GoT S5 E1 "The Wars to Come"

Great premiere episode. I loved the opening with the prophecy from Maggie the Frog. Tyrion going off to meet Dany is great. I like the addition of Varys to the storyline (that's a change from the books). I really liked the Wall scenes. I thought Jon handled himself well with Stannis, which he should. I loved his defiance at the end by putting Mance out of his misery. Great start!

This was a decent season opener. The important plots have been picked up and it made appetite for more.
Though it was a "quiet" ep for most of its run, its scenes and dialogues were (as usual for GoT) set up well and never got boring.
Don't see the point of Stannis having Mance killed. I think this is not the way to win the "minds and hearts" of the Wildlings, not to speak make them reliable allies in the upcoming war. On the other hand, maybe Mance could have been smarter by trying to win some time for maybe another chance to get away with his folks?
The prospect of Tyrion meeting Dany is promising. Varys is absolutely right, Tyrion will not sit on the Iron Throne, but he probably is the perfect man to support Dany, who basically has it in her heart to rule in a more just and less cruel way. In this context I don't like how that guy (don't remember his name, the one who's her bed toy) is getting in her head by selling it as just telling her the truth.
Hm, I somehow hope, Dany will figure out to control the dragons (one of them is missing?) at least to some degree again. If they turned completely into uncontrollable monsters, it would ruin the whole "mother of the dragons" thing for me.
BTW, is it only me, or was young Cersei already an ass ... ;-)

Yeah young Cersei is a bitch. I think she will control the dragons, they are going to need them to stop the White Walkers, the true threat to the world. Dany really needs to let the dragons out so they will grow to full size. Drogon will dwarf them because he has free reign to grow. Mance was a fool for not bending the knee, Stannis made him a great offer, land and citizenship for service. I think the next Wilding in charge will accept his deal.

Also, in the prophecy in the beginning with young Cersei, I don't think they younger queen who replaces her is going to be Margery, I think it will be Dany.

Predictably, Game of Thrones crushed it in the ratings this past Sunday. “The Wars to Come,” the premiere episode, pulled in nearly 8 million viewers, scoring a 4.2 rating among adults 18-49. Those are the highest numbers the show has ever gotten for a premiere—Season 4’s premiere was watched by 6.64 million people. In fact, those are the highest numbers the show has ever seen. Game of Thrones has been watched by more and more people each year, and so far, Season 5 is keeping this trend going.

This doesn’t even count all the fans who pirated “The Wars to Come” ahead of the premiere, assuming those people didn’t double-dip, which is definitely possible. Even with that handicap, Game of Thrones still outpaced it’s nearest competition (fellow HBO show Silicon Valley, which pulled in around 2.1 million viewers) by a decent margin. Episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Family Guy took third and fourth place, respectively.

In each of the past seasons, viewership dipped slightly after the premiere, and then grew steadily before finishing stronger than it started, often with a few peaks and valleys along the way. For example, even though last year’s finale pulled in more viewers than its premiere, the highest-rated episode of all was “The Mountain and the Viper,” probably because word of head-squishing travels fast. Still, the show follows a pretty clear pattern we can expect to recur this year. These number are already very impressive for a cable show, and if the pattern continues over the course of the show’s seven (or so) seasons, they could get downright spooky.