While the Game of Thrones Season 7's fifth episode may have seemed like a mere bridge between the action-packed fourth installment and the climactic final two entries, it actually contained a staggering amount of game-changing information. But the most crucial detail was hidden in the Game Of Thrones Season 7, Episode 6 promo, and it may have been missed by the vast majority of viewers. While "Eastwatch" featured the return of Gendry, the confirmation of Rhaegar and Lyanna's wedding, and the revelation of Cersei's pregnancy, this one Easter egg may very well trump the rest when it comes to the show's endgame.
In the Season 7 premiere, as the Hound gazed into the flames at Thoros' bidding, he reported that he saw a vision that their destination was a mountain that "looked like an arrowhead." Well, the promo for Episode 6 gave viewers a glimpse of the geographical formation in question. The arrowhead mountain is apparently where Jon Snow and his "suicide squad" — Beric Dondarrion, Gendry, Jorah Mormont, Sandor Clegane, Thoros of Myr, and Tormund Giantsbane — are heading on their quest to kidnap a wight and take it south to King's Landing to prove to a disbelieving Cersei that the army of the dead is real.
But what's interesting about this particular mountain is that the Episode 6 promo isn't the first time it has been seen on the show. The same distinctive peak appeared in the background of a crucial scene in Season 6… although viewers might not remember or recognize it, considering that its surroundings looked markedly different back then. The scene was during one of Bran's greenseeing trips with the Three-Eyed Raven, when the Stark boy was shown the origins of the very first White Walker.
It was revealed that the icy demons were created by the Children of the Forest as a weapon to use in their war against the First Men. The ceremony — involving plunging a dragonglass dagger into the heart of a sacrificial man — took place within a Stonehenge-esque ring of rocks surrounding a giant weirwood tree. And hovering above it all, behind a picturesque waterfall, is the mountain that Jon & Co. are seen approaching in the Episode 6 promo.
If you look closely at the two photos, the scenes appear to be taking place on opposite sides of the mountain — and if Jon and his all-star team are approaching the mountain from the south, then that means the creation of the White Walkers took place just north of that same mountain. What's bizarre, then, is how lush and green everything appears in Bran's flashback; what viewers have always known as the snowy tundra north of the Wall appears to have once been a verdant land of much the same climate as the rest of Westeros.
It has been said that White Walkers bring the winter with them, and it appears that this isn't just a figure of speech. Several times on the show, the temperature appears to have literally gotten colder — breath misting, puddles freezing over — as White Walkers approached, in much the same way the dementors are depicted in the Harry Potter films. Given that the North apparently wasn't always a frozen tundra, as this picture tells us, it's probably reasonable to assume that the Children accidentally cursed the land with winter at the same time they created the White Walkers. In fact, was their ill-thought-out experiment what threw the seasons so out-of-whack in Westeros to begin with? Seems very likely.
The revelation that Jon is currently headed directly to the very place where White Walkers were first created is intriguing enough on its own… but it's not the only information the show has provided about the icy demons recently. In Episode 4, it was revealed that the Children of the Forest once drew designs in the caves on Dragonstone that are remarkably similar in appearance to the patterns used by the White Walkers when displaying the corpses of their victims.
None of these Easter eggs are coincidental; all of these connections between the Children and the White Walkers must be leading up to something that will have a big impact on the Great War to come. But what? For years, fans have speculated about what the White Walkers actually want; distilling the sprawling saga of Thrones down to a battle between the living and the one-dimensional dead seems antithetical to the way George R.R. Martin typically crafts multi-faceted villains and subverts standard fantasy tropes.
Given how far off of Martin's script the show has gotten at this point, it's almost impossible to tell where all these clues are leading. But the sheer amount of intel being dumped about the White Walkers lately foreshadows a major twist ahead, moving into the final season. If the Land Of Always Winter wasn't always winter… then what was there before? Perhaps finding out the answer to that question will be the key to defeating the White Walkers once and for all.
