrones the “wrong” way means you aren’t walking through the series—you’re flying above it, able to see different characters at different points in their lives, which adds a unique, rich layer as a viewer. But only you can decide whether you want to start watching a prestige, majorly hyped show out of order. I don’t regret my decision; I think of what the Three-Eyed Raven said of young Jojen Reed, who could also see multiple timelines, and the journey his gift took him on: “He knew what would happen. From the moment he left, he knew. And he went anyway.”
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/4/5/18295884/game-of-thrones-season-8-never-watched-guide
2019-04-05 10:10:00Z
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