SPOILERS: Where do the new Game of Thrones photos fit in the season 7 timeline?
Entertainment Weekly has released seven all-new (well, mostly new) photos from Game of Thrones season 7. We’ve got pics of Dany and Drogon going out for a Sunday stroll, Arya and Jon chilling on horseback, Tormund searching Winterfell for his lady love (or something), and more. Where do these images figure into the season? Using our extensive knowledge of Game of Thrones SPOILERS, we thought we’d try to piece it together.
Also, obviously, SPOILER WARNING.
Let’s start with the stunner of the bunch: Daenerys Targaryen riding Drogon, who seems to have grown several sizes since we last saw him — Dany looks like a tiny doll on his back, to say nothing of the soldiers underfoot. Every season, he looks more and more like the dragon of Aegon the Conquerer, Balerion the Black Dread.
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen. HBO/Entertainment Weekly
Thanks to spoilers, we know that a Lannister army led by Jaime will sack Highgarden fairly early in the season. Very likely, Jaime will work with Randyll Tarly, Sam’s terrible dad, to achieve this. On their way back to King’s Landing, Dany will lead her Dothraki horde into battle and ambush them. She’ll be riding a dragon. That’s more than likely what we’re seeing above.
Zoom in and you can see some of the combatants going head to head:
"[EVERYTHING] From the Dragon Image. from gameofthrones"
Below, check out some behind-the-scenes shots from the filming of the battle, which was shot in Spain:
This battle will go down in Episode 4, smack dab in the middle of the seven-episode season. It was directed by Matt Shakman, who told Entertainment Weekly that “[t]he dragons this year are the size of 747s. Drogon is the biggest of the bunch — his flame is 30-feet in diameter!” Sounds about right.
Now let’s move on to Jon “King in the North” Snow, who looks to be leaving Winterfell with a few other armed guys on horses behind him.
Kit Harington as Jon Snow. HBO/Entertainment Weekly
Could this be him departing for Dragonstone, where we know he meets Daenerys? That puts it very early in the season.
Then there’s Arya, sitting astride a horse in a strangely familiar location.
When I first saw this photo, I thought she was arriving at Winterfell, where we know she’ll reach eventually. I’m still hoping that’s true — take a look at the comparison shot below. Is that rounded doorway behind the crowd at Winterfell the same doorway Arya is in front of in the new still?
Maybe, but it looks a little too rounded. In terms of the doorframe, the shape looks closer to the door to the Inn at the Crossroads, where Arya’s good pal Hot Pie is currently employed:
True, the door is different — it looks like it’s been repaired or boarded up — but the masonry work is the same. Hopefully she and Hot Pie can catch up.
We’ve suspected for a while that Arya will stop by the Inn at the Crossroads, and that she’ll meet Ed Sheeran’s character there. Sheeran has confirmed that he shares a scene with Maisie Williams in season 7, and that he sings a song. We think Arya is listening to him play in this previously released still shot:
Note that Arya is wearing the same tattered Hobbit-looking cloak in both photos. When she DOES make it home to Winterfell, she gets snappy new duds, so this very likely happens beforehand.
The other photos are mostly behind-the-scenes angles on shots we’ve already seen, like this shot of Jaime and Cersei…
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…looking a lot like this one.
Note that Cersei has replaced the Seven-Pointed Star above the Iron Throne with the Lannister lion, and that Jaime has Widow’s Wail, Joffrey’s old Valyrian steel sword, at his hip.
Then there’s this one of Sansa and Littlefinger at Winterfell…
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…which looks a lot like this one of Sansa and Littlefinger at Winterfell:
Finally, we have Tormund searching around the Winterfell courtyard.
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What is he searching for? Our money’s on Brienne of Tarth.
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James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly made sure to note that Brienne is at Winterfell in this picture. (Also note Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) and the top of Sophie Turner’s Sansa wig in the background behind her — it looks like Brienne is on the same covered walkway from which Littlefinger and Sansa are observing the courtyard.) And she’s grinning from ear to ear, undoubtedly because her ginger-bearded boy toy is coming to find her in their game of hide-and-go-smooch.
Okay, there’s no way we could know that — the cameras obviously aren’t rolling in the shot above, but we’ll take whatever hints of a Brienne-Tormund romance we can find.
One more fun thing about the Tormund photo: you can see Brienne’s male stunt double in the background, undoubtably wondering why he can’t get Tormund to look at him the way he looks at Gwendoline Christie.
"No wonder Tormund looks so grumpy – Brienne obviously has changed from freefolk"
See anything else in these pics? Let us know!