When people think about Game of Thrones, chances are they're thinking about the dragons. The later seasons of the HBO series were all about Daenerys Targaryen's three fire-breathing dragons, and the ongoing spinoff House of the Dragon has plenty of draconic action, too. Even when Dany wasn't going all "dracarys," late-era Game of Thrones was often about spectacle — the biggest battle or the biggest twist (not to mention the biggest budget and the most CGI). That's not how Game of Thrones began, though. On a Sunday night 15 years ago, the most epic fantasy series announced itself with another genre: horror.
The first episode of Game of Thrones, "Winter Is Coming," premiered on April 17, 2011, and it begins much the same way that the first book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series does. It's a cold open (literally), as three members of what we'll later learn are the Night's Watch venture beyond the relative safety of the Wall. Will, the youngest, stumbles upon a grotesque arrangement of chopped-up icy body parts and the frozen corpse of a child pinned to a tree. He runs back to tell his superior officer, who dismisses his fear. It's only when they return to the site that the White Walkers, blue eyed ghouls who we see only fleetingly, emerge to cut down Will's compatriots and command the dead to rise — including that little girl. The scene ends with Will surrounded as it slowly, ominously fades to black.
