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More tantalizingly tangled webs are in store as 'Game of Thrones' looks to fill the empty Iron Throne with one leader for the Seven Kingdoms.

Always a bit slow starting (relatively speaking, anyway), the new season of “Thrones” has a lot of cleaning up to do. After all, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) escaped a death sentence and took flight with the eunuch Varys (Conleth Hill), producing no end of wonderful exchanges between the two of them. Meanwhile, Tyrion’s sister Cersei (Lena Headey) fumes over both being deprived revenge and the prospect of dealing with her daughter-in-law-to-be Margaery (Natalie Dormer), who has the temerity to ask Cersei if she’d like to be called “Dowager.”

There are so many fine performances here it’s difficult to single out just a few, but in the early going the season offers especially good and illuminating moments for Aidan Gillen as the scheming Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish; Gwendoline Christie as the towering warrior Brienne; and Stephen Dillane as Stannis Baratheon, whose last-minute season-four heroics represent part of a larger plan designed to advance his quest to rule Westeros.

Of course, that’s barely the tip of the iceberg, with several new characters to savor, including the progeny of the since-departed Oberyn – his vengeful daughters, known as the Sand Snakes; and Jonathan Pryce, who is in a bit of a happy rut casting-wise, inasmuch as he plays Cardinal Wolsey on “Wolf Hall” and now the High Sparrow, a religious leader with a darker bent who Cersei seeks to enlist to her cause.