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LOS ANGELES, USA – Hit fantasy TV show Game of Thrones returned for its season 6 premiere Sunday appearing to answer to one of the most hotly debated questions in modern television history: “Is Jon Snow dead?”
As well as revealing the fate of the brooding Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch – which AFP will not spoil for fans who have not yet caught up – the writers hit viewers with a huge curve ball that had them rushing to social media to voice their shock. (READ: ‘Game of Thrones’ season 6 premiere recap: ‘The Red Woman’)
On Twitter #GameOfThrones was the top trending hashtag worldwide for several hours before and after the HBO premiere at 9:00pm (9:00am in Manila) on the US east coast.
Fans speculated whether the season opener’s title, “The Red Woman,” indicated that the Red Priestess Melisandre, played by Carice van Houten, would have a hand in bringing Snow back to life after he was stabbed by his mutinous underlings.
Instead, the title was a reference to a big reveal in the final moments of the episode.
“Almost that time!” tweeted Houston Texans offensive tackle and GoT fan Duane Brown as the episode was about to begin, before adding around an hour later: “What. The. Hell?”
What. The. Hell. #GameofThrones
British conservative columnist and novelist James Delingpole complained that he was “slightly upset that there was nothing in #GameofThrones episode one that really upset me.”
Slightly upset that there was nothing in #GameofThrones episode one that really upset me…
“Back to the good ol’ Sunday night ritual of sitting quietly for an hour and then suddenly yelling out ‘NOOOOOOOO,'” tweeted New York-based fan Alex Lauer.
Back to the good ol’ Sunday night ritual of sitting quietly for an hour and then suddenly yelling out "NOOOOOOOO" #GameofThrones
Game of Thrones tells the story of noble families vying for control of the Iron Throne, all the while keeping one eye on the White Walkers leading hordes of wights – the undead – toward an invasion from the North.
The multiple Emmy-winning show and AMC’s The Walking Dead have been hailed by analysts as examples of how cliffhangers can elevate already hotly anticipated TV episodes into global media “events.”
While The Walking Dead will still be working off Robert Kirkman’s comic when it returns in the autumn, season 6 of Game of Thrones has moved beyond George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.
“Fans may have worried that the show might suffer by straying from Martin’s source material, but judging by the confidence of the premiere, those fears appear to be unfounded,” wrote Laura Prudom of weekly entertainment magazine Variety.
‘Swagger’
“Whether the producers feel liberated by the chance to go off book a little more or by their record Emmy haul, Thrones certainly seems to have found its swagger in this dense, decisive hour.”
With more than 20 million viewers per episode, the show’s return had been touted as the biggest TV drama event since JR Ewing, the infamous antagonist in prime-time soap opera Dallas, was gunned down in 1980.
The first episode was mistakenly made available online for a few hours on Sunday, according to online fan forums, with some threads blaming a Canadian streaming website.
Many dismissed the leak as a hoax but a number of fans seemingly managed to watch it and posted accurate plot spoilers and screen grabs on a Reddit thread and on the Internet Movie Database.
Three US cities – Atlanta, Boston and Denver – held theater screenings at the same time as the east coast broadcast, while the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, also screened the opener.
In Britain, where “The Red Woman” show was being shown simultaneously on Sky Atlantic – 2:00am local time – weekly listings magazine the Radio Times ran a live blog starting two hours ahead of the broadcast. – Frankie Taggart, AFP/Rappler.com
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