That time of year (slightly later this time around) is upon us again. Game of Thrones is back, for a seventh season of blood, guts, violence, nudity and dragons. Greg D Smith reminds us all of where the major players in this extended fantasy drama were when we last left Westeros.

Another year, another series of Game of Thrones is upon us. It’s easy to forget in the intervening year or so since Season 6 ended, just how much was crammed into those ten episodes. The usual intrigue and hyper-violence, sure, but also some of the most jaw-dropping scenes in a series that has been surprising us all for some time.

Top billing of course had to go to the penultimate episode, Battle of the Bastards, in which Jon Snow literally attempted to take on an army single-handed. Claustrophobic, urgent, and genuinely engaging, this was an extended battle scene of the scope and spectacle usually only seen in the average Hollywood blockbuster. It’s a truism gone stale that TV is the new movies these days, but nowhere is that more apparent than in this one episode. By the end, as Sansa walked away with a sly grin to the savage background noise of her former husband/rapist being torn to shreds by his own dogs, I found myself shaken and slightly out of breath with all the action I’d just witnessed.

Of course by tradition, the penultimate episode of a season of Thrones would be the big, action-packed denouement, followed by an episode in which ends were tidied away, seeds sown for next time and generally everything proceeded calmly. So when episode ten of Season 6 opened with the utter annihilation by wildfire of the Sept of Baelor, killing off a whole slew of established characters as Cersei looked on, it felt like a very real jolt to the system. That the episode maintained that pace throughout, with various massive events culminating in the final truth about the identity of Jon Snow himself felt simultaneously like the greatest gift and the cruellest agony, the show ending at a point where momentum had built and so many questions needed to be answered.

Elsewhere, we got our answers, and perhaps the cruellest of all was the revelation of exactly where Hodor’s name had come from, and the meaning beneath it. Bran’s power is now akin to actual time travel, and having become the Three-Eyed Raven, it’s difficult to think he won’t play a pivotal part in the war to come. Benjen Stark is some sort of half-White Walker hybrid, fighting on the side of good but for how long?

Jon Snow stands as King of the North, reunited with his sister Sansa. But lurking ever-present in the shadows is Littlefinger, his agenda as unknowable as ever, his smile sinister and discomfiting. Does he truly love Sansa, or simply see her as a means to his ends, whatever they may be? Will Sansa allow herself to be manipulated, or has she truly learned the cruel lessons of her existence to date?

Arya Stark has made a gruesome start to ticking off the names on her list, but where will she go next, and should she ever find her way back to her living family members, will they even recognise/ welcome her?

The Hound is back to his murderous, hard-drinking ways, but will his alliance with the Brotherhood without Banners truly bring redemption to the character? Will he ever face the horrifying undead creature that his brother the Mountain has become, and if so, what will that look like?

And finally, crossing the sea after what feels like the longest build-up ever, Daenerys Targaryen is on track to bring her own brand of fearsome war to the Seven Kingdoms. With the fleets of the Greyjoys transporting the armies of the Unsullied and the Dothraki, backed by three fully grown dragons, it’s difficult to imagine that she will face much conventional opposition, though it’s equally difficult to imagine Cersei giving up the throne which has cost her so much to achieve already easily.

Only seven episodes await us in this seventh season, each one no doubt to be watched and analysed endlessly as viewers search for clues as to where this journey may finally take us. Hanging over the petty squabbles between houses and human factions is the very real, icy apocalypse threatened by the White Walkers – can an alliance be built which might surmount this terrifying challenge, or must all men finally die in the longest winter of all?

Whatever happens, one thing is for certain – we will be here to offer our own take on this latest season.