Winter is Coming Live chat “Maester” Bryan Forrest is a pretty talented dude. When he isn’t fielding your questions during WIC’s official Game of Thrones recap show, Bryan is an actor, stuntman and a blacksmith!

That is why we knew we were lucky to get Bryan to help out on WIC Live. Recently, we decided to start filming a short new segment called “Weapons of Westeros” where Bryan could talk a little bit about some of the weaponry used in Game of Thrones.

After the jump, check out the first edition of “Weapons of Westeros” where Bryan takes a look at the ancestral sword of House Stark.

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For those of you who like your recaps/reviews to be a bit more…animated, here are some video wrap-up and discussions, based on your own recommendations. In these posts, we will compile a collection of video reviews and recaps with varying degrees of irreverence (and length!).

Many thanks for helping sort the written recaps; your comments have been invaluable. For now, categories for videos will be Book Readers, Unsullied or a combination of the two.

SourceFed Nerd hosts discuss the shocks and surprises of episode 2. Show Watchers, Moderated by Book Reader.

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Rejoice, Tweepies! Revenge is a dish best served cold, preferably at the hands of one’s loyal cupbearer!

You know what time it is! It’s Twiiiiiitter tiiiiiime agaaaaaain! (For a taster-sized version of some of this episode’s epic tweets, check out this Twitter post from Sunday night!)

These sweet Tweets were culled from George R.R. Martin’s wildly popular episode “The Lion and the Rose.” Directed by Alex Graves, this sucker’s gonna go down as one of the better ones. At the very least on the strength of that last half hour.

So I, the amiable @Axechucker, along with my partner in crime @The_Rabbit01, greedily collected thoughts and feels from around the globe. And here we have them for you!

My all-stars for this episode: @TaraGiancaspro, @duckandcover, and @BlackGirlNerds respectively. Take a bow, ladies! (And y’all can follow ‘em on Twitter if you so desire!)

(An extra special star to any #FakeWesteros people playing Joffrey on Twitter. There was some epic Joffers stuff from them.)

No more pussyfooting around! Let’s git it awn!

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Charitybuzz is in the habit of making dreams come true while making a difference with their online charity auctions, and they’re about to make some Game of Thrones fans very happy.

Ballintoy Harbour of Northern Ireland transforms into Dragonstone for Game of Thrones Season 4

Currently up for auction, and generously donated by David Benioff, is a trip to the set of Game of Thrones Season 5 in Northern Ireland. The winning bidder will be one of the first to see the drama unfold before their eyes, and as an added bonus will get to spend one hour with Thrones co-creator David Benioff. (Plenty of time to squeeze spoilers out of him!)

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Much like the Red Wedding in season 3, the spectacular death of King Joffrey in “The Lion and the Rose” has inspired a new rash of reaction videos on the internet. Only the tone of the Purple Wedding reaction videos is decidedly different.

Here’s a compilation of fan reactions, put together by one Youtuber:

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After his stellar work on Game of Thrones Season 3, Director Alex Graves was told by the powers that be that in Season 4 “we’ll give you all the big stuff.” The big stuff started off with a bang, with his Season 4 directorial debut of The Lion and the Rose including what was sure to be one of the year’s most talked about scenes.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter Alex Graves discusses the challenges of creating a truly monumental event, the Purple Wedding.

“The Purple Wedding took six months to prepare. It was a show-wide, gigantic effort on everybody’s part — from the design of the set to the costumes to the circus performers. There was a lot of pressure I put on myself. It was a 32-page scene that was actually 18 scenes, and it involved an enormous number of the cast, who were going to hang out for five days in Croatia while we put on dwarf shows and allowed jailed birds to literally go free. We had the death, and almost more important, we had Tyrion’s humiliation in the middle of it. It was a lot for five days — especially with rain.”

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In this week’s Inside the Episode David Benioff and Dan Weiss take us behind the scenes of The Lion and the Rose. The pair talk about Stannis’ decision to go all in with Melisandre, as well as Bran getting the coming attractions of what’s in store for him once he masters his ability.

Like the episode, much of the video is dedicated to the Royal Wedding, including the rare opportunity they had to put characters together. They explain that the sequence leading up to Joffrey’s demise was designed to tell us exactly who he is, what this episode means for the structure of season 4, and give a nod to a great actor who will be missed on set, Jack Gleeson.

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Jack Gleeson was always one of those guys you’d hear great things about, but couldn’t quite imagine. He didn’t do too many interviews, or even big splashy premieres; he was always just a bit removed from the usual frenetic Game of Thrones hubbub.

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This is a selection of written recaps and reviews for the second episode of season 4, in which George R. R. Martin delivered sharp dialogue and a shocking conclusion that was easy to swallow for Sullied and Unsullied alike.

BOOK READERS

Sean T. Collins – Rolling Stone

If there’s a throughline for this episode…[it's] examining what people will endure to get what they want, or simply to survive.

James Hibberd – Entertainment Weekly

So at last we got what we wanted. But as always with Game of Thrones, we didn’t get what we wanted the exact way we wanted it.

Alyssa Rosenberg – Washington Post

Cruelty is the real theme of the episode, rather than the rather more obvious lesson that you never, ever want to go to a wedding in Westeros.

Todd VanDerWerff – A.V. Club

A; Joffrey’s wedding, known to book fans as the Purple Wedding (even though George R.R. Martin never calls it that in A Storm Of Swords), is the closest thing the Song Of Ice And Fire series has to a karmic balancing of the scales by this point in its run.

Charlie Jane Anders – io9

Don’t get too excited — the huge event at the end of last night’s outing changes nothing. Because the episode goes out of its way to show that we’ve only dealt with a symptom, not the disease.

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The Purple Wedding went down last night on the latest episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This week’s episode was all about the wedding of King Joffrey and Lady Margery Tyrell. There was a lot of action and we talk about it all on this week’s episode of Winter is Coming Live.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch “The Lion and the Rose” yet, definitely don’t watch this video as it is spoilerific.

If you did and want to check out the conversation, plus some behind the scenes photos from this week’s show, proceed.

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Episode 210 – The Purple Wedding

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Game of Owns returns to the studio, moments after the earthshaking events of the Purple Wedding. So far, Game of Thrones Season 4 does not disappoint, with a second episode worthy of the shock and awe to follow.

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A slightly more detailed number will be out tomorrow thanks to TV by the Numbers and their regular weekly updates, but the word is already out in the realm of Entertainment Weekly that the second episode, The Lion and the Rose, was seen by 6.3 million people. The second highest number after last week’s record. With only one repeat (the premiere had two), the total for the night was 8 million, but 2 per cent off last week.

That is in line with the previous three seasons where the high premiere number was largely retained in the following weeks, unlike with many other shows. I am glad the viewership stays so high (I would take anything above six million, personally), and can only look forward to a rise next week when people flock to their screens to witness the aftermath of this week’s momentous episode.

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