‘Game of Thrones’ season 4, episode 2 spoilers: The return of Melisandre

When you talk about the Melisandre storyline with “Game of Thrones,” it is traditionally either thought of as very cool, very strange, or too much stop-and-go. When the character first surfaced back during the second season, we admittedly had no clue what she wanted most of the time. Then, last season, things didn’t really start to get crazy until near the end of the season when we saw poor Gendry be put through the wringer.

So where do we go from here? When the Red Woman resurfaces on Sunday night’s new episode, you’ll get to see a greater sense of how she operates in Stannis Baratheon’s universe. Just take a look at what Carice van Houten (who plays the character) had to say in a chat with The Gate:

“We start by seeing her doing a certain ritual – I can’t be more specific than that–and then we get a little peek behind the scenes of Stannis’ household. So you see Stannis and his two wives–basically, me and his own wife Selyse [Tara Fitzgerald]–and you get to enjoy the dynamics between the three of us.”

Can we let it be said how terrible we feel for Selyse? She’s not in the best shape, and also has to witness her husband sleeping around with some sort of witch-like person and spawning demon babies to kill Renly. If there was anything that would drive us even further into illness, we are pretty sure that this would be it.

Despite our reservations with the Stannis story at times, we are still intrigued to see him back on the show. If nothing else, we view it as a nice opportunity to learn what this man’s ultimate endgame is, and how he plans to make it there.

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Photo: HBO