Game of Thrones, season 8 is finally here.

After 20 months of waiting, we can finally talk about it.

The first episode aired last night and was titled Winterfell.

We didn't even know the name of this episode until after it aired.

That's how secretive the season is.

I'm EW editor at large, James Hibbard, and I'm here with

our critic extraordinaire, Darren Franich, and we're going to talk about John Snow finding out his

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Okay. So, man, we have so much to talk about. Darren, let's get your impressions first.

Because I've been yacking about this on Twitter and, you know, gushing about in the recap for

all night. What was your reaction as EW's critic to

the first episode? This was an interesting episode, James. I mean, like, because I remember you

sort of told me having seen the episode before me and most people on earth that, like, there was

the feeling of a lot of chess pieces moving together. And I did get that a little bit.

I mean, I assume that of all the six episodes, in some respects, this one might be like

the less momentous in pure plot terms.

But what I found really interesting about the premiere is that it was really constructed,

well, in two ways. First, as a kind of echo of the series premiere,

...