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It’s that time of year again. The holidays are largely over, but spring still hasn’t arrived. Instead, millions of fans are waiting for the fifth season of HBO’s massive hit, Game of Thrones, and taking some time to catch up with the fourth season on the newly released Blu-ray and DVD sets. It’s a chance to relive the medieval battles, political intrigue, and family drama that characterize this fantasy epic while waiting to see just how much worse everything can really get for the fictional world of Westeros.
As season four opens, the War of Five Kings has largely concluded with television’s most hated spoiled brat, King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), still on the Iron Throne. The powerful houses of the kingdom continue to maneuver around the new order, while the surviving members of the noble Stark family remain scattered. Armies of ruthless Wildlings march on the enormous Wall protecting Westeros from the dangerous northern wasteland. Across the sea, exiled princess Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) learns that conquering kingdoms and ruling them are two very different things.
After the emotional gut punch of the Red Wedding in the third season, it would be natural to assume that things just have to get better—but Game of Thrones has never played by the standard rules. While an early development may have audiences briefly cheering, it also sets in motion events that will shatter the lives of the few characters we’re still rooting for—most notably the brilliant and frequently underestimated dwarf Tyrion (Peter Dinklage). This series never lets its characters off easily, a sentiment that permeates the season’s two most notable centerpieces: a massive battle between the Night’s Watch and the Wildlings at the Wall and a thrilling duel between sly newcomer Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) and the hulking brute known as The Mountain Who Rides (Hafþor Björnsson). Every action in Game of Thrones carries consequences—some trivial, some heartbreaking.
That sense of high stakes and unpredictability goes a long way toward keeping Game of Thrones fresh. The many interlocking schemes and reversals make up much of the drama, which is good, since the major conflicts that the narrative has promised since the first season—an invasion of ice zombies from the north and the rise of Daenerys’s dragons in the east—stay on the slowest of slow burns. There’s a little development on each front, but, at some point, the show is simply going to have to start paying off those promises.
As the fortunes of its characters rise and fall, Game of Thrones continues to be one of the most compelling fantasy epics on TV. The strong ensemble cast impresses at most every turn, and the production design remains top notch. As the narrative slowly shifts away from internecine war toward the rise of supernatural threats, there’s a sense that something big is looming on the horizon. If the series history is any guide, it will likely be a terrible crisis for the characters but wonderful drama for the rest of us.
Blu-ray Review:
As has been the case so far, Game of Thrones: The Complete Fourth Season arrives with a gorgeous HD transfer and sound mix, backed up with a number of useful and interesting special features. Commentaries are plentiful and generally well done, although the omission of one episode that features a particularly controversial sequence is a bit glaring. A couple of the featurettes—including one on the role of bastard children in the social order of Westeros—don’t seem especially necessary, but they do provide some more context for the show’s world. Others—like the retuning in-episode guides—are indispensable for viewers who enjoy the show but aren’t quite as obsessive-compulsive about the many names, places, and histories of Westeros.
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