Speculation is the Tyrells will plan to marry Sansa to him rather than Garlan. Makes sense and maybe Loras will join after Sansa’s wedding to Tyrion.
Random thoughts:
I wondered why the Unsullied were armored. In the book they’re half naked.
I am also wondering how they’re going to do the reveal to Dany that Jorah was a spy for Joffery originally. In the book that was done at the same time as Selmy’s reveal. I always thought Jorah was stupid for getting on Selmy’s bad side - he must have known that Selmy would be aware of his messages to Joffery’s small council.
Looking forward to Jon Snow’s deflowering.
Really hope Strong Belwas shows up, though I’m glad they got rid of the “Artsan” fluff. Heck, most of Dany’s plots can use a lot of tightening up, so I’m glad they seem to be doing so.
Also, skimming the comments, a lot of people think we’ll see the Red Wedding, etc this season. As far as I’m aware, ASoS will take up both seasons 3 and 4, so most of the good stuff will be coming Season 4.
I loved the “I heard you lost your nose” comment about Tyrion.
Strong Belwas was not cast, and we definitely (based on comments from the two showrunners, as well as the relevant episode title) get the RW this season.
I know the show is already massively successful and critically acclaimed, but this is going to be the season that makes GoT a cultural phenomenon.
Ah, thanks. The RW is approximately chapter 50 out of 80, so I can see them fitting it into Season 3.
Hopefully Belwas shows up in a later season… 
GoT season 3, episode 1 Facebook Recap.
I’d have put this in the other thread but I didn’t check it thoroughly for spoilers.
It checks out. Nothing past ep 1.
I’ll just drop this here:
Axis of Awesome - Rage of Thrones
I do love how non-book people seem to think that Varys is this great guy with totally selfless motivations. I mean, he said he serves the realm, there’s no way that he could have lied and he’s actually intentionally destabilizing it to make it susceptible to invasion. Nope, not kind misunderstood Varys.
I loved that line. 
The two characters that have been built up in my imagination as the most beautiful women are Arianne Martell and Taena Merrywether. I’m sure it’s too early for them to be introduced in the TV series, but I have an anticipation and a fear that no actual living actor is going to measure up to my mind’s conception of either of them.
This was a “welcome back!” episode. Not a lot going on, but lots of great moments/character scenes.
Loved Cersei’s line about Tyrion’s nose. Cute. (If memory serves, we never hear much detail about Tyrion’s wounds except from his own POV anyway, so it’s possible he exaggerated out of self-pity.)
Loved Tywin/Tyrion.
Loved Danaerys/Kraznys/Missandei. My wife wasn’t really paying attention, but happened to catch the nipple-removal scene and totally got the heebie-jeebies. “I look up for one second and that’s what I see?! This show…” 
yup.
It was totally not clear what happened at Harrenhal, and I don’t really remember. Did the Lannisters completely vacate it to go defend King’s Landing? Were all the dead people the villagers that they’d rounded up?
I’m sad that they couldn’t pull off the Artstan charade, but whatchagonnado? It’s just good to have him back. (Though the “previously on GoT” montage totally gave his return away by showing his retirement scene. I hate that.)
Don’t despair about Belwas and the shitting scene. Mereen isn’t until chapter 58. Could be next season. They didn’t cast him for this season, but they delayed casting on the Reeds too. They didn’t show up last season when they did in the book, but they will in S3. (and they did the head in a sack trick for Jaqen in S1 too) Somehow they’ll find a different way to intro them. Perhaps the same with Belwas.
In the book the Brave Companions are holding Harrenhal while working for the Lannisters. They “capture” a bunch of northmen and Arya convinced Jaqen to help her free them. They free the prisoners and take over. I put capture in quotes because the Brave Companions actually defected to Roose Bolton so those northmen were trojan horsed in so they could capture the castle from the inside.
In the show the Mountain was in control of Harrenhal after Tywin went to save King’s Landing. He didn’t have enough men to hold the castle against Robb so he killed all his prisoners and left.
In my mind, that IS serving the realm. From all accounts, the non-crazy Targaryens were actually pretty decent rulers, or, at least, better than the Baratheon/Lannisters have been.
I’m only partway through book 4, but it seems to me that up to this point, even the books don’t offer a whole lot of fodder to wonder too much about Varys and his motives. He’s portrayed as dubious and duplicitous and slimy, sure, but there aren’t a whole lot of specifics regarding what his big-picture viewpoint might be, other than self-preservation.
And then it was Vargo and the Brave Companions who were in charge of Harrenhall after the northmen left, if I remember correctly. I don’t recall specifically, though, that the Brave Companions “captured” the northmen just so they could take over the castle. I thought that was Arya who decided to release them on her own. Maybe I’m forgetting something though.
Armored warriors look more intimidating than half-naked ones. There’s also the practical issue of the helmet: when you’re taking a dozen dudes and CGI-ing them into a whole army, having a helmet cover the faces is a good thing so you don’t have to go in and tinker with each CGI dublicated dude’s face to not make them look like clones of each other.
When she frees them, they are expecting to be released. They’re also not injured at all, odd if they were captured in a fight with a guy that’s fond of maiming people. Then Roose is friendly with them afterwards, not something you would expect. I don’t think GRRM ever writes it out explicitly, but it’s all there.
So yes, Arya frees them of her own volition, but they would have been let out anyway.
In a long term view, yes. But I think the point was that to some it appears Varys is like a Maester in that he tries to do the best thing depending on whoever occupies the Iron Throne… not plotting to make things worse so a better ruler can come to the Throne.
And then again, Varys kind of had no idea the Baratheon/Lannisters would have been this bad when he started his planning.