We’re going to remember this episode for a long time. Westeros – we have lift off. In a breathless hour that saw more than one scion of a great house dethroned, we now know this: Jon Snow lives, Roose Bolton dies and Game of Thrones has, with practised verve, has plunged us into a tailspin all over again.
Make no mistake, this will go down as one of the most seismic 60 minutes in the annals of the show, up there with the Red Wedding and last year’s epic White Walker battle at Hardhome.
Seeing Ramsay calmly eliminate his family was wrenchingly gruesome while, after months of speculation, Snow’s resurrection had a genuine bolt-from-the-blue quality.
The question now is: across the rest of the season, how can Game of Thrones possibly top this?
Jon Snow’s return played out like a piece of sublime fan fiction. As the internet had long suspected, the task of coaxing the Lord Commander back from the void fell to Red Witch Melisandre (Carice van Houten), thus fulfilling a script many of us had already written in our heads.
So why was Jon Snow identified with Christ? Because of his resurrection by the Lord of Light? It seemed to owe more to sorcery than spirituality. What were the makers trying to tell us?