‘Game of Thrones’ Series Finale, “The Iron Throne”: 5 Clues and Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

For years we’ve known that Jon Snow’s mission in life was to face down the Night King’s Army and to protect the realm from the Army of the Dead. He did so by uniting the Wildlings, Northerners, Knights of the Vale, Dothraki, Unsullied, and Daenerys’s dragons against that Army. Love or hate the strategy behind the Battle of Winterfell, without everyone giving it their all, Arya Stark wouldn’t have been able to make it to kill the Night King. She landed the killing blow, but Jon’s years of dogged diplomatic work and in field military experience set it up.

However, Jon Snow wasn’t meant to just save the realm from the invading force of ice, but fire as well.

In the end, Daenerys, the Dragon Queen, represented as existential a threat to the survival of Westeros as the Night King did. While he impersonally strove to convert the living to the dead, she passionately pursued the Iron Throne, resulting in the deaths of thousands, if not millions. When she explains that she intends to repeat this “liberation” across the world, Jon realizes that they’re not actually on the same team. She wants to burn the world and rebuild it as she sees fit, much like the Night King wanted to engulf everything in ice to create his own version of perfection.

So Jon had to kill Dany, and in doing so with a simple dagger to the heart, this kill mirrors how Arya took down the Night King. Just as the Night King’s story began and ended by a Heart Tree, Daenerys and House Targaryen fell next to the Iron Throne.

You may not like it, but hey, the symbolism is there, and it tracks. The Dragon Queen was to fire what the Night King was to ice.

Over the weekend, we shared a list of 13 characters we wanted to see return in the Game of Thrones finale. One of these was Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies), Catelyn’s ne’er-do-well brother. Never forget that the Red Wedding was his wedding, and the last we saw of him, he had caved to Jaime Lannister’s request to surrender the family home of Riverrun.

So what happened to him next? Well, it looks like not much, or at least, enough to make him think that in this age of heroes, he’s fit to serve as king. Edmure served up one of the few intentionally funny moments in last night’s finale when he stupidly started to offer himself up as a candidate to rule only to be cooly put in place by his own niece, Sansa.

This isn’t the first time Edmure has been the laughing stock of the Stark/Tully clan. Never forget Cat’s face when he failed to shoot a flaming arrow at their father’s funeral barge.

Of course, Edmure’s return had another subtle political significance…which we’ll get to next.

Another character we were hoping to see pop up in the finale? Robin Arryn, the small, Moon Door-obsessed child lord of the Vale. Robin did indeed show up and his appearance might have been the biggest twist of the night because…Robin got hot?

Actor Lino Facioli has been playing Robin ever since Season 1 of Game of Thrones, and somewhere between Season 6 and now, he’s had a massive IRL growth spurt. Instead of looking a raggedy and sniveling little boy, he’s lounging in his chair like the hot jock in high school French.

Of course, this only means that Twitter was juggling a bunch of theories as to how he grew up so well. Was it his mother’s insistence on breast feeding that gave him the nutrients to thrive, or did introducing solids (and taking away Littlefinger) have that great of an impact on his digestive system?

Also, Robin’s glow up has deeper political ramifications. We can joke that he’s now Westeros’s most eligible bachelor, but his appearance on that final council, along with the Stark children, and Edmure Tully represents a quiet victory for one of the the forgotten houses in Westeros. Never forget that Sansa, Arya, and Bran are also half Tully. The fact that Catelyn’s family has survived this tumultuous chapter in history is a small triumph that would have meant a lot to the family-oriented Cat.

In last night’s Game of Thrones series finale, Arya Stark tells her siblings that she’s going to sail west of Westeros, to see what’s beyond the edge of the maps. Apparently no one has ever done this before, except…someone might have.

This past winter, George RR Martin published an original work entitled Fire & Blood. It’s an in-universe historic record of the first half of the Targaryen dynasty. Rhaena Targaryen was the eldest daughter of Aenys I Targaryen and would have perhaps been queen had her siblings Jaeherys and Alysanne not strategized their own ascension. Rhaena’s own story is super interesting, in part because it seems that the great love of her life was her second husband’s sister, Elissa Farman.

Elissa Farman lived with Rhaena on Dragonstone for a while, but her life, her love and her true lady was the sea. Elissa longed to sail west of Westeros, and she was so desperate to do so that it seems she stole three dragon eggs from Dragonstone. She snuck them across the Narrow Sea to Pentos where she sold them in exchange for the money to create the greatest ship of its age, the Sun Chaser.

The Sun Chaser was chased by some Hightower ships before it slipped far, far into the horizon. Years later, another great mariner of the age, Corlys Velaryon swore he saw an old, weathered version of the Sun Chaser in the ports of Asshai. If so, Elissa sailed around the world from Westeros to the easternmost lands. Here’s hoping Arya can do the same. It would be embarrassing if after slaying the Night King she wound up just sailing off the edge of the world.

(Also, George RR Martin has teased that some of the spin-offs in pre-production have their inspiration in Fire & Blood, so maybe we’re not getting an Arya Stark “West of Westeros” series, but an Elissa Farman one.)

We know that clothes play a huge symbolic role in Game of Thrones, and Sansa Stark’s coronation costume is full of little symbols and clever Easter eggs that reflect her journey and where she’s going next. Her crown, like her throne, have wolves on them. What’s interesting is when she sits, it looks like she is surrounded by a pack of protective wolves. Contrast that to Cersei’s singular lion motif.

For the first time since we met her in Season 1, Sansa is wearing a grayish blue gown. The gray is a Stark color, and the bluish tones evoke the dress she made herself as a girl in Winterfell. Her sleeves are decorated with what looks like autumnal leaves, but in fact, they are the leaves of a Heart Tree. This suggests that in addition to being independent, the North is going to officially recognize the old gods.

Finally, even Sansa’s hair is sort of an historic Easter egg. Many fans have noted that she looks a lot like Queen Elizabeth I at her own coronation. Anthony Oliveira even notes that Elizabeth wore her hair down “to signal sexual purity, in open hostility to those who said her sexual abuse ruined her.” If Sansa is evoking this same strategy, she is reclaiming herself, and positioning her reign as one of renewal. Her dress, again, evokes not winter, but spring.

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