‘Lord Snow’ Gets Ready for a Long Winter

By Steve Marzolf

For many of the characters in ‘Game of Thrones,’ Episode 3 meant getting used to intimidating new places – kind of like college orientation but with more battling in courtyards and making out with your sister.

At this point, everyone and their mom has weighed in on the Lannister twins’ incestuous affair, but luckily Episode 3 has provided a new subject for speculation: The twisted seasons of Westeros. Vulture’s Margaret Lyons asks, “The big question in my head now is IS winter coming? Are we going to see it? Like … soon, please?”

Sure, Old Nan painted a pretty nasty picture of the Long Night, but not everyone is buying it.  Others are just extremely curious about the logistics. And even if the long winter DOES come, Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield is skeptical that anyone will be left to suffer through it. “Even their summer looks like a nightmare,” he writes. “Life sucks so profoundly for these people that there's not much difference between a good king and a bad king — power is just a game, and nobody expects to live long enough to see the outcome.”

• Do you think that snow season will be as bad as the Starks are expecting?
• Is Cersei raising a princely psychopath or the ‘Game of Thrones’ version of a star athlete?
• And yeah – how about that scene with Ned discovering Needle?

A NOTE ON SPOILERS: In the comments, please avoid mentioning or alluding to any events from the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ books that haven’t occurred on the television series. All the fans experiencing this story for the first time will appreciate it!