In the ramp up to the Game of Thrones Season 5 premiere on April 12, Geekly Inc is doing character-centered recaps as well as a short recap of Season 4.

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Jon Snow

At the end of Season 3, Jon gets shot by his lady love, Ygritte, but makes it back to Castle Black.  The first time we see Jon in Season 4, he has survived and seems to have recovered from his injuries, (but what about his broken heart??).  He has learned about about Robb’s death and when Sam comes to take him to testify before a panel of sworn brothers, Jon tells Sam that he wanted to hate Robb because he got more of their father’s affection and he was better at everything, even getting girls; but he just couldn’t hate Robb *sob*.  In front of the panel of brothers that includes Maester Aemon, Alliser Thorne, and Janos Slynt, Jon admits to everything he has done – killing Qhorin, living with the wildings, and wifeing up Ygritte.  Obviously, Thorne and Slynt are dicks to him but Aemon believes him, which leads to Jon being spared.

Jon wants to attack Craster’s Keep because of the mutineers who killed the Old Bear are camping there – Grenn and Edd escaped and made it back to Castle Black.  While training the new recruits, he meets Locke, who we know to be Roose Bolton’s man sent to infiltrate Castle Black.  Thorne finally gives his permission to go attack Craster’s Keep but only with volunteers.  Dick.

They attack Craster’s Keep at night and Jon goes up against Karl, the asshole who drinks from a skull.  They’re going toe to toe and it seems as though Karl-stupid-face has the upper hand, but one of Craster’s daughters stabs him in the back.  When Karl-dumb-nut turns to deal with her, Jon jams Longclaw through Karl’s head and out of his mouth.  HUZZAH.  Jon offers Craster’s daughters a place at Castle Black but they tell him “bro, after what all your other brothers did, thanks but no thanks” and burn the Keep to the ground.  Jon finds Locke dead in a terrible way and he’s like “who did dis??” Ghost pops up and Jon’s like “yay pupppppy”.  He’s a good direwolf, yes he is. Yes he is.  But, when they get back to Castle Black, Thorne is not happy (obvi) and tells Jon to lock Ghost up.  Dick.  Since Mance is close, Jon tells his peeps that they should seal the tunnel instead of defending it because it will not hold up against Mance’s giants.  Of course, Thorne doesn’t listen to Jon.  Dick.

How about when Sam asks Jon about the sex stuff?  “We about to die mayb.  Plz tell me abt when you had sexy times with red hair lady.”

Then, they get attacked by Mance’s army AND Tormund’s gang.  Thorne is like “oh crap…should’ve listened to you…too late.”  He goes to defend the keep, leaving Janos Slynt in charge on top of the wall.  He quickly breaks down; Grenn, quick on his feet, tells Slynt that Alliser needs him in the keep, so Slynt leaves.  Jon takes over command on the Wall.

How do I even describe the battle on the Wall?  The “Watchers of the Wall” are raining down arrows at the wildlings.  The wildlings keep coming.  There are Giants.  There are Giants firing giant fire arrows.  There is a Giant lifting the gate single-handedly.  Jon sends Grenn and some other brothers to hold the tunnel below (which he knows is probably a death sentence).  Sam comes up to the wall to ask for more men to defend the castle.  Jon goes to help and asks Sam to release Ghost.  Jon kills a couple of wildlings and then comes face to face with Styr, who bests Jon repeatedly – and it looks like it hurts.  Jon finally manages to spit blood on Styr and distract him long enough to whack him in the skull with a hammer.  As Styr is dying, Jon turns around to see Ygritte aiming an arrow at him.

There is a second when Ygritte hesitates (because its her boo, y’all) and its a second too long because she gets shot with an arrow by Olly (an orphan boy from a village the wildlings attacked).  As she is dying in his arms, she tells him that they should’ve never left their cave and its so sad.  I still can’t.  The wilding army is forced to retreat and the Night’s Watch takes a wounded Tormund as prisoner.  Later, Tormund tells Jon that Ygritte truly loved him and Jon takes her body into the woods and burns it. *waaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllll*.

Jon wants to go assassinate Mance (Sam is like “you crazy brah”).  While making his way through the tunnel, he sees that Grenn died stopping the Giant from getting through *sob*.  Jon makes it to Mance’s camp and tells him he’s there to negotiate with Mance but Mance quickly deduces that Jon is there to assassinate him. Before he can do more, they hear war horns and are surrounded by the army of Stannis Baratheon, who slaughter a lot of the wildlings.  Jon introduces himself and advises Stannis to arrest Mance and burn the bodies of the dead – Stannis agrees.

Sansa Stark

Sansa is super sad about the deaths of Robb and Catelyn.  Really, after all that has happened to her and her family, it’s no surprise that she is depressed and doesn’t want to eat.  Tyrion tries to console her but to no avail.  Sansa goes to the godswood, not to pray, but to be by herself – she is surrounded by Lannisters and Tyrells of course, so she values time by herself to mourn her family.  She is also being pursued by Dontos Hollard; the knight that she saved from Joffrey’s cruelty in season 3.  Dontos thanks her for saving his life and gives her a necklace that he says once belonged to his mother.  Sansa initially turns his offer down but finally gives in.

Everyone gathers for the breakfast before Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding, where Joffrey is being terrible as usual; talking about how he will be reminded of Ned’s beheading every time he uses his new sword, Widow’s Wail, gifted to him by Tywin.  At the same feast, Olenna offers her condolences to Sansa and invites her to visit Highgarden.  There are more terribleness like dwarves reenacting the War of the Five Kings, where the one playing Robb is wearing a wolf’s head and it upsets Sansa even more.  Joffrey makes Tyrion is cup-bearer to humiliate him and then Sansa and Tyrion try to leave, but Joffrey ain’t having it.  Tyrion brings the cup to Joffrey again and Joffrey drinks from the cup, not knowing that Olenna has poisoned the wine with a stone taken from Sansa’s necklace.  As Joffrey is dying, Dontos appears again – this time telling Sansa to GTFO and she does.

Dontos takes Sansa to a ship – Petyr Baelish’s ship – and Petyr has Dontos promptly murkt.  He tries to deny his involvement with the Purple Wedding but then tells her everything.  And here starts the Petyr-is-super-creepy-towards-Sansa arc.

They eventually make it to the Eyrie, where Sansa pretends to be Petyr’s niece to disguise herself, but Lysa knows who she really is even though Sansa introduces herself to Lysa as Alayne.   Later, Lysa is talking to Sansa over some lemon cakes (Sansa’s favourite) and, lo and behold, she turns into crazy Lysa – accusing Sansa of sexing up Petyr and trying to steal him away from Lysa.  After Sansa cries and tells Lysa that Petyr says Sansa is a stupid little girl who is a terrible liar, Lysa goes back to being nice and saying that Sansa will marry her cousin, Robin, once Tyrion is executed.  Sweet Robin.  Sweet Robin who messes up the Winterfell replica Sansa creates in the snow.

Sansa later questions Petyr why he had Joffrey killed to which he claims to have done it for Catelyn – and then kisses Sansa on the lips.  Creep Alert.  Lysa witnesses the kiss.  Crazy Alert.  She summons Sansa to the room with the Moon Door, threatens Sansa with death, and nearly pushes her out of the Moon Door.  Petyr intervenes and tells Lysa that there was only ever one person he loved, which seems to quell Lysa as she expects him to mean her.  But instead, he says “your sister” and pushing her out of the Moon Door.  BYE FELICIA.

There’s an “investigation” about Lysa’s death and Sansa (or should I say Alayne) is called to testify before Lord Royce, Lady Waynwood, and Ser Corbray.  She tells them who she really is, how she was abused by the Lannisters, and how bat-shit-crazy her aunt was.  Whilst crying, she bends the truth in telling them that Lysa saw Petyr kiss Sansa on her cheek and threw herself out of the Moon Door in a jealous fit.  The “investigation” panel believe her.  SHE IS GETTING BETTER AT LYING.  Later, she comes down from her room wearing a feathered black dress – signifying the change in her.

Arya Stark

Since the Hound can’t take Arya to her mom and brother, he has decided to take her to her aunt, Lysa, in the Eyrie.  On their way to the Eyrie, they stop at a tavern and guess who is there?  F-ing Polliver and crew (he killed Lommy green hands) and he has Needle – Arya is like “I gotsa get that” but, at the same time, she is also worried that he will recognize her.  Polliver instead recognizes the Hound and chats him up which eventually turns violent (the Hound is going to eat all the chickens).  Arya kills Polliver in the same way he killed Lommie – slowly sticking needle through his neck.  She can check off the first name off her kill list.

They continue on the road and come across a farmer and his daughter who give them food and water, after Arya tells them that the Hound fought for the Tullys.  However, the next morning, Arya finds that the Hound has assaulted the farmer and taken his silver, which makes her supes angry.  Later, by campfire, she recites her kill list as the Hound is trying to go to sleep.  She tells him that the list is the name of all the people she’s going to kill, to which he says they could both cross off a name if his brother was there.  When she asks him what he would do to the Mountain if he was there, he tells her to basically shut up and to go to sleep.  She finishes the list by saying the Hound’s name.  The next morning, she is practicing her water dancing and the Hound makes fun of it and Syrio Forel (HOW RUDE).  He lets Arya have a go at him, promptly knocks her down, and tells her to not practice lessons learned from dead people but to take lessons from the ones who are still alive…like the people on her list.

Then we cross paths again with Biter and Rorge.  Wonderful.  Biter takes a big bite out of the Hound’s neck – the Hound snaps his neck.  There’s an almost heartwarming moment where Rorge recognizes Arya and the Hound asks Arya if Rorge is on her list.  When she says no because she doesn’t know his name, the Hound asks Rorge for his name, which Rorge gives, and Arya stabs him.  Awww, right? Right? RIGHT?

Arya wants to cauterize the wound but the Hound is all “I am tough (but really scared of fire).  I no need that bullsh*t”.  Suit yourself.  We will see how that goes, eh? He does allow her to clean it up and stitch it up.  Ouch.

They keep making their way to the Eyrie and when they reach the Bloody Gate, they are informed of Lysa’s death, to which the Hound reacts with shock and Arya reacts with a fit of laughter.  Such a weird reaction but so awesome.

When they leave the Eyrie, they run across Brienne and Podrick “Sex God” Payne – Brienne doesn’t realize who Arya is until Pod recognizes the Hound.  Brienne and the Hound each want to take Arya, which results in a bad ass duel, which Brienne eventually wins.  Arya is like “ummm I don’t want to go with either of you” so she hides from Brienne until she and Pod leave.  She goes to see the injured Hound, who begs her to kill him.  She seems unwilling so he says a bunch of stuff that he thinks will anger her enough to kill him – but she takes his money and leaves him.

The last we see of Arya: she sees men readying a ship for departure.  She wants to go to the Wall but the ship captain tells her that he is leaving for Braavos.  She shows him the iron coin that Jaqen H’hgar gave her and says “valar morghulis”, to which he replies “valar dohaeris”, offers her a cabin and off Arya sails for Braavos.

Bran Stark

Bran, Jojen, Meera, and Hodor are just hanging out beyond the Wall.  Bran can now warg into Summer whenever he wants and he’s doing it so much now that they have to warn him about the dangers of staying in the wolf too long – he will stay permanently and lose his human senses.  He wargs with a Heart tree that Summer finds while they are traveling and he has a vision (a different Heart tree, a three eyed raven in the tombs of Winterfell, his father,  White walkers and wights, flight of ravens, the snowy Iron Throne sitting empty, Bran falling from the tower, a dragon flying over King’s Landing, and the same Heart tree on a hill again) with a voice telling him to “look for me beneath the tree, north”, which tells him where to go.

On their travels, they stop near Craster’s Keep to rest, where they hear faint cries so Bran wargs into Summer and finds Ghost, but Summer is also caught in a trap.  When they go to rescue Summer and Ghost, they are captured by the asshole, Karl.  Those damn mutineers are being real dicks to the kids and Hodor, so Bran tells them who he really is, in hopes that they will stop being dicks.  They are all being held in a tent, which Karl later visits with the intention of raping Meera.  In order to get him to stop, Bran tells him that he has the sight, which Karl shrugs off.  At that time, Jon and his buddies attack the Keep.  Locke, who joined the Night’s Watch on Roose’s command to find Bran, goes searching for Bran, finds him, and tries to take off.  But Bran is like F this and wargs into Hodor.  He gets Hodor to get out of his binds, lifts Locke off his feet, and breaks his neck something terrible.  Bran sees Jon and tries to crawl to him but Jojen “reunion stopper” Reed reminds him that Jon will never let Bran go off to find the Three Eyed Raven, so they leave.  SO DAMN CLOSE.

The kids and Hodor make their way to the weirwood tree that Bran saw in his vision but, like in any good video game, there is an obstacle they have to overcome first!  This time it is an army of wights and boy do they wreak havoc.  One stabs Jojen something awful.  Meera tries to save him but Jojen tells her to leave.  A Child of the Forest comes to the rescue and throws a hand grenade (okay its not a hand grenade but kind of seemed like it) on to Jojen’s body, which burns his body and deflects the wights long enough for the other 3 to escape.  She leads the 3 deep into the cave where the Three Eyed Raven resides – he is an old man whose body has become fused with the tree.  He tries to console (?) Meera by telling her that Jojen had known what his end would be ever since they started on their journey and that he’s been watching them all through their whole lives with “a thousand eyes and one”.  He tells Bran that Bran has finally come but the hour is late.  When Bran starts protesting saying he didn’t want anyone to die, the Raven tells him that Jojen died so that Bran could find what he has lost.

Bran asks the Raven if he will help Bran walk again, to which the Raven replies “you’ll never walk again…but you will fly.”

Rickon Stark – Off being wild somewhere with Osha and Shaggydog.

Eddard Stark – Dead

Catelyn Stark – Dead

Robb Stark – Dead

Next recap: The Lannisters