Just a few hours until the first episode of season 6 of Game of Thrones. Just over a week since I finished rewatching season five on Blu-Ray at the rate of two episodes on Fridays. Rewatching S5 on Blu-Ray I realised that it was better paced and plotted than I had realised on originally watching the broadcast. Another show that benefits from binge-watching. Now that the show is (almost) completely past the published books (although I’m sure the show-runners are well-acquainted with the unpublished material) it’s hard to predict what might be in the first episode (beyond the unavoidable spoilers in trailers and such).
It seems the question of whether Jon Snow lives again might not be answered in the first episode either way, but if so it will need to be addressed by the second episode as he is too important a character to be in limbo for much of the season.
Which of the many characters appear in the first episode and which are left to be visited in episode two is also hard to guess. Now that many of the characters are beginning to meet up in larger groupings it is possible that all the important locales could be visited in a single episode. Except that new characters, and previous characters we haven’t seen for a while, are being (re)introduced so the scattering continues.
Since it has been publicised that the show hits the ground running this season rather than spending an episode or two re-establishing things it is also possible that fairly major plot developments and incidents could happen as early as episode one or two rather than further in to the season.