HOTD Musings

[The Dragon Demands]

8 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I guess they haven't been asleep for thousands of years, then.

I made a thread on this that didn’t get approved yet but the short version…maybe they never left. Remember the Black Gate at the Nightfort.

• At first it seemed that Craster's sacrifices to the Others were tolerated because the Watch was in decline and needed a friendly outpost...but then at the Nighfort we saw there's a secret magical gate through the Wall that will only open for members of the Watch.
• First Night was very strong in lands close to the Wall and produced a lot of excess bastards. The theory is that this was in fact used to produce a surplus to give as sacrifices to the Others...conducted in secret through the Nighfort's secret gate. 
• Now from HotD, we get the revelation that the Targaryens came to Westeros in the first place to stop the White Walkers...and ended up provoking them. Motivated by a prophetic dream in a closed time loop of Greek tragedy (Hodor). 
• Thus the White Walkers never went FULLY dormant, but at least some scouts were around to accept the sacrifices. The Targaryens put an end to First Night AND the sacrifices (the real reason Nighfort was closed) which angered the White Walkers (the scouts roused all of them)
• Why didn't they attack immediately after 58 AC when Alysanne banned those? Well....it's possible that their scouts return cyclically, like for a generation every hundred years. When you look at the list of 8 legends Old Nan told Bran about the Night Fort, they all seem to imply that the White Walkers were still active ever since (particularly "the Thing That Came In The Night" heavily implies that child sacrifice happened every 100 years, and lines up with that the Night King allegedly ruled 100 years after the Wall was founded). 
• Thus it's possible that they were simply in a "dormant" phase when the Nightfort was shut down, so their reaction wasn't immediate....combined with the fact that the Targaryens were then at the height of their power, with a large number of dragons, and they're particularly vulnerable to dragon-fire.
• So why didn't they come back as soon as the last dragon died? Well, the Targaryens still had EGGS, and could potentially hatch them. Several kings since then thought it was entirely possible to restore the dragons....culminating in the Tragedy at Summerhall, when Aegon V's last big attempt to hatch the remaining dragon eggs ended in disaster. That was a mere 40 years ago....and Craster's been sacrificing baby sons to the Others for around that long (though he might have started before Summerhall). 
• Consider that the White Walkers' return wasn't just flipping a switch but took time: the wildlings "stirring" beyond the Wall in reaction to their gradual return took a couple of years prior to AGoT itself, it took time for Mance to unite them all in reaction to that. 
• Hard to say but if the Children of the Forest with greensight are any indication, it's possible the White Walkers know a decent amount of what's going on south of the Wall (if the theory they can touch Bran's and Euron's dreams is true). So Summerhall might have roused them...and PARTICULARLY the fall of the Targaryens in Robert's Rebellion. With no Targaryens or known eggs left IN WESTEROS, they'd have thought the time was right to come back with no dragons, dragon eggs, or even people who knew how to hatch dragon eggs in Westeros anymore....not realizing that the last Targaryen, Daenerys, would survive on a different continent and end up hatching preserved eggs there.

Edited September 9 by The Dragon Demands

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

10 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I made a thread on this that didn’t get approved yet but the short version…maybe they never left

It's definitely possible. But since the show has its own separate canon, we can't be sure if it means anything for the books.

[The Dragon Demands]

It depends on what exactly the show is going to say

I mean...purely as a hypothetical...what if they have someone outright say in Season 2, "We used to use the Nighfort's secret gate to sacrifice First Night babies to the White Walkers to placate them, but Jaehaerys & Alysanne shut that down, and they've been increasingly active and restless ever since"???

Even this COULD be pure fanfiction, based on theories circulating online or even just Condal's own theories....but...it's a pretty well-crafted one that would align with book info. 

Yes we need to be vigilant to avoid the assumptions we made in early Game of Thrones that "surely, D&D are only doing things GRRM approved of" (dear god, how hyped we got when we first saw the Night King however briefly in Season 4, that this must by definition be a book revelation). 

We...shall see....

Best case scenario of course is that GRRM outright admits in interviews during Season 2, "this is true in the books", just as he did with Aegon the Conqueror's prophetic dream.

Edited September 9 by The Dragon Demands

[The Dragon Demands]

Intriguing new info from IMDB: we already knew that Maddie Evans, who played the handmaid Dyana that Aegon II assaulted, is returning in Season 2. But she's in maybe 4 out of 8 episodes - that surprised me.

It lists that she's in episodes 1, 3, 5, and 6 - "episode 1" might be in error as that's often a placeholder on IMDB corrected later.

The only through-line I can think of is that episodes 3 and 5 will feature those extensive street processions through King's Landing, that we saw filmed in Caceres. 

My running guess was already that she just left to work at a tavern or something in Flea Bottom. Some theorize she's actually in episode 1 and will tell Blood & Cheese the schedule inside the Red Keep. Others, that she's working on the "Cock's Inn" tavern where Aegon will celebrate Aemond's "victory" over Luke in episode 1. Uncertain.

[The Bard of Banefort]

There haven’t been any sightings of Jace’s actor on the Wall set, right? So it’s possible that he doesn’t even go to the Wall and that this is all for a brief scene establishing the WW, not unlike those interspersed in the first few seasons of GOT.

[Thomaerys Velaryon]

30 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

There haven’t been any sightings of Jace’s actor on the Wall set, right?

We have no sightings of filming at the Wall set, only the set being built. So there is no way to tell if Jace is involved or not in this storyline as of yet.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I thought they were almost done filming?

[The Dragon Demands]

EXTERIOR on-location filming wrapped at Bourne Wood on September 1st, but INTERIOR filming at Leavesden Studios will continue through the last week of September. We won't get nearly as many spy photos from interior filming, though.

Edited September 10 by The Dragon Demands

[The Dragon Demands]

Whatever they're doing with the Wall/Night's Watch/White Walkers, it's not a minor thing. 

...I can't rule out if it's a flashback, but if it is, it's a HUGE flashback - the amount of resources they're pouring into this, building a physical Wall set and filming on-location with mounted rangers when they could have just done it on the virtual set. 

Some have suggested it could be a really long flashback to the Night's King, 13th Lord Commander of the Watch. That is intriguing and I can't rule it out.

We haven't seen any actors tied to these scenes yet to establish it's happening in the present day.

Still....for myself, I won't believe it's a flashback until something suggests that.

[The Bard of Banefort]

We may roll our eyes at it, but I feel like a lot of casual viewers would be over the moon if they caught a glimpse of the Night King. It would make for a great marketing strategy, even if it’s misleading. I definitely expect them to hype Winterfell in the trailers.

[The Dragon Demands]

A new thought: it's possible that Jace & Cregan don't, necessarily, see White Walkers or wights or EVEN GO TO THE WALL...

....but that it's a "flashback"...to JAEHAERYS shutting down the Nightfort. Ending the secret baby sacrifices. Stopping First Night (in a season with the Dragonseeds, there's a strong chance they'll introduce First Night in Season 2). 

Then the camera turns and we see White Walkers and their zombies snarling from the tree-line at night when they realize their sacrifice isn't coming. 

THEN Cregan just has to TELL Jace, in Winterfell, "yeah the wildlings are getting restless, as if they're spooked by some danger rising beyond the Wall again". 

We HAVE heard rumors of Jaehaerys flashbacks in Season 2, we just don't have any idea what they are.

[Back in Black-Snow]

Apparently Episode 1 is being titled A Son for a Son?

I don't know why they just don't title it Blood and Cheese. Only the avid book readers would be spoiled by it.

Edited September 16 by Back in Black-Snow
to add

[The Bard of Banefort]

14 hours ago, Back in Black-Snow said:

Apparently Episode 1 is being titled A Son for a Son?

I don't know why they just don't title it Blood and Cheese. Only the avid book readers would be spoiled by it.

I think that’s probably just a rumor, since Jaehaerys’ funeral is in the third episode IIRC. I don’t think there’d be an episode gap in between, but I could be wrong.

[The Dragon Demands]

On 9/16/2023 at 7:46 AM, Back in Black-Snow said:

Apparently Episode 1 is being titled A Son for a Son?

I don't know why they just don't title it Blood and Cheese. Only the avid book readers would be spoiled by it.

We think Blood and Cheese actually happens in episode 2, so it might be the title of episode 2. Episode 1 will have Daemon say “a son for a son” as he seeks out blood and cheese.

[Lord Varys]

7 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

We think Blood and Cheese actually happens in episode 2, so it might be the title of episode 2. Episode 1 will have Daemon say “a son for a son” as he seeks out blood and cheese.

Yeah, I imagine the first episode will include a lot of debates how to answer the apparent murder of Luke at the hands of Aemond.

[The Dragon Demands]

I was previously in error on the info we have about certain scenes, some things I thought were mid-season around episode 4 are actually more like episode 7 or 8 :

• Daemon surveying the growing river-lord army at Harrenhal
• Rhaena arriving at the Eyrie

I honestly can't tell even from this update if the Battle by the Lakeshore will happen this season, next season, or has been cut entirely (or drastically reduced in scale). I'm leaning towards it was pushed to Season 3 but that's just a guess.

The running theory now is that Season 2 finale ends with the BEGINNING of the Battle of the Gullet, which we then see in the Season 3 premiere - but that's just a guess. 

Interior filming should end this Friday. Scheduled filming, that is. HBO openly said they'd come back for over a month of reshoots based on rewrites....AFTER this WGA strike ends. Whenever that is...

[The Dragon Demands]

Ah, good news, the WGA finally had a breakthrough in strike negotiations with the studios....one week before HotD Season 2 principle photography ends.

Well, it's not over yet, but they said they're having lawyers write up the fine details, could take a bit longer:

https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/writers-strike-wga-amptp-contract-talks-2-1235733340/

[biosnake20]

 

[The Dragon Demands]

I can confirm that Tom Taylor is Cregan Stark. The spy reporters from HouseTheDragon, HotDCroatia, RealmOfTheDragon, and Redaniian Intelligence showed me materials on their private Discord server that I can't discuss in public. But suffice to say that these are the same people that broke that Amanda Collin has been cast as Jeyne Arryn:
 

 

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

I'll admit I was expecting someone a bit gruffer (not to mention a good deal hairier) for Cregan.