Game of Thrones Season 8 full HD

In the world of Game of Thrones, where seasons last years, a mysterious magical threat is rising in the North. But with a dragon queen looking to reclaim her throne and a country too focused on infighting to notice the dangers around them, the promise that winter is coming can prove to be deadly. This is Game of Thrones in 5 minutes, sort of. Beware, spoilers are coming!

This is a world where magic used to exist, but at the outset of Season 1, it's politics that rule the continent of Westeros, and the concept of magic isn't something that many people still believe in. The series opens with undead creatures known as the White Walkers killing men, so the audience knows there are obviously more supernatural forces at work here. Historically, House Targaryen and their dragons ruled Westeros, but a decade and a half before the events of Season 1, a usurper named Robert Baratheon overthrew King Aerys II Targaryen and took control of Westeros's Iron Throne. Only two Targaryens escaped, but more on them in a bit. This is the political backdrop from which we pick up in Season 1.

The show opens with Robert, his wife Cersei Lannister, and their family traveling to Winterfell to visit the home of Robert's close friend and old war buddy, Eddard Stark, or as we affectionately call him, Ned. Robert asks Ned to be his Hand of the King after the death of the former Hand, Jon Arryn. Ned agrees, but only after hearing that the Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn and that Robert might be next. When Ned's son Bran catches Cersei and her twin brother Jaime having sex, Jaime Lannister throws the boy out the window, hoping to kill him. Though no one knows the Lannisters were behind Bran's fall, even he can't remember. This move incites the series-long political rivalry between the Starks and the Lannisters. To add salt to the wound, we later learn that the Lannisters weren't even behind Jon Arryn's death.

Ned brings his daughters, the ladylike Sansa and the tiny butt-kicker Arya, with him to King's Landing. His heir, Robb, stays behind to rule Winterfell with Catelyn, the now-paralyzed Bran, and the youngest Stark, Rickon. But Ned's arrival in King's Landing is a rude awakening. Robert's a terrible king and has run Westeros into major debt. He’s also been cheating on his wife like crazy and has a bunch of illegitimate heirs, which leads Ned to the revelation that Cersei's three children are actually her kids by her brother Jaime, not with the king. Gross!

Robert dies soon after their return to King's Landing, thanks to Cersei's devious machinations, and her cruel son Joffrey becomes king. Ned also gets the axe—literally—early on in the series after not being a very good player at the Game of Thrones. Lesson: don't piss off Cersei Lannister. Westeros quickly spirals into chaos when rumors of King Joffrey's questionable claim to the throne spread. Various forces, including the Starks, rise up against the crown. The good Tyrion Lannister does his best to hold the country together, but when his family repeatedly betrays him, he finally burns ties with them, kills his father, and departs Westeros a fugitive.

Luckily, he's one of the few people who realizes that the best heir to the Iron Throne is raising power across the Narrow Sea. Remember those two missing Targaryen children? They were raised in secret by Targaryen loyalists, and the younger, Daenerys, is wed to a Dothraki warlord in the hopes that he'll help her raise an army to reclaim Westeros. As one of their wedding gifts, she's given three seemingly ornamental dragon eggs. Both her brother and her husband die, but Daenerys earns herself quite a following when she walks into her husband's funeral pyre with those dragon eggs and emerges unscathed with three baby dragons.

Over the seasons, the Mother of Dragons raises an army and conquers several slave cities in the East. Daenerys's season-long journey is basically a rehearsal for when she finally sails west to reclaim Westeros. She even lucks out in Season 5 by getting the best possible political adviser in the form of Tyrion Lannister. She just won't be conquering a very healthy or happy country, as war tears Westeros apart.

We learn through the eyes of Ned Stark's bastard, Jon Snow, that a supernatural threat is brewing to the North. Back when Ned headed south, he allowed Jon to pledge his life to protecting the realm as a member of the Night's Watch, the guardians of a giant wall that separates Westeros from the wilds to the North. Jon ascends the ranks in the Night's Watch to Lord Commander, even venturing north of the wall, where he witnesses the terror of the White Walkers and their leader, the Night King, firsthand.

Though the Night's Watch's primary purpose is to defend against the wildlings who live north of the wall, Jon begins to realize that they all must band together to fend off the White Walkers and their army of the undead. But when that prompts him to ally with the wildlings and allow them safe passage into Westeros, his own men revolt and assassinate him.

Westeros doesn't fare much better than Jon. Like dominoes, all of the kings vying for the Iron Throne die. The Lannister versus Stark political rivalry escalates when the Lannisters plot the betrayal and murder of Robb Stark and his family at the Red Wedding, the single most gut-wrenching moment in all of Game of Thrones. They lose their home of Winterfell in the process. The Lannisters don't fare much better, with all of Cersei's children also dying off. Though she’s lost pretty much everything, she does end up on the Iron Throne.

The surviving Starks are scattered to the wind. Bran travels north of the wall to learn magical secrets from the Three-Eyed Raven, Arya trains to be an assassin in Braavos, and Sansa gets stuck in two unhappy, progressively more terrible marriages before finally getting a dark makeover and taking matters into her own hands. As for Rickon, well, he never really was that important.

There is some good news for the Starks: Jon lucks out and gets resurrected by powerful new magic, thus severing his duty to the Night's Watch. Now able to leave the wall, Jon reunites with Sansa, takes back Winterfell, and is declared King in the North. It's shaping up to be a full-blown Stark reunion too, as Bran, stacked with magical knowledge, and Arya, newly back in Westeros, seem to be heading towards Winterfell as well.

Interestingly, Game of Thrones is starting to suggest that Jon's not actually Ned's bastard but rather the secret son of Ned's younger sister Lyanna. The implications of that have yet to be explored. Across the Narrow Sea, Dany and her dragons have grown in power, and she’s becoming a conqueror just like her Targaryen ancestors. With Tyrion now by her side and an army and fleet behind her, she sets sail to claim the Iron Throne.

In the finale of Season 6, awaiting her is Cersei Lannister, with her claws sunk deep into the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, north of the wall, the White Walkers are finally on the brink of invading. Who will ultimately claim the Iron Throne, and will it even matter if the threat in the North isn't dealt with? This answer, and presumably more, will hopefully be resolved when winter arrives in Season 7. For more on Game of Thrones, make sure to watch our "Winter is Here" trailer breakdown, plus find out why Season 8 might not premiere until 2019.