Did director Jack Bender See A “Winds of Winter” Manuscript?

Earlier this week, we reminded everyone of the dangers of doing a Twitter Q&A, but it turns out that a Reddit AMA can also be perilous.

Jack Bender, one of the big name directors to join the Game of Thrones stable for Season 6, recently did a Reddit AMA. Nothing all that newsworthy seemed to come out of it at first, but over the last week there’s been a slow build over one of his answers that seems to have taken on a life of its own. Burrowed somewhere in the stream of queries was the question: “Were you able to read an advance copy of Book 6 of Game of Thrones to prepare for directing next season’s episodes?”

To which Bender replied: “Yes.”

Well, you can just imagine how fans went through the roof in the last couple of days as that answer has been making the rounds. (After all, when George R.R. Martin’s Twitter account started doing a cute little countdown to Christmas Eve, people thought it might be a countdown to The Winds of Winter.)

But as the fervor reached a pitch yesterday, westeros.org, which is run by Elio García and Linda Antonsson, the co-writers of The World of Ice and Fire along with Martin last year, made sure to come out and set the record straight.

So what was Bender referring to? The best guess is that he misunderstood the question, and thought they meant “the book” for Season 6—aka the outline for the season—in order to prepare.

Either that or Bender is a world class troll. Always a possibility. We should keep our eyes open after he returns from the six-month filming process and see if he gives any more answers that might fluster and befuddle fans of the show.

Even if there’s no Book 6 manuscript to read, it looks like there’s plenty of Season 6 stuff to be worked on. David Peterson, who does all the fantasy language translations for the show, tweeted this today:

No Spoilers? Oh well.

Next: An energetically stylized analysis of A Game of Thrones