Catch up with last season’s ‘Game’ moves
HBO’s Game of Thrones premieres its seventh season Sunday (9 ET/PT), which is great news for fans — if they can remember what happened last year.
From hundreds of deaths to revelations about the White Walkers to new alliances, Season 6 was incredibly dense. If you don’t have time to catch up on the most-recent season before Sunday’s big premiere, here are six key points you should remember. 1. MANY, MANY WERE KILLED Was the sixth season the deadliest in the series’ history? It depends on how many nameless casualties you count, but the writers certainly dispensed with many of the antagonists over the course of 10 episodes.
In the finale, Margaery, her brother Loras, fundamentalist leader the High Sparrow, Lannister relatives Kevan and Lancel and more were killed in the explosion at the Sept, Septa Unella was contained for her long punishment from Cersei and King Tommen committed suicide. Jon and Sansa dealt with Ramsay in the Battle of the Bastards. Dany killed a group of Khals in the East, as well as two of the three Wise Masters of Slaver’s Bay that had been plaguing her. Arya killed the Waif, and later Walder Frey. 2. JON, CERSEI AND DAENERYS HAVE THE MOST POWER With all those players taken off the board, the game of thrones has gotten much smaller. Jon was declared King in the North after he took Winterfell back from the Boltons. After the Sept explosion and Tommen’s suicide, Cersei was crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, unopposed. Dany managed to ally herself with the grieving Olenna Tyrell, the Sand Snakes of Dorne and Yara and Theon Greyjoy, while gaining a new army after burning Vaes Dothrak to the ground.
There’s one more pesky wan- nabe king that could cause problems: their uncle Euron. He won control of the Iron Islands over Yara at the Kingsmoot midway through the season and wanted to ally himself with Dany. Yara and Theon got there first (using his ships), but Euron is still alive and potentially a threat. 3. BRAN CAN TIME-TRAVEL AND HAS CHANGED THE PAST After a certain Season 6 episode, we were never able to think of the phrase “hold the door” in the same way again. We discovered Bran has more powers than we knew, such as visiting the past. At first, he appeared to just be an ob- server, but a fateful encounter revealed that he could change it.
In the finale, Bran witnessed the birth of Jon, who is revealed to be the son of Ned’s sister, Lyanna Stark (who dies soon afterward) and Rhaegar Targaryen, making him Dany’s nephew, Sansa’s cousin, and potentially the strongest claimant to the Iron Throne (although still a bastard). Bran, who is now the mythic Three-Eyed Raven, is the only person who knows this, it seems. 4. SOME CHARACTERS ARE MIA Brienne of Tarth and her trusty squire Podrick Payne have not been seen since the eighth episode of Season 6, when they rowed away from Riverrun after Jaime took the keep.
Also missing is Melisandre, whom Jon banished from the North after her part in burning Shireen at the stake came to light, and the Hound, who got off the bench after his idyllic retirement to a community of do-gooder peasants was violently ripped away from him. His reappearance reminds us that Beric Dondarrion and the Brotherhood Without Banners are still around. 5. EVERYONE ELSE IS A WILDCARD What happens in Game of
Thrones when you’re not one of the major players anymore? That’s the question Arya, Sansa, Jaime and Littlefinger will confront in the new season.
When we last saw Arya, she was finally back in Westeros and she had crossed off another entry on her vengeance to-do list. Sansa was present for Jon’s ascendancy to King in the North, but Littlefinger was whispering in her ear again and she seemed a tad resentful when he didn’t share credit. Jaime, too, was not overjoyed at Cersei’s coup d’etat, possibly because she unleashed the wildfyre. 6. THE WHITE WALKERS ARE STILL A HUGE PROBLEM In the excitement of Cersei’s coup and Dany’s voyage, it may have been easy to forget that the White Walkers are behind the Wall. We learned, with the reappearance of Benjen Stark that the White Walkers can’t cross it because of ancient magic. Sam and Gilly went to Oldtown to learn more about them, and Sam gained a Valyrian steel sword along the way — one of the few weapons that will kill a White Walker. Jon and Brienne also have Valyrian swords. We also learned, during one of Bran’s trips to the past, that the ancient Children of the Forest created the White Walkers as a weapon to fight man. It worked a little too well.