Winter is Coming

The first teaser for Game of Thrones’ Season 8 (okay, the second half of season 7; no one knows why it’s called that) just dropped, and shows Jon, Sansa and Arya preparing for an epic battle in the famed Winterfell crypts.

You could say that we’re jacked, to the brim, with some nice Mole’s town wine. A couple of months ago, in an Entertainment Weekly cover story, it was revealed that the season opens with Jon and Dany—of #BoatSex fame—arriving at Winterfell to meet the people who Jon promised to never align with Dany. Now that he’s stuck the dragon queen with the pointy end, our boi has to bring down the Army of the Dead, save Westeros, even, maybe, probably defeat Cersie Lannister—all in six episodes.

Speaking of which, the gawd Peter Dinklage, (who was a fucking horseshit strategist in the first half of Season 7. Please be a little objective) dropped the line which lit my nerd-only WhatsApp groups with wildfire. There’s going to be a billion on billion fight, a collision of everything we’ve seen for nearly a decade with a Humans vs Army of the Dead battle.

Sidebar: The Army of the Dead has always seemed like a metaphor for climate change to me, with all their coldness, the prospect of human extinction, the need for us to collectively set aside our desires (coal energy) and differences (geo-political issues) for the greater good. George RR Martin being a climate change activist, this is his greatest plot twist.

When the list of directors for the final season was dropped, having Miguel Sapochnik’s name (he directed Thrones’ most iconic battle episodes, including 'Hardhome', 'Battle of the Bastards' and 'The Winds of Winter') as the director only meant one thing: annihilation, of people, of dragons, of production budgets. All of that apparently is real. As Dinklage said in the EW piece about the big battle: "It’s brutal. It makes the 'Battle of the Bastards' look like a theme park.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve made my film snob friends, who don’t watch Thrones, watch the ‘Battle of the Bastards’ for its scale and filmmaking, and here is Dinklage, calling it puny compared to what’s coming.

The life cycle of hype is volatile, and the one for Thrones is just getting started. But if this opening salvo is anything go by, the wait for the new season is going to be excruciatingly rousing.

Strap in.

Update: The post has been updated with the new teaser.