You’ve seen them before.
Fair warning, this post contains spoilers for the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
OK, have you recovered from that episode yet? Probably not.
In a season that’s moving at a rapid pace, The Spoils of War was our favourite episode of the season.
That epic battle scene at the end naturally drew a lot of the attention and much of the discussion post-episode was about the fact we finally got to see a dragon in action. Although we’ve seen them burn some ships in previous seasons, this is the first time we’ve seen a dragon in a proper combat scene.
And boy, it did not disappoint.
But there was another scene between Jon and Daenerys, in which some eagle-eyed viewers spotted little details that trace all the way back to the very first episode of the show.
Jon is showing Daenerys the caves beneath Dragonstone where they’re going to begin mining the dragonglass. The paintings and carvings on the wall also back up Jon’s claim that the White Walkers are real.
The pictures depict the Battle of the Dawn, a battle referenced in George R.R. Martin’s books in which various forces join forces to defeat the White Walkers.
But the patterns on the wall, such as the one below looked very familiar to viewers.
We saw them in the very first episode of the show, only not on the walls of caves… with body parts.
“It’s supposed to be something that’s very evocative of the thousands of years that have passed since these caves were first explored and the paintings were first made,” showrunner David Benioff explained in the post-episode discussion.
“And also obviously something that’s quite relevant to the current storyline because it’s about how these two disparate peoples united to defeat the common enemy…One of the things we learn 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 Forrest. 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.”
