Callbacks and Easter Eggs in “The Dragon and the Wolf”

As always, the latest episode of Game of Thrones was thick with little details and callbacks to past events in the series. Let’s catalog some of the callbacks and Easter Eggs in “The Dragon and the Wolf,” the season 7 finale.

Let’s start with the simple stuff. Game of Thrones loves to reference prior episodes with its framing, and that happened a couple of times in “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Most obviously, the shot of Sansa and Arya making peace on the Winterfell ramparts directly mirrored the moment from “The Winds of Winter” when Sansa and Jon talked out a few of their issues.

We also had some similar framing when the heroes of Blackwater Bay — Tyrion, Bronn, and Podrick Payne — reunited for their walk to the Dragonpit.

And finally, while this wasn’t a reference to a past episode, Game of Thrones was trying really hard to draw parallels between Rhaegar/Lyanna on the one hand and Daenerys/Jon Snow on the other.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, flip the hair color, and add incest, and you’ve got another potentially disastrous romance on your hands.

Let’s zoom out a bit and take a look at the army of the dead as they march over the ruins of the Wall at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea — that’s them in the image at the top of the post. Here it is again, lightened:

Some fans have noticed what they see as a peculiar shape in that formation: the Stark direwolf, if it was flipped so it faces left instead of right.

Is this purposeful, or are we seeing things? Either way: eerie.

Speaking of the army of the dead, you may have (but probably didn’t) notice a couple members of British band Bastille among its number, including its tour manager…

…and keyboardist Kyle Simmons.

So Ed Sheeran was in the premiere and Bastille was in the finale, although Sheeran definitely got more of a spotlight. Incidentally, there were reports of Bastille maybe making a cameo in season 7 months ago, but the band members denied it — that’s a strategy that works on this show.

A couple more quick ones before we wrap up with a whopper:

• Cersei is shipping in soldiers fro the Golden Company to fight for her. Back in season 4, Jorah Mormont revealed to Daenerys that he worked for the Golden Company before signing on with Viserys. Might he have an in with somebody there?
• While talking with Jon in the Dragonpit, Daenerys breaks out her High Valyrian. I won’t try to spell what she says, but it translates to “A dragon is not a slave.” It’s the exact same thing she said to Master Kraznys before she burned him alive way back in season 3’s “And Now His Watch Is Ended.”

Finally, Redditors like thaCleaner and Relyson have come up with an interesting theory: was Bran spying on everyone in Winterfell (and particularly Littlefinger) this whole season?

As the theory goes, if you listen carefully, you can hear ravens quorking during several key moments, including when Arya is searching Littlefinger’s room in “Eastwatch”…

…and when Littlefinger is stirring the pot between Sansa and Littlefinger in “Beyond the Wall.” Listen for the quork after he says “I don’t know” at 0:04.

So what does this mean? We know that Bran sees and hears things through ravens when he wargs into them — we’ve seen him send them beyond the Wall as scouts. But there’s nothing preventing him from setting a few to work keeping tabs on people at Winterfell. So when Sansa approached him in “The Dragon and the Wolf,” he would have been ready with the dirt.

What Easter Eggs and callbacks did we miss? Sound off below!

Next: Did Tormund Giantsbane survive the season 7 finale? Star Kristofer Hivju weighs in

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h/t Independent, NME