Before Oberyn, There Was Only Waiting

Popcorn bought. Beer cold. TV warm. I sat there counting down the weeks until Game of Thrones season four, rewatching the trailer for secrets the way you used to pause VHS tapes frame by frame. That pre-release ritual is its own kind of pleasure—all potential, no disappointment yet.

Season four delivered on most of it. Oberyn Martell arrived and immediately became everyone’s favorite person in the room. The Purple Wedding happened in episode two and the internet broke in the way it only breaks when a genuinely satisfying piece of plotting lands in public all at once. Tyrion’s trial unspooled over multiple episodes with a patience television rarely manages. Blood, betrayal, a man’s skull getting compressed by a giant’s bare hands—everything you signed up for and then a little more.

What the trailer was coy about was the season’s actual engine: not the spectacle but the accumulated grief. Season four is the show past the midpoint of its source material, which means it’s the season where George R.R. Martin’s best work finally starts feeding through the machine. The Red Viper’s duel with the Mountain is as formally perfect as the show ever got. You know it won’t end well. You watch it anyway. The anticipation—beer, popcorn, a month of Sundays still to go—was part of the experience. Some things are worth sitting with before they arrive.