"Game of Thrones" Year Three

Spoilers ahead for all three seasons.

I wasn't too happy with the second season of "Game of Thrones." There were parts that I enjoyed very much, such as Tyrion's life in King's Landing and Arya's arc in Harrenhal. However, too much of that year felt like filler, dragged down by uninteresting characters playing out uninteresting stories. Even the stronger characters I usually enjoyed like Danaerys and Cersei got blander material that made them seem tedious. I understood that much of the maneuvering was necessary, that the show was playing a long game to set up much bigger events down the road. The third season finally gave us some payoff, and was altogether better paced, easier to watch, and more satisfying all around.

There were some small changes this year that made big differences. One was just a matter of which characters in which storylines were getting the emphasis. Jon Snow's travels were a lot more tolerable when Ygritte became a bigger part of his story. Rob and Talisa got a few romantic moments together, but the POV character in their storyline was Catelyn this year. There were too many characters to follow and too much to keep track of, as usual, but the creators fully embraced the splintered nature of the narrative, and put more faith in the audience to keep up. So segments got shorter, giving us five minutes with one character here, and a brief scene there, which was often all we needed. Some characters disappeared for multiple episodes, something I wish they'd been brave enough to do with Danaerys last year, when there just wasn't enough material for her.

We got another round of new characters, but as the show has become more popular, the actors playing minor roles and guest stars have gotten more high profile, making it easier to pick them out. There's Diana Rigg playing Olenna Redwyne, the delightfully non-nonsense grandmother to Margaery and Loras. There's Ciaran Hinds as the wildling leader Mance Rayder, with Mackenzie Crook as his follower, Orell. There's Thomas Brodie-Sangster, as Jojen Reed, who with his sister Meera, played by Ellie Kendrick, join up with Bran's band of fugitives heading toward the Wall. There's Noah Taylor as the sadistic Locke, a soldier loyal to the Boltons who intercepts Jamie and Brienne. And then there's relative newcomer Iwan Rheon playing Ramsay Snow, who spends the entire season torturing Theon, and making the kind of bad impression no one will soon forget.

On the production side, the show looks more gorgeous and expensive every year. Danaerys's scenes in Essos are particularly stunning, making great use of locations and talent in Morocco. You can tell that there's a higher comfort level with the use of CGI, because we get more wolves and more dragons than ever before, along with eight thousand CGI soldiers and seeing the Wall up close and personal. It feels like more large scale action is happening more often, even if that's not actually the case. The writing and the pacing are tighter, and there's little that feels like filler. I can't think of a single episode this season where something didn't pay off, though some of those payoffs were bigger than others. I was also happy that the content generally felt less gratuitous than it had in the past. Sure, there's still a lot of sex and nudity and a big, bloody massacre, but it's all better integrated into the stories and and feels less obtrusive.

What I think really makes this season so much more solid and engaging is that "Game of Thrones" has its sense of epic scope back, and the storylines feel properly connected to each other again. You have characters swapping in and out of different threads of the plot more frequently, so now Margaery and Tywin are in King's Landing, while the Hound crosses paths with Arya, Gendry briefly becomes central to Stannis's story, and Bran's group eventually meets members of the Night's Watch. The fall of Winterfell is shown to seriously affect things going on in other places on the map, and there are several small but pointed discussions to show that various characters in Westeros know that danger is coming from the North and from Danaerys in the East. And speaking of Danaerys, she's still largely disconnected from everyone else, but her story has ramped up into a massive enterprise, full of armies and conquests and ever-growing CGI dragons. She takes back her place as one of the most fearsome contenders for the Iron Throne, and gives the show one of its best moments in the fourth episode of the season.

And character arcs! We had real, full, complete character arcs for some of the minor players who had been trooping along on the sidelines since the first season. Jamie Lannister gets the prize for most improved characterization, after bonding with Brienne during their ordeal with Locke. Sam got to be a hero, and Davros got to be a badass, and Varys is more fascinating every time we see him. My new favorite character may be Margaery, whose desire for power and machinating mind are a match for anyone else on the board, but hidden beneath a disarmingly sunny disposition. I love that some of the year's biggest developments turned out to be typical soap opera fodder, like who was getting married to who, and who was sleeping with who, but in "Game of Thrones" if you make the wrong match, you end up with a Red Wedding situation on your hands.

Speaking of which, the events of "Rains of Castamere" were pretty thoroughly spoiled for me, so it didn't have nearly the impact that it had one other viewers. Frankly, I didn't find it as nearly as shocking as I've heard described. Were Robb and Catelyn really anyone's favorite characters? I was honestly a little relieved to see Robb gone, as the show did a pretty poor job of making him into a sympathetic figure. However, I did find Stannis and Melisandre much improved, Jon Snow and Ygritte were more than tolerable, and Bran has quietly emerged as an intriguing major protagonist. My favorite storyline this year, however, was Tyrion and Sansa's union, and I found their deeply uncomfortable nuptials much more fun than the more famous Red Wedding.

There were rougher spots, of course. I'm not sure what to make of the Theon scenes, and don't feel they did much to further either his story or Ramsay Bolton's. The Reed kids are in desperate need of a few monologues to flesh them out. And was that really all we get of Mance Rayder? And Thoros and Beric? And is Lancel Lannister dead in a ditch somewhere? Still, there's always next season, and "Game of Thrones" has been good about building its characters up slowly. And with the story back on track and many more seasons ahead, I definitely plan to be around for the long haul.
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