Well, we finally got that Game of Thrones season 8 trailer we’ve been dying for, and naturally, we’re full of questions.
Most of the footage looks like it centers around the much-ballyhooed Battle of Winterfell. One action shot in particular, at 1:03, caught my eye: a warrior, seen in silhouette, swinging a sword. Who exactly is this mysterious individual? Let’s break it down!
First off, let’s see if we can identify the sword. As you can see below, the sword has a curved pommel:
Most swords, like the Valyrian steel sword Widow’s Wail, tend to have a straight pommel:
However, we know of at least one sword with a curved pommel: Oathkeeper, the sword Jaime Lannister gave to Brienne of Tarth back in season 4:
So the most obvious answer is that the silhouetted figure is Brienne. The armor looks close enough to the heavy plate she usually wears, and her hair is just long enough to flick through the air as it does in the shot in question:
Do we even need to consider anyway else? Maybe. Immediately after that shot, we get a shot of Jaime in the heat of battle looking distraught:
Both shots look to be lit by burning fires. Is the trailer cutting closer to the silhouetted figure to show us who it is, or is it indeed Brienne and Jaime is reacting to whatever she’s doing? Or maybe the shots are unrelated and HBO is playing editing tricks.
Let’s entertain the possibility that the silhouetted figure is Jaime. We got a new look at him a few weeks back when HBO released a new cache of images from season 8:
That hair is certainly long enough now to swing about in a pitched battle, and that armor matches the heavy plate we see in the silhouette. The sword’s the rub. Jaime has insisted that Brienne keep Oathkeeper, so there’s no reason for him to be wielding it. Plus, he was using Widow’s Wail in season 7 and presumably brought it north. Unless he lost it along the way, there’d be no need to borrow Brienne’s Valyrian steel blade when he has his own. We heard a while back that Jaime and Brienne would fight the army of the dead together in season 8, and the trailer seems to back this up.
On the other hand, maybe Jaime has picked up Brienne’s sword because she’s — perish the thought — fallen in battle, or at least too wounded to ride out.
UPDATE: And now HBO has thrown in its two cents with this tweet:
So HBO is associating this silhouette with Jaime. So it IS Jaime, unless they’re just referring to the close-up. What do all of you think?
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