The Queen's Gambit · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 23 October 2020
S1E1 Openings
THE MOMENT Beth's first encounter with the chess board in the basement - a child's face registering that she has found the one language she speaks fluently.
The premiere establishes Beth Harmon in the orphanage basement, a nine-year-old watching the janitor play chess on a concrete floor. The show earns immediate trust by refusing to sentimentalise her circumstances - the addiction thread is seeded in the first ten minutes via the institution's tranquiliser regimen. It is a confident, unhurried setup.
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The Queen's Gambit Season 1 Episode 1 'Openings' premiered October 23, 2020 on Netflix. Rotten Tomatoes holds Season 1 at 96 percent from 103 critics; IMDb audiences scored the series 8.5. Entertainment Weekly noted Taylor-Joy 'excels in the quiet moments, her eyelids narrowing as she decimates an opponent.' The premiere earns immediate trust by refusing to sentimentalise Beth's circumstances: the orphanage is filmed with cool institutional clarity rather than poverty-melodrama softness, and the addiction thread is seeded in the first ten minutes through the institution's tranquiliser regimen rather than waiting for it to become a plot problem. Anya Taylor-Joy is nine years old in this episode, and the casting choice of using her face across the full age range works precisely because her features register calculation rather than innocence. The first encounter with the chess board establishes Beth's entire relationship to the game in a single image.