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Warning: SPOILERS coming soon for Game of thrones season 8, episode 1, "Winterfell"
The king of the night left a sinister message in the Game of thrones season 8 premiere, with a spiral design that we saw in the show before. In one of the last scenes of "Winterfell", Tormund and Beric meet Jon's old friend "Dolorous" Edd Tollett at Last Hearth, House Umber's ancestral home. Unfortunately, the only shade they found was the young Ned Umber, who was impaled on a wall in the center of a frightful spiral of cut limbs.
To make matters worse, Ned Umber was not dead but undead: he became a warrior of the king of the night. Beric put him out of his misery with his flaming sword, also setting the spiral on fire. It's been a while since the last season of Game of thrones, so you might be forgiven for not remembering it, but this spiral has actually been in the show many times. In season 3, Jon encountered horses belonging to the Night Watch, cut and stored in a similar spiral. Jon also saw the same spiral pattern engraved on the walls of the Dragonstone Caves.
Related: Game Of Thrones: What Arya Wants to Make by Gendry
The spiral pattern was originally attributed to the children of the forest, the ancient breed that guided Bran in Game of thrones season 6. In the episode "The Door", Bran sees a vision of the forest children stabbing a man (played especially by the same actor who plays the king of the night, Vladimir Furdik) with a dragonglbad dagger and apparently creating the first White Walker. The white walkers themselves then took the spiral as one of their symbols, using it as a means of displaying the bodies of their victims, including poor Ned Umber.
Here are some examples of the spiral we saw before – starting with the horses shot north of the wall:
Here is a spiral of stones surrounding the woodland tree where the children of the forest created the king of the night:
Here is the spiral among rock drawings on Dragonstone. The White Walkers also disposed of the bodies in the form of another symbol from these caves:
So what is the meaning of the spirals? We know that they were originally used by the children of the forest and that they were later adopted by the White Walkers. There is animosity between these two factions, so it is highly likely that the king of nights and his cohorts use the symbols of the forest children in their horrific acts of violence as a kind of blasphemy against their creators. However, there are also other theories.
Some fans have hypothesized that the symbols have powerful magical properties and that ritual sacrifices are used to advance the southern cold, essentially evoking the winter. Another theory is that the king of the night is a former Targaryen (a theory reinforced by the fact that he is able to drive a dragon) and that the spirals are somehow related to a similar pattern in the sigil of the Targaryen:
We can learn more about the precise meaning and history of the spiral over the past five episodes of Game of thrones, or it may just remain an intriguing aspect of Westerosi's story that has never been further developed. One thing is certain: if Jon and Daenerys can not stop King Night and his army, more terrible spiral symbols are on the horizon.
More: Game Of Thrones: Why Jon Snow Is The Rightful Ruler Of Westeros, Not Dany
Game of thrones returns to HBO at 9pm on Sunday, April 21st.
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