Hi. Have you watched the Season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones yet? If not, watch out, because this post is gonna get real spoilery.
I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from the small heart attack I had when the Umber boy came back as a wight.
Me when the umber boy started screaming #GameofThrones
I could talk all day about how great this shot was, where you saw his eyes open in the background.
Anyway, lots of people have noticed the recurring spiral pattern on the wall that the White Walkers tend to leave behind.
Fire and ice 👻 #GameofThronesSeason8 the poor umber boy 🥴🙄🤥
According to this clever fan theory/prediction by Redditor zyuko22, that spiral — particularly in the scene with the Umber boy — might have foreshadowed how the Night King will be defeated.
The theory from zyuko22 points out that we saw the spiral back in the scene where the Children of the Forest created the first White Walker.
That spiral surrounded a weirwood tree, similar to the one in Winterfell or the one where Bran met the Three-Eyed Raven. The Children bound a man to the tree and stabbed him with dragonglass, turning him into a White Walker.
But the Children and the White Walkers have both inscribed another symbol in various locations throughout Westeros: a circle with a line through it.
Fans speculate that this symbol represents the Gods Eye, a huge lake in southern Westeros. At the center of that lake is the Isle of Faces, the spot where the Children supposedly signed their peace treaty with the First Men...and guess what? It's one huge grove of weirwood trees.
So, zyuko22 theorizes that the spiral represents the Grand Weirwood Tree, a sort of "heart" of all the weirwoods in Westeros, that is located in the Gods Eye and is the source of all the magical power of the weirwoods, and therefore of the Children of the Forest (and by extension, the White Walkers).
So when Beric plunged his flaming sword into the Umber boy and the entire spiral burst into flames, it COULD foreshadow the possibility that they will have to burn down the Grand Weirwood in order to kill the Night King and defeat the White Walkers for good.
Most likely, our buddy Jon will have to learn some of that Beric Dondarrion fire magic and plunge his flaming sword into the tree. But what kind of damage would that cause?
If Bran, now the Three-Eyed Raven, contains the magic of the Children and/or the weirwood, will destroying the tree kill him?
There's also the question of why the White Walkers would drop such a big hint on how to destroy them. Zyuko22 theorizes that they don't know what the symbols mean and are just marking their territory. I think it's possible that the Walkers are suffering, and are hoping to get the Prince That Was Promised to put them out of their misery, or else to march down there themselves.
