At this point, it’s clear that the Game of Thrones production team is filming some kind of huge battle scene in Saintfield, Northern Ireland, probably for the all-important Episode 9. For a while, the production was keeping a tight lid on things, but since a pic with an enormous spoiler payload leaked on Friday, it appears that the floodgates are being opened.
For example, check out this pic of of members from several different Northern houses standing together, presumably so they can participate in that huge battle scene. According to the Reddit user who brought this photo to our attention, the pic was taken by an extra who will participate in that battle. We hope he still has a job.
Click for extra zoomed-in version
We assume this is the group of Northern soldiers who will stand against the Bolton army before finally kicking those usurpers out of office (we hope—the show does love to dash our hopes). All of the round shields have the direwolf of Stark on them, which is exciting, since it likely means that a Stark will be involved with or even lead this charge. Rickon? Sansa? Jon Snow? All three? Time will tell.
There’s also at least one Stark banner flying just to the right of the center of the picture. We’ve also got what looks like the bear of House Mormont on the more oval-shaped shield on the ground near the center. True, it doesn’t look like the sigil from the books, but the colors are right, and I’m not sure what else it could be, so I’m going with Mormont. After all, Lyanna Mormont reiterated her house’s loyalty to the Starks last year when she refused Stannis’ demand that she bend the knee to him. “Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark.” Rock on, Mormonts.
It’s hard to tell what houses all the banners belong to, but here’re our best guesses:
- The blue, white, and yellow banner left of center appears to belong to House Flint.
- The banner with green and orange on the far left could be House Moss.
- The orange and blue-black banner in the dead center of the photo could be a couple of different houses: House Hornwood has orange in its banner, as does House Ryswell. The color “flame-red” appears on the banner for House Umber, which we know we likely participate in the battle on account of their fostering Rickon for the last two seasons, plus all the rumors saying that House Umber will participate in the battle. I don’t think that’s the Umber banner, though.
Also of note: the sigil of House Karstark (a white sunburst on a black field) is nowhere to be seen. We know that a Karstark lord will feature in Season 6, and previous rumors have placed Karstark soldiers in the battle fighting against the Boltons alongside the other Northerners. However, it makes sense to me that they would be absent from this photo. In A Dance with Dragons, the Karstarks are allied with the Boltons, so perhaps they’ll fight on the opposing side?
If any of you have ideas about which houses these banners belong to, let us know in the comments. There’s a lot of speculation fodder in this picture, assuming it really is a picture from the production and not a really elaborate Dagorhir battle.
Update by David: Is this a crannogman of House Reed? He is in green and on the short side.