The North remembers and so do “Game of Thrones” screenwriters.
“Stormborn,” the second episode in Season 7, was chock-full of callbacks to scenes and details shared throughout the series’ six-year run. Some are obvious: The episode kicks off by showing Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) at her family’s ancestral home of Dragonstone as a storm ? much like the one that earned Dany her first nickname, her Council notes ? rages outside.
Later, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) reads a message from Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) containing a phrase Jon remembers him using years ago as a peace offering: “All dwarves are bastards in their fathers’ eyes.” And Arya (Maisie Williams) even reunites with Hot Pie (Ben Hawkey)!
But other echoes of the past were all over the place. As much as they remind us how far the Starks, Lannisters, Targaryens and all their friends and enemies have come ? as the series’ final episodes approach quicker than we’d like them to ? they make us wonder whether there’s a bit of foreshadowing going on, too.
Here are a few you might’ve missed.
Cersei (Lena Headey) tests a crossbow that’s a bigger, badder version of the one Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) had.
She also uses it to shoot an arrow through a dead creature’s eye socket, just like Joffrey once did to impress Margaerey (Natalie Dormer). Perhaps most memorably, Joffrey used his crossbow to murder a woman who betrayed Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen). We’ll see what Cersei decides to do with hers.
Arya repeats herself as she realizes Nymeria has an independent spirit much like her own.
In Season 1, Arya rebukes her father’s plan for her future by simply telling him, “No. That’s not me.” In Season 7, Nymeria walks away from Arya’s invitation to venture north to Winterfell, apparently because doing what other people want her to do is not the direwolf’s jam, either.
But we wouldn’t have recognized this if it weren’t for a handy explanatory video from the “Game of Thrones” showrunners, who obviously wanted us to appreciate the reference.
