HBO just dropped a majorly spoiler-happy promo image for Game of Thrones Season 6. Really, it seems like the network is done pretending and has decided to just give the game away. Take a look:
This image was tweeted by both the official Game of Thrones twitter account as well as HBO’s official account. There’s also a billboard in New York, so this is not a drill.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First up, it’s now clear that Season 6 will debut in April, although it was previously predicted that it might get pushed back to May on account of Vinyl, a new HBO show.
Next, the elephant in the room: the promo image shows a bloodied Jon Snow! This raises obvious questions. Well, one obvious question: why would HBO feature Jon Snow prominently in its very first promotional teaser if he’s going to spend the entire season dead? This seems like HBO’s admission of what everybody already knows: Jon Snow will be back. The cat’s actually been out of the bag for awhile, but it seems the pretense is now over, as well.
(I guess you could argue that the network is just reminding everyone of Jon Snow’s death to get people speculating about what’ll happen next. On the other hand: come on. Just come on.)