The first official trailer for Game of Thrones season seven didn’t really end up being anything of the sort. Yes, it was exciting; yes, it left you with goosebumps; and yes, it did its job, in that it made you want the season to be here now so much that you almost certainly wanted to cry. But it didn’t do what we were expecting it to, ie show us much actual footage of the series to come.
Instead, we got Cersei, Jon and Daenerys glumly stalking corridors and sitting down to the accompaniment of Sit Down by James. There were no quick shots of deaths to freeze-frame and examine; no locations to suggest characters’ movements in the season to come. Nothing. But do you think I’d let the fact there’s little to pore over stand in the way of writing an in-depth article about it? Of course not.
Season seven’s focus is on Cersei, Jon and Daenerys
What we can glean from the trailer is that this series will put the power struggle between the trio of royal wannabes front and centre, with the looming threat of the larger war to come against the Night King and his chilly chums never far away. The show’s been building to this for six seasons, so it’s about time.
Jon Snow will walk near, around and past lots of fire
Considering the “fire and ice” themes represent Daenerys’s dragons and the oncoming Winter respectively, this could allude to an upcoming alliance between Jon and the Mother of Dragons to defeat the Night King, with or without Cersei, we don’t yet know. Or it could be because Kit Harington looks hella-cool walking near roaring flames in slow motion. Place your pennies on the latter, gambling fans.
Jon’s throne is in Winterfell, Dany’s is in Dragonstone and Cersei’s is in King’s Landing
Presumably all three will end up vying for the Iron Throne (current incumbent: Cersei Lannister), but the trailer shows them taking their places as we saw them at the end of last season: Jon as the King in the North after the doggy demise of Ramsay Bolton; Dany as the Queen Across the Sea after outsmarting the slavers; and Cersei as the Queen of the Andals and the First Men after killing just about everyone else in the world. Does this mean the eventual battle for the Iron Throne will be put on the back burner, ready to rage next season? Your guess is as good as mine.
All three stare intensely at the camera, then close their eyes
It’s being implied they’re staring at each other like people do when they’re about to fight, sizing each other up, so war is definitely coming. The question appears to be which one Cersei will have to contend with first. Dany’s on her way to King’s Landing right now. She’s also Jon’s aunt, so one assumes she’ll have to deal with both of them. The closing of the eyes, though: a simplistic metaphor for death? Will this ensuing war for something as pointless and ephemeral as power claim one of their lives? Not a clue. None. Let’s keep going.
Cersei’s breath is visible in The Red Keep
This almost certainly means winter is finally coming to King’s Landing. It’s been nippy in the North for years, and the notion of those flat white-slurping lubbers in the Capital getting a taste of what all this White Walker fuss has been about is an appealing and overdue one. Either this, or Ed Sheeran, who is set to appear in the new series, is playing Galway Girl somewhere nearby, and the air has creaked to an Arctic chill in response to its ear-gouging abhorrence.
The Night King’s eye
As the camera zooms out of the Night King’s eye at the trailer’s end, some eagle-eyed internetters believe they’ve spotted a clue reflected in his iris: an image of the Wall, breached. Taking this with a pinch of salt, if the Night King and his rabble are to attack Westeros, it stands to reason the Wall would have to be breached. So this “spot” suggests nothing logic already hasn’t. Though, in truth, the reflection looks nothing at all like a wall being breached.
What else do we know?
Slightly more revealing was the trailer for the trailer, which is a thing we apparently have to have in 2017, in which Jon says “There’s only one war that matters: the great war. And it is here.” Which, again, doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know. We’re aware that the first episode of this penultimate, seven-episode season premieres on 16 July (the eighth and final season next year will comprise of just six). We know that Jim Broadbent will be playing a Grand Maester, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds will return for a cameo, Walder Frey will be back (which is impressive because he is dead), and that – due to a slip of the tongue in which she said she began work on season eight – Sophie Turner’s Sansa Stark probably won’t die.
For anything else, we’ll just have to wait. Only three months to go. Hurry up July.
