content: 
  ===Critical reception===
  Reviews for "The Red Woman" were very positive. The episode was praised for its humor, Brienne's reunion with Sansa and Theon, and the revelation regarding Melisandre's true age. Rotten Tomatoes assembled 38 reviews and calculated an approval percentage of 86% with an average rating of 7.6/10, and the consensus reading: "A solid season opener, The Red Woman balanced its ongoing mysteries with a bit of humor and featured Sansa's touching reunion with Brienne of Tarth."
  James Hunt of ''What Culture'' wrote in his review of the episode; "It was a good return to the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond), one that was filled with tension throughout, and set about re-establishing the pieces on the board." Ellen Gray of ''Philadelphia Daily News'' noted in her review of the episode; "First episodes are always difficult. So many people to check in on. Or kill. Or swear vengeance upon. Still, things are off to several promising starts." Mark W. Pleiss of ''PopMatters'' wrote in his review of the episode; "The most recent episode of HBO's Game of Thrones largely evaded the two major questions from the previous chapter, and instead lined up its sixth season to gravitate around the heroics and cunning of its female protagonists." Tim Surette of ''TV.com'' wrote that Melisandre is one of his favorite characters.
  In isolation from the rest of the episode, many critics were baffled by the drastic changes to the Dorne storyline. For io9, Charlie Jane Anders called it "the absolute worst" part of the episode, and criticized the Dorne storyline in general for giving Doran Martell "a grand total of ten minutes' screentime" before suddenly killing him off, given that he is alive in the novels and his major subplot from the books - that he was simply ''feigning'' a desire for peace while planning to betray the Lannisters - was not introduced at all before his departure. Alan Sepinwall from HitFix also disliked the Dorne scenes and summarized, "I'll settle for not needing to audibly groan every time the story returns to Dorne, frankly." For Vulture, Nate Jones wrote an op-ed piece specifically criticizing the Dorne storyline in seasons five and six, culminating in the changes in the season six premiere, which it felt to be bizarre and illogical - purely relying on shock value when the characters' actions don't make sense upon closer analysis. Jones was also critical of how it was altering the female characters in Dorne, saying that they were changed from the novels to be "the kind of violent, scantily clad women that emerge when creators want to pay lip service to feminism, but don't have the time or inclination to create actual three-dimensional female characters."