With the final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ this weekend, it’s worth keeping in mind virtually nothing in this show happens without a reason. Revisit 10 critical details that could play a pivotal role in the HBO fantasy show’s final season.
Nothing in “Game of Thrones” happens by accident.
Petyr Baelish can’t just tell Sweet Robin that some men die on the privy without a toilet-bound Tywin Lannister getting two arrows to the gut a few episodes later. Maggy the Frog can’t just tell a young Cersei Lannister that she’ll have three royal children who will die without Cersei actually having three royal children who bite the dust in increasingly tragic ways.
It means that in the final few episodes, basically every detail, line of dialogue and theory from the past seven seasons could very well be at the center of some mind-blowing revelation. However, a LOT has happened, and you’d be forgiven if somewhere between the Red Wedding and Margaery Tyrell becoming green mist, the section of your brain devoted to “Game of Thrones” deep cuts got a little overloaded.
So, settle in to your favorite knobbly tree, let your eyes roll back in your head and let’s journey through time and space to revisit 10 critical details that may or may not play a part in the final season — but will be good to remember anyway.
(NOTE: This list only includes things specifically mentioned or heavily implied in the series, so things like the Valonqar prophecy are not mentioned by name. Otherwise, we’d be here all day.)
In case you needed a clue that this story wasn’t JUST about games and thrones, after all, the very first scene of Season 1, Episode 1 ends with a very cryptic arrangement of dead bodies, executed by the very murder snowmen we’ve come to know and fear. We see the White Walkers using circular patterns pretty often, and a spiral pattern of dead bodies in Season 3, Episode 3 is echoed again in Season 6, Episode 5 when the Children of the Forest set about making the Night King. We can assume these aren’t isolated incidents — Mance Rayder even comments that the White Walkers are “ever the artists.” And the spirals are back in Season 7, Episode 4 when Jon shows Daenerys cave paintings of the White Walkers that feature the mysterious shapes.
What does it all mean? Well, obviously we don’t know yet, but here’s another thought to keep you awake at night: Aside from those horrible dry ice screeches, White Walkers don’t talk (as far as we know). If the Night King and Company are really going to be the epic antagonists this season, it’s pretty likely we’re going to learn more about their motives, which means they’re going to have to communicate. How? Unless the Night King clears his throat and David Attenborough comes floating out, the answer may lie in these symbols.
Some “GoT” hints and prophesies are subtle, and some haul off and smack you right in the face years before you even know what to do with them. In Season 2, Episode 10, Daenerys enters a symbolically rich vision while trying to escape the creepy warlocks of Qarth. In it, she explores a frozen, snowy version of the Red Keep, complete with a charred, burnt-out ceiling. Hmm. She then approaches the Iron Throne — the one thing she thinks she wants, the one thing that has driven her entire odyssey in Essos. She gets close enough to touch it and… doesn’t. Hmmmmm. Let’s not even get into the emotional reunion she has with Khal Drogo and her son Rhaegal and focus on how likely it is that all of this very obvious imagery will come to pass. Because remember, as of now, the Red Keep is in one piece and Daenerys is torn between wanting the throne and not wanting every living person in Westeros to be turned into a skeleton puppet. Oh, and snow is definitely in the forecast for King’s Landing.
“You’ll be queen, for a time. Then comes another, younger, more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold dear.”
Those are the words of Maggy the Frog, a witch young Cersei visits in Season 5, Episode 1. Young Cersei, already very much a vicious queen-in-training, asks the woman for some predictions. And boy, does she deliver. Maggy the Frog accurately predicts baby Cersei’s marriage to Robert Baratheon, his philandering ways, Cersei’s three golden children and their three golden deaths.
