The wars to come have long been hinted at on the pages of A Song of Ice and Fire and it looks as though its HBO counterpart, Game of Thrones, has finally rallied the Realm to fight. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the showrunners and two cast members—Jaime Lannister (Nickolaj Coster-Waldau) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington)—set the scene for just how quickly the series’ endgame will be upon us. And then there’s that new, White Walker-y key art we got Tuesday morning, too. Being the obsessive speculators that we are, we have some thoughts as to what these things might mean!
First, take into consideration this quote: “I feel like I’d been lulled into a different pace,” Coster-Waldau explained to EW. “Everything happened quicker than I’m used to … a lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode.” Couple the sentiment there with that of Harington, who added that, “it’s so different than what everybody is used to,” and the picture starts to become clearer. Not only will the show be faster paced, what we’re about to see is a far cry from the Throne Games we’ve long come to expect. Which makes total sense when you think about the story at hand.
(Yes, that is Jon Snow in the Night King’s eye.)
“For a long time we’ve been talking about ‘the wars to come,'” showrunner David Benioff explained to EW. “Well, that war is pretty much here. So it’s really about trying to find a way to make the storytelling work without feeling like we’re rushing it.” Co-executive producer Bryan Cogman also tagged on an important bit of intel to consider: “There are White Walkers and dragons and once they start to come together the story has to go where it goes.”
So where, exactly, could that story be going now that we’ve surpassed George R.R. Martin‘s source material? To suss that out, we must consider the main players and underlying mysteries that still remain: Who is the prince that was promised? Which religious prophecies ring true, and which do not? Is the fall of The Wall imminent, and what does that mean? And just how important are the White Walkers and magic to all of this?
When taking all of this into account, the “wars” that the series often hints at may not be actual, physical war (though knowing Game of Thrones—and the fact that their 7-episode budget is the same as what they’d usually get for 10—there will definitely be quite a bit of that), but the war for control that’s existed far beyond the understanding of the Realm. The war for and against magic. As we’ve frequently stated on Nerdist News Talks Back, the religions of the known world are key in understanding what those wars to come truly are: a battle for control beyond the limits of power in one region or another, but control of a populace and their morality (and hopefully also their magic, if they have it). We’d wager that, once at the Citadel, Samwell Tarly will quickly learn that the events of now have long been at play for those who wish to control—or stop completely—those magical, unknown, unpredictable forces the Old Gods and the Children have mastered, and the Targaryens long ago domesticated with their dragon horde of old.
So, in short: get ready for these wars to be a heck of a lot more subliminal—and a heck of a lot more prescient to our current political and social climate. Because we weren’t already feeling enough gloom and doom as it is!
But what do you think? Are we over-thinking Game of Thrones and what its end game may be? Let us know in the comments below before the series returns on July 16th.
Images: HBO
Alicia Lutes is the managing editor of Nerdist, creator/host of Fangirling!, and the resident Khaleesi of Twitter over-sharing.
