‘Game of Thrones’ season 4, episode 1 video: Emilia Clarke leads the way

In just over 24 hours from the time in which we are writing this, the time for waiting will be over, and “Game of Thrones” season 4 will finally be upon us. Prepare your finest ales … or at least get a bucket of popcorn! There’s going to be quite a bit of story crammed in to a single hour, if the promo below is any indication.

The video starts with Danaerys hoping to solve her latest problem regarding her army, which is something we’d love to see explored more. We get it that dragons are awesome and Dany is marketed like the Daryl Dixon of this show, but like with Daryl, the character moments are just as interesting as the more action-oriented ones. (The dragons are her version of the crossbow.)

There are two other moments in this promo that are to us particularly worth noting:

1. Getting the chance to see the arrival of Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) to King’s Landing, with a reminder that the Lannisters have another family to deal with this season.

2. Jaime Lannister struggling with the fact that he is now what he at one point feared most: Disabled in the eyes of the public. Now that he is back in King’s Landing, he really starts to realize the implications of losing a hand. This could be devastating for him, but given how awesome an actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is, we have all the confidence in the world that these scenes will turn out amazing. (Lena Headey recently talked about what Cercei will think about this.)

The one thing to overall remember when watching this episode, though, is that “Game of Thrones” is a series with a reputation for starting off slow. The first episode is traditionally all about creating the stage in which the characters will work and play for the nine moving forward. After watching the first hour, you will automatically want the second.

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Photo: HBO