Warning: this review contains spoilers.

At one point in the long-awaited, much-hyped premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, Tyrion, Varys and Davos look down from a Winterfell gangway on the recently-arrived Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, and let their imaginations run riot. What if, Davos wonders, the Seven Kingdoms could be ruled by a just woman and an honourable man, “for once in their shit history.”

A harsh assessment of the preceding 67 hours of dynastic convolutions, power plays, undead risings and narrative horses galloping across multiple continents and delivering members of the largest ensemble cast in televisual history to their correct destinations on time – but fair. It’s been a bit grim, for the most part. Heads have been melted and crushed. Eyes have been extracted with thumbs. An unusual number of penises have been severed. Twincest has been a thing. Offspring have been baked into pies and served to unwitting but, alas, hungry fathers.

The eighth season premiere – there are, slightly incredibly, just five more episodes after this – was, by Westerosian standards, a sedate affair, concentrating largely on retrenchment, and narrowing the scope of the narrative and emotional landscape. This was doubtless disappointing to the many who expected nothing but mighty spectacle all the way down the home straight, but pleasing to those of us who found that the sprawl of later series was dissipating our ability to care about the characters and rendering the (many) deaths, twists, unions and partings increasingly insignificant.

The premiere pulled everyone and everything together; it was, for the most part, an almost nostalgic hour. Moments of it – like Arya’s reunion with Jon, or Yara’s forgiveness of Theon – might even have warmed the cockles of your heart, if winter hadn’t come with such a vengeance to Winterfell that the chill seemed to reach through the screen.

Plenty of callbacks for those who have stayed the distance ... Arya Stark wearing her hair like her late, lamented father. Photograph: HBO

There were plenty of callbacks for all the loyal viewers who have stayed the distance; from the little boy running through the crowded Winterfell streets and climbing a tree to see the arriving army led by Jon and the Mother of Dragons, recalling our first sight of Bran eager to see Robert and Cersei arriving all those series ago, to tiny touches like Arya wearing her hair like her late, much lamented father Ned Stark did before (and I suppose, technically, after) his shock decapitation at the end of season one. And the greatest circle back of all, in the final scene, when Jaime Lannister lays eyes on Bran for the first time since he lightly flung him out of the tower window and paralysed him, 66 hours of juggernauting television ago.

Plus we got our best look yet at the dragons, albeit in a scene that seemed to come from a different series entirely, as secret new couple Daenerys and Jon flew together over the snowy wastelands grinning at each other like something out of a medieval romcom (When Dany Met Dymwytte).

There were no great plot advances. The Wall is still very much down, the White Walkers are still coming, Cersei is still Cersei (giving Bronn orders to kill both her brothers and handing him the crossbow with which Tyrion killed their father to do it. “That fucking family,” he sighs, and he is so right), and Euron is still a mad charmer with a strangely brightening effect on my mood (and brightens considerably himself when Cersei allows him an advance on their promised post-war wedding night). But Sam does reveal to Jon that he is not in fact Ned Stark’s bastard but Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of his Name, therefore not just currently shagging his aunt but the true heir to the Iron Throne and her direct rival. And because the makers have chosen to go deep with their creation rather than wide, it is a revelation that suddenly matters once more to us. Though possibly not as much as it will to the Northerners when they find out that Jon effectively gave away their autonomy to a close relative. Bad optics. Or as Ygritte used to put it – you knurr nothing, Jon Snurr.

It is the competing loyalties, the loves and enmities that enmesh the Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens and the rest, after all, and the questions Game of Thrones poses about conscience and corruption and the manifestations of power, that will propel us through to the end. The Battle for Winterfell looks set to take place midway through the season; after that comes the reckoning. Who will win, who will die? Deservedly or undeservedly? Cleanly or peeled like a switch, Ramsay-style? Can there be punishment enough for Cersei, or was the wig she sported till season five’s walk of shame enough?

All will be revealed soon enough. Then we will know everything, Jon Snurr.