Last week, HBO finally dropped a teaser trailer for Game of Thrones season 8. You’ve probably watched it a hundred times, but once more won’t hurt:
There no new footage in the teaser, but it definitely increased my hype level. First, a frozen mist, likely representative of the Night King and his army of the dead, sweeps out of the north and creeps over Aegon the Conqueror’s map table at Dragonstone, enveloping direwolf and dragon map markers representing House Stark and House Targaryen respectively.
Next, fire blazes up in the south and engulfs the Lannister lion map marker as it races north:
While the fire likely represents the Night King and his dead followers, the fire probably represents Daenerys Targaryen and her living followers. It’s fire vs ice, the living vs the dead, the battle we’ve been waiting for.
Fire and ice clash at the three forks of the Trident river, the same area where Robert Baratheon killed Rhaegar Targaryen — Jon’s father and Daenerys’ brother — at the Ruby Ford during the War of the Usurper. That was a key moment in Westerosi history. Will another happen at the same place? (Also, the Inn at the Crossroads is just northwest of here. Thoughts and prayers for Hot Pie, y’all.)
Anyway, as ice meets fire, a jagged wall is born from the collision, running east to west across the middle of the continent. Some fans are saying that this is a wall of obsidian, known to the people of Westeros as dragonglass, which in our world forms when lava from a volcano cools rapidly. In other words, when fire meets ice. The going theory is that this could become the new Wall, the old one having been breached by the Night King and his undead dragon mount.
Here’s what the newly formed Westeros would look like with an obsidian Wall dividing it down the middle, from Dragonstone (the official name of this teaser, by the way) to the Ironman’s Bay.
The new North would extend from the Lands of Always Winter, past the broken Wall, and down into the Riverlands. This is the land the Night King and his army would inhabit.
And here’s the south of Westeros, where the living would make their new home.
Under this theory, the living would be giving up a ton of land, and any Northerners who survived the war would have to get used to the warm weather down south. I suppose it would beat extinction, and since dragonglass is one the few things that can kill a White Walker, a Wall made of the stuff would obviously be an effective way to keep the White Walkers and their wights from ever crossing into the realm of the living, again.
Of course, this theory takes the symbolism in the teaser trailer very literally. HBO may have just thought it looked cool. What do you think? Is the teaser hinting that a new Wall will rise in season 8? Would that make for a satisfying end to this story? Or are we just overanalyzing every detail of this thing because it’s been way too long since we’ve had new episodes of Game of Thrones in our lives?
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h/t Quartermaester
