The Game of Thrones writers are taking us back to where it all began for the opening episode of Season 8: to the all-important Stark home of Winterfell.
You’ll remember that Season 1 Episode 1 began with a soldier of the Night’s Watch abandoning his post after a terrifying encounter with a White Walker, before being dragged to the Northern stronghold to face his punishment. And it wasn’t long before the royal party of King Robert Baratheon, Cersei and Joffrey arrived in Winterfell to secure Ned Stark’s support as the Hand of the King.
So now, excellently mirroring this very first episode, we’re heading back to Winterfell for the next season’s opening, according to the first final season plot details that have been revealed.
“Season 8 opens at Winterfell with an episode that contains plenty of callbacks to the show’s pilot,” according to Entertainment Weekly, which has been given some lovely details about the final season.
“Instead of King Robert’s procession arriving, it’s Daenerys and her army. What follows is a thrilling and tense intermingling of characters — some of whom have never previously met, many who have messy histories — as they all prepare to face the inevitable invasion of the Army of the Dead.”
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“It’s about all of these disparate characters coming together to face a common enemy, dealing with their own past, and defining the person they want to be in the face of certain death,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman added.
“It’s an incredibly emotional, haunting, bittersweet final season, and I think it honors very much what George set out to do — which is flipping this kind of story on its head.”
EW also confirms the theory that Sansa Stark, who until now has been a pretty excellent stand-in Warden of the North, isn’t too pleased about Jon’s decision to bend the knee to Daenerys. Does this set up a brooding conflict for the final season? Maybe.
Finally, GOT bosses gave some hints about the scale of the looming battle with the Army of the Dead, which will take up at least one entire episode.
“It’s the living against the dead, and you can’t do that in a 12-minute sequence,” says David Benioff.
Don’t know about you but we’re locking ourselves away in a room until 2019 and doing nothing but watching all the old episodes on a loop so we’ll be good and ready for when the final season drops.
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