‘Game of Thrones’ season 4, episode 5 reaction: Director on Littlefinger – Jon Arryn shocker

“Game of Thrones” did some intriguing on Sunday’s episode: The had a major piece of important information, but they chose to mask it in the early part of the episode rather than emphasize it and put it a little later on. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

What we are referring to here is the big reveal that Littlefinger is the responsible party for the death of Jon Arryn, who was one point hand of the king. This death led to Ned Stark getting the position, which of course set in motion every other event moving into the eventual placement now of Tommen as ruler, and Littlefinger in the Eyrie married to Lysa Tully.

Realizing that all of this was going on in these early scenes tonight required a great deal of viewer loyalty, and also memory of every thing that transpired. This was obviously easier for book readers than it was for those who only watch the show, but speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, episode director Michelle MacLaren made it clear that she felt confident that viewers would be able to understand what was happening without being given baby steps to get from point A to point B.

“In these highly serialized shows, you have to trust and hope your audience is following along. Audiences are really, really smart and you want to give them some credit for being invested in the storyline, and not throwing everything out really easily for people. There are these moments when you go ‘wait, what did they say? Oh! That’s because in season one this happened and in season two this happened.'”

For diehard fans, we imagine this philosophy was appreciated; however, for everyone else we can imagine it taking a minute or two to remember everything.

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Photo: HBO