What We Learned From Game Of Thrones Season 7, Episode 1

*Spoilers ahead, obviously.*

Not even five minutes had passed in the Season Seven premiere and about 40 people were already vomiting blood—having been poisoned by Arya Stark disguised as Walder Frey, the man whose throat she slit at the end of Season Six. Game of Thrones is back on its bullshit! Returning after an excruciatingly long gap, Game of Thrones's Season Seven premiere was a night of maps: Jon and Sansa draw out the map for loyalty in the north to stand against the White Walker army, Cersei and Jaime analyse a map of Westros that reveals the Lannisters surrounded by enemies, Sam finds the map toward dragonglass and the key to victory, and Daenerys Targaryen lands in her family's ancestral home and finds the map of a war that Stannis Baratheon left behind.

The first six seasons of Game of Thrones were the drawing of a great map, and now, with the borders clear, and the lines defined, our characters are moving toward the great battle, like the figurines on the carved Westeros in Dragonstone.

So, let's get the most important thing out of the way immediately: Yes, that was Ed Sheeran. Yes, his is a cameo you'll never get out of your head. And yes, I 100 percent believe his publicist made him ask Arya if she was old enough to drink before handing her the wine. Even though this is Westeros, where it's encouraged for children to drink, they can't let a show about sex and murder ruin Sheeran's good-boy image!

Besides that whole Sheeran thing, this premiere of Game of Thrones absolutely delivered on what the show had been promising for the long months between seasons. Though there are fewer episodes this season, the actors have promised they'll have more screen time. And that was largely evident in this first episode. We had plenty of time with everyone, including Pod, who is still a very sweet and good lad. While past seasons would dedicate entire episodes to one or two characters, this premiere caught us up with just about everyone. Solidly paced and wasting no time, the episode provided an hour of necessary exposition, without making it feel like we were getting Thronesplained the entire episode.

We spent the most time, surprisingly, watching resident neck beard Samwell Tarly as he cleaned bedpans for his shitty new job training as a Maester in the Citadel. While the montages at the diarrhea factory probably spoiled everyone's takeout dinner, Sam actually ended up being kind of useful! In an extremely Harry Potter narrative, Sam needed to get into the adult books in the library's restricted section. Unfortunately, the old, diarrhea-afflicted dudes in the Citadel aren't too concerned with the army of undead monsters marching to destroy humanity. But since Sam is the most rebellious neck beard in the place, he looked at the book anyway (which wasn't that hard to do?) and found that Daenerys' ancestral home of Dragonstone is conveniently located on a mine of dragonglass. While whoever titled these things gets minus 1,000 points for creativity, the good news is the dragonglass is one of the few things that can kill White Walkers. Also, Jorah Mormont is in some sort of isolation chamber at the Citadel, where his unfortunate case of greyscale is looking pretty bad.

Thankfully, Daenerys just landed in Dragonstone, where she just kind of walked in through the front door of an abandoned stronghold like it's a Blockbuster video store in 2005. At least it made for a powerful scene: Daenerys kneels on the beach, finally feeling the soil of her home after living a lifetime in exile.

Cersei and Jaime plot how they're going to survive now that they've essentially pissed off just about everyone after murdering a church full of people and taking the Iron Throne. It doesn't look too good for them, although Cersei has called in Euron Greyjoy (supposedly this season's villain) to help. What's certainly clear is thatevery character went shopping at the local Westeros Hot Topic during a back-to-school sale—everyon's in a lot of tight, black, studded leather. (Euron in particular looks like he's in a Danish punk band.)

"Here I am with a thousand ships and two good hands," Euron tells Cersei, throwing some mad shade at Jaime. But Euron is kind of an asshole, and Cersei turns down his offer of half the Iron Fleet (Theon and Yara took the rest of the boats to Daenerys). He promises to return with a gift, and while fans speculate it could be dragons of his own, it's still unclear what he's talking about at this point. Now, with no children and no clear goal to fight for other than basic survival, Cersei's character has become more explosive than ever—pun absolutely intended. A lot of fans have already started describing her as the "mad queen," as Cersei is completely unstable after seeing all of her kids die horrible deaths.

After wandering through the north and hanging out in a tree—and having visions, getting poor Hodor's mind destroyed, seeing his wolf killed, and being just generally creepy—Bran has finally arrived at Castle Black. Further south at Winterfell, tension beings to grow between Sansa and Jon. He's been named King in the North, but Sansa—who has learned a thing or two from Cersei (which is both a good and bad thing)—wants Jon to consider her opinion. Which he should! And he should also give the badass Lyanna Mormont about three to five minutes at every cold north meeting to give a speech. The last thing anyone really needs is Jon and Sansa bickering among themselves, but Littlefinger, who remains a total creep, continues to whisper into Sansa's ear in an attempt to dismantle her relationship with her half-brother (even though none of them know that Jon is actually Sansa's cousin).

But the best moment in this premiere episode came, rather unexpectedly, from the Hound. Sandor Clegane is traveling around with Beric Dondarrion, who has been resurrected by Thoros, the Myrish hipster red priest. They're followers of The Lord of Light, the fire god that Melisandre also worships. The Hound, however—having been tortured as a child by his brother, the Mountain, and forced to protect that little shit Joffrey—is the ultimate cynic. He's a non-believer in anything, neither a hero nor villain—yet we've seen him reluctantly reveal his soul in a few beautiful moments throughout this series. In the premiere, the duo discover two dead bodies in an abandoned cottage—a dead adult and a child whom the Hound robbed back in season four. In the dead of night, he sneaks out alone to dig them a grave in the snow. It's a beautiful scene, one in which depicts the Hound's low-key conversion into a believer—and it also provided us with the funniest line in the episode. "You think you're fooling anyone with that topknot?" the Hound asks Thoros, proving that man buns are as lame in Westeros as they are everywhere else.

While it was an episode short on action, it was absolutely effective in drawing the map for the precious few episodes that remain. The pieces are all in place, and as Daenerys asked Tyrion in the episode's closing moments, "Shall we begin?"

Yes, we shall.