Television Review: Game of Thrones (Season 2, 2012)
When Game of Thrones concluded its inaugural season in 2011, it left behind a singular achievement in television storytelling: a remarkably faithful adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s dense literary source that nevertheless possessed its own distinct cinematic identity. The execution of Ned Stark—television’s most shocking narrative gambit in years—demonstrated that this series would operate by rules entirely its own. Season Two, adapting the considerably more sprawling 1998 novel A Clash of Kings, thus faced a formidable challenge: to maintain narrative momentum whilst expanding an already Byzantine tapestry of competing claimants, new locations, and proliferating storylines. The result is a season that, whilst undeniably accomplished in patches, reveals the strain of its ambition—a workmanlike sophomore effort that occasionally buckles under the weight of adaptation, even as it delivers moments of genuine television spectacle.
The opening instalment, The North Remembers, establishes immediately that this shall be a season of broader geographical scope and denser political machinations. Showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss perform a commendable juggling act, reintroducing the principal players and establishing new power centres—from Stannis Baratheon’s austere court at Dragonstone to the windswept Iron Islands. Yet for all its competence, the episode cannot replicate the electric, world-building shock of the series premiere. It is a workmanlike piece of television—efficient, thematically focused upon the corrupting nature of power, but already hinting at the narrative compromises that would occasionally plague later seasons. The introduction of Stephen Dillane’s Stannis, Liam Cunningham’s Davos, and Carice van Houten’s Melisandre is handled with superb economy, establishing a potent new religious dimension that disrupts the established order. Nevertheless, the episode’s reliance upon exposition—at Craster’s Keep, in the desolate Red Waste, amidst the intrigues of King’s Landing—gives it the quality of table-setting rather than dramatic propulsion.
This tension between scope and depth persists throughout the season’s opening movements. The Night Lands continues the work of positioning chess pieces, introducing the Iron Islands through Theon Greyjoy’s humiliating homecoming—a fine display of dramatic irony that sets in motion one of the season’s most tragic arcs. Yet even here, the mechanics of adaptation become visible: the killing of Rakharo (necessitated by actor Elyes Gabel’s departure for feature film work) and the renaming of Asha to Yara (to avoid confusion with the wildling Osha) represent early examples of the compromises required when translating vast literary series to the screen. These were largely justified by practical constraints, but they signpost a willingness to trim and adjust the canon that would later have more consequential ramifications.
By What Is Dead May Never Die, the third episode, the season’s fundamental challenge becomes apparent. The narrative has expanded to accommodate Renly Baratheon’s vast southern army, the Ironborn’s northern incursion, Daenerys’s struggles in Essos, Arya’s captivity, and the ranging party beyond the Wall—yet the episode format remains fixed at approximately fifty minutes. The result is an instalment primarily concerned with introducing new factions and agendas without delivering major set-pieces or dramatic reversals. It is, in essence, an episode of preparation rather than payoff, efficiently executed but necessarily lacking in the spectacular moments that define the series at its best.
The introduction of Renly’s camp, whilst narratively essential, exemplifies the season’s occasional production shortcomings. His army is supposed to be the strongest and provide the biggest spectacle of the season; yet the scenes look remarkably underwhelming, explained less by budgetary constraints than by logistical issues and weather problems on the Irish locations. The result is a camp that feels smaller and less impressive than it should, undermining the visual argument for Renly’s superiority. Natalie Dormer’s Margaery Tyrell and Gwendoline Christie’s Brienne of Tarth are welcome additions—Dormer bringing pragmatic intelligence to a role that challenges the rigid patriarchal world of Westeros, Christie embodying a female knight whose androgynous physicality and moral code transcend factional loyalty. Yet their introduction marks the beginning of a trend in which HBO caters to progressive sensibilities, a trajectory that would be brought further by the increasingly "girlboss" portrayal of Daenerys in later seasons.
A curious phenomenon emerges in episodes such as Garden of Bones and The Ghost of Harrenhal: the dissonance between episode titles and actual content. Garden of Bones refers to a desert surrounding Qarth that features merely as a footnote, whilst the episode’s substantial dramatic weight is invested in the grim political machinations of Westeros. Similarly, The Ghost of Harrenhal’s title refers to a storyline that is not the most important or consequential. This dissonance serves as a fitting metaphor for the season itself: a collection of well-crafted, albeit sometimes meandering, plot advancements that occasionally lose sight of their central thrust.
Yet Garden of Bones also demonstrates the season at its most thematically concentrated. The episode takes a decisively dark turn, relentlessly reminding viewers of the pervasive brutality in Martin’s world. From Sansa’s public shaming and the torture of peasants at Harrenhal to Joffrey’s psychopathic abuse of prostitutes and the massacre of green boys at Oxcross, the narrative insists upon the cheapness of life amidst dynastic squabbles. The introduction of Talisa Maegyr—a complete invention for the television series, replacing Jeyne Westerling from the books—injects a distinctly modern, pacifist sensibility into the medieval setting, arguably serving as a conduit for contemporary audience sentiments. This creative choice, whilst perhaps intended to simplify the political landscape and inject "exotic" romance, would prove contentious; the relationship between Robb and Talisa often feels contrived and underwritten compared to the authentic spark between Jon Snow and Ygritte.
If Season Two struggles with pacing and narrative compression for much of its run, it finds its definitive statement in the ninth episode, Blackwater. Written by Martin himself and directed by Neil Marshall, this instalment abandons the season’s sprawling multi-continental storytelling to focus entirely upon a single, critical engagement: the Battle of the Blackwater. It is a radical structural choice that pays dividends, delivering the series’ first truly spectacular set-piece and cementing the tradition of the penultimate episode as the season’s "wham" moment.
The episode’s extended build-up—nearly thirty minutes pass before the first clash—is as compelling as the battle itself, masterfully crafting an atmosphere of dread within the capital. The character work shines: the complex dynamic between Cersei and Sansa, with the latter emerging as a pillar of strength amidst the former’s drunken despair; Tyrion’s desperate ingenuity with the wildfire; the Hound’s psychological breakdown triggered by pyrophobia. The green explosion that consumes Stannis’s fleet remains a landmark in television visual effects, visceral and shocking even years later. That the battle was shifted from daytime to night for budgetary reasons—masking the limited number of physical ships and easing CGI integration—represents a compromise that occasionally renders troop movements confusing, yet the overall achievement is undeniable. Blackwater proved that Game of Thrones could deliver cinematic-scale warfare on the small screen, setting a new standard for television spectacle and raising audience expectations for what was to come.
For all its visual grandeur, Season Two increasingly reveals a propensity to sacrifice nuanced character logic for immediate shock or simplified conflict. This tendency is most starkly illustrated in the treatment of Jaime Lannister. In A Man Without Honour, his escape attempt involves the invented character of his cousin, Ser Alton Lannister—crafted solely to be portrayed as honourable, sharing nostalgic banter with Jaime, only to be brutally murdered by him. This act of kinslaying makes television-Jaime significantly more vile than his literary counterpart at this juncture, creating a chasm of audience antipathy that the subsequent redemption arc struggles to bridge.
Similarly, Theon Greyjoy’s arc, whilst providing some of the season’s most compelling tragic material, occasionally suffers from manipulative execution. His botched execution of Rodrik Cassell—a horrifying spectacle that strips his rule of legitimacy—contrasts with the telegraphed revelation that his displayed "Stark" corpses are actually murdered farm boys. For the perceptive viewer, the reveal is anticipated by earlier discoveries, rendering the shock somewhat hollow. It functions less as genuine narrative twist than as convenient punctuation.
The season’s sexual content also warrants critical examination. Theon’s encounter with the "Captain’s Daughter" in The Night Lands—existings solely for a scene of steamy "sexposition" where Ironborn culture is explained mid-coitus—exemplifies the gratuitous inclusion of nudity that occasionally feels less organic than obligatory. The Stannis-Melisandre coupling, feeling more like an obligatory narrative checkbox than an organic character moment, similarly reduces potentially complex character dynamics to functional titillation.
Valar Morghulis, the season finale, performs the necessary function of resetting the board after the climactic battle, but does so with a consistent, cynical intelligence that arguably surpasses much of the preceding material. The episode understands that in the world of Game of Thrones, the most important moves are often made in the quiet aftermath of the noise. Tyrion’s unceremonious dismissal despite his salvation of the city; the Lannister-Tyrell alliance cemented through Joffrey’s breaking of his betrothal to Sansa; Robb’s politically catastrophic marriage to Talisa; the burning of Winterfell and Theon’s capture; Daenerys’s visions in the House of the Undying and her subsequent display of growing ruthlessness—all are handled with efficient narrative economy.
The finale’s greatest achievement lies in its deliberate complication of the show’s moral binary. Brienne’s lethal dispatch of Stark soldiers who have raped and murdered peasant women—partly pragmatic, primarily an act of personal chivalric code—forces the audience to witness the brutal reality that there are no purely virtuous armies. The Stark cause, however just in its origins, is prosecuted by men capable of atrocity. This nuanced approach to morality represents the series at its most sophisticated, even as it sets in motion narrative developments that would, in time, lead to the show’s more controversial later seasons.
Season Two of Game of Thrones is ultimately a season of transition—expanding the narrative scope established in the first year whilst grappling with the logistical and creative challenges of such expansion. It is a season of stark contrasts: the grinding, often oppressive darkness of its Westerosi politics against the exotic, if underdeveloped, intrigues of Qarth; the intimate, character-driven brilliance of Tyrion’s machinations against the occasionally confusing spectacle of its battle sequences; the faithful adaptation of Martin’s moral complexity against the invention of characters and plotlines that occasionally create unintended narrative complications.
Episodes such as Blackwater and Garden of Bones demonstrate the show operating at the height of its powers, whilst instalments like The Prince of Winterfell and A Man Without Honour feel like necessary but uninspired table-setting. The introduction of new locations and characters expands the world, but at the cost of the laser-focused storytelling that distinguished the first season.
Viewed with hindsight, Season Two stands as a fascinating artefact from the show’s earlier, more faithful days—a period where the strain of adaptation was visible but had not yet overwhelmed the narrative. It is a season that remembers the past, sets the stage for the coming chaos, and promises fire and blood—delivering enough of each to satisfy, even as it hints at the more troubled waters ahead. The War of the Five Kings is revealed as a brutal, cynical game of musical chairs, whilst the true existential threats gather in the frozen darkness and across the Narrow Sea. For all its flaws, Season Two successfully establishes that in the game of thrones, the stakes are higher, the players more numerous, and the consequences more devastating than ever before.
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