Warning: Game of Thrones spoilers loom like a dragon on the battlefield
Okay so let’s just get this right off the bat, The Spoils of War was the best Game of Thrones episode of the season so far.
So much shit finally went down and for the first time in ages, it feels a bit more uncertain about what’s going to happen next.
In such a jam-packed episode, it’s easy to miss the minute details that are likely to mean something later on in the series.
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But fear not, this is what the internet is for!
So in one of the crucial scenes, Jon has taken Daenerys to the caves of Dragonstone to show her some cave paintings that prove the White Walkers’ existence.
I mean, apart from the fact that Jon could have drawn those paintings to dupe Dany into helping him.
I don’t know why Daenerys just accepted that they were genuine, but still, I digress.
The drawings evoked images of cave paintings from the old worlds and depicted the joining together of the forces of Men and the Children of the Forest.
Yet some of the first images we see are of geometric shapes and spirals that seem awfully familiar.
We actually have seen them before, back in the very first episode of Season 1.
Only back then, they weren’t on cave walls, they were arranged on the snow using dead body parts and were made by the White Walkers no less.
We also know the images originate from the Children of the Forest, from season 6 when we see the creation of The Night King.
In the latest behind the scenes video, we get even more context.
Showrunners Benioff and Weiss have a lot to say about those drawings.
Benioff said:
One of the things we learned from these cave paintings is that the White Walkers didn’t come up with those images, they derived them from their creators, the children of the forest.
These are patterns that have mystical significance for the children of the forest. We’re not sure exactly what they signify, but spiral patterns are important in a lot of different cultures in our world, and it makes sense that they would be in this world as well.
So we’re getting closer to realising the mythology behind the White Walkers, but what could those images actually mean – do they have significance or are they just a nice thematic link between the White Walkers and the Children of the Forest.
I’d bet the former, considering they were one of the first things we ever saw in Game of Thrones, there’s clearly some significance to those drawings.
