A deleted line from the latest Game of Thrones episode could hint at the White Walkers’ master plan
Is this how they’ll finally invade Westeros? – contains potential spoilers
While the people who make Game of Thrones are masters of keeping secrets, occasionally they’ll let something slip – and on those days the internet pounces.
This year we’ve already had costume designers inadvertently confirming long-awaited character meetings and sound engineers revealing the return of long-absent figures – and now even one of the series' own websites might have slipped up, revealing a line cut from season seven’s first episode Dragonstone that could have huge significance for the series.
This is your last chance to look away if you want to avoid any potential spoilers, gang.
You see, GameOfThrones.com does an official recap of every episode – and in their segment on scenes involving the Hound (Rory McCann) and the Brotherhood Without Banners, many have noticed an interesting tidbit.
Can you spot it? Describing the Hound’s vision in the episode (in which the troubled warrior sees the marching White Walkers approaching a castle by the sea, convincing him of the need to go north and fight them), the summary adds a line that wasn’t in the broadcast episode – “The waves are frozen.”
More like this
Now, this brings up all sorts of possibilities. In a different part of the episode, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) speculates that the White Walkers and their undead army will attempt to come through the Wall at Eastwatch-by-the-sea (as its nearest to where they saw the Walkers last), one of the many castles built on the Wall that divides Westeros from the wilds beyond.
And Eastwatch’s geographic location could give some clues as to what this deleted line may have been referring to. If you look at this map (below) you can see that Eastwatch is located right at the far end of the wall, right by the ocean (hence the “by-the-sea” suffix).
If the Hound’s vision is correct, it could be that we’re going to see the White Walkers actually FREEZE over a small area of the sea in that bay-like area (marked) to allow their army to just walk around the Wall, bypassing its magical defences at a stroke and allowing them into Westeros proper.
And if all this is true, then it’s clear why this line may have been cut from the finished episode – so as to avoid spoiling a pretty awesome scene for viewers that could come up in a future episode.
…which we may have just done anyway. Oh well – you can’t say we didn’t warn you.
Game of Thrones Season 7 premieres exclusively on Mondays on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV at 2am, repeated at 9pm on the same day
