And the reactions to the teasers for Game of Thrones Season 6 were…

…positive! All these sneak-peaks into what’s to come have worked fans into a lather.

The teaser HBO released last week, featuring new dialogue between Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven, was the more well-received of the two, which makes sense, since it was designed specifically to tease Season 6. Readers picked up on the double-meaning of Bran’s final line (“They have no idea what’s going to happen”) being both a forecast of doom for the characters and a light prod at book-readers who can no longer rely on the source material to predict what’s coming. Several commenters are hoping that we find out about the Three-Eyed Raven’s history, and I loved FeralSmurf’s idea about why Jaime’s surprise amputation made an appearance in the montage of images Bran sees during his training: Jaime lost the hand that pushed Bran out the window, so that event is significant to Bran. I hadn’t thought of that.

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Going back to the point about book-readers no longer knowing what’s coming, there was a debate in the comments about whether it would be preferable for The Winds of Winter to come out before or after Season 6 finished. I wonder: does the secondary meaning of Bran’s comment—that book-readers won’t be able to predict Season 6—mean that Winds is more likely to come out after Season 6 has wrapped? After all, if it came out beforehand, people would have some idea what’s coming.

It’s possible I’m overthinking this, but as commenter kadoe pointed out, that’s kind of what Game of Thrones fans do.

Next, the snippets of new Game of Thrones footage from HBO’s Yearender video:

This footage was thrown onto a massive trailer for HBO’s 2016 season rather than carefully strung together to tease Game of Thrones Season 6, so fans were a bit less enthusiastic about the Yearender video than they were about the teaser trailer.

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Still, new footage is new footage, and discussions were had. Commenter $Bill took an interesting angle on the scene between Cersei and Tommen, both of whom are wearing black clothing. I’m going to reproduce his comment because it vaguely lines up with what I’ve hoped will happen to Cersei’s character.

"I agree that she probably got the news about Marcella’s death. Lots of fans think that Cersei will be defiant and vengeful going forward, but, I’m still of the belief that the experience she went through with her imprisonment and walk of shame broke her in some way. I don’t think she will be quite the same going forward. And it would be very much like GRRM to turn her character into a sympathetic one."

Cersei seemed more subdued to me at the end of A Dance with Dragons, so I was hoping for something along these lines. Realistically, this scenario seems less likely than it used to, now that we saw the look of cold fury in Cersei’s eye after she completed her walk on the show. We’ll see.

We’ll ALL see, come April (or before, depending on what happens with The Winds of Winter). And because HBO seems determined to tease the season early this year, we may be able to form some ideas beforehand.