Game Of Thrones Season 8: WILL The Dead Starks Rise From Winterfell Crypt?

Why Jon Stark's vision of the dead kings and beheaded statues might mean something GREAT...

Dead Starks Direwolves
HBO

While the second episode of Game Of Thrones' final season was a delightful, character-building, relationship-celebrating joy, it was hard not to feel completely on edge for the entire thing. This was, after all the end of the first act of the finale season and the prelude to the Biggest Battle Ever In The History Of Game Of Thrones TM.

If you felt like everyone was on the brink of something terrible happening to them, it's because they literally do. There's an army of wights and White Walkers outside the doors and they don't plan on knocking gently. And their army is set to be swelled even further by the Dothraki and the Unsullied who inevitably fall to them. Cut off one head and another grows.

And if all of that wasn't bad enough, there's the whole issue of the Crypt, where Dany and Jon have decided their innocent non-combatants should safely hide while the battle rages. You know, the Crypt where there are dead people. You know, dead people who the Night King could raise... Oh no.

So could that happen? Yes, very probably. But will it be a bad thing? Not necessarily.

Here's your deep dive into the perils of the the Winterfell Crypt, why it might all go differently to how we imagine and why it might all be misdirection. Featuring headless revived Starks, symbolic statues and Bran the Builder...

7. The Sledge-Hammer Foreshadowing

Varys Game Of Thrones
HBO

Pretty much everyone on social media reacted to the repeated insistence that the Crypt is the safest place in Winterfell like they would have if Robb Stark had turned to camera back in season 4 and loudly proclaimed his excitement at his definitely safe and uneventful forthcoming marriage. By the time it was repeated a third or fourth time, you knew to expect something very ominous.

Thrones might be cleverly written, but it's not always the most subtle show ever made and those repeated allusions have to mean something. And not just because Crypts are a bit creepy.

When you think about it, this would also be the best possible way of the show handwaving at Lady Stoneheart too. They can't bring her in as they did in the books, because it's just not possible for a number of reasons, but having revived Starks fighting for their family would be a very good poetic stand-in for her.

And who is to say that they wouldn't have her playing one of the Good Wights? Less possible things have been written into this show repeatedly in the past. Plus, there's precedent in the source material for the dead kings rising...

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