HBO has released photos from Game of Thrones Season 8, episode 2 ahead of Sunday’s debut. As with the season premiere, the episode 2 title is being kept under wraps until it airs – but we do know how long Game of Thrones episode 2 is, with a slightly longer run-time than the premiere at 58 minutes.
HBO is going to great lengths to obscure any plot details about Season 8 (in addition to hiding the episode titles, the cable network hasn’t released any episode descriptions this season), but there are some things we can infer from the new photos.
Judging by the lighting in several of the images it seems that all the power players in Winterfell – including Jon, Sam, Arya, Daenerys, Jorah, Varys, Tyrion and Bran – are gathered around a table in Winterfell, perhaps trying to plan their defense strategy against the Night King and the Army of the Dead.
As we saw in the episode 2 promo released by HBO, Tormund apparently makes it back to Winterfell in time to warn Jon that the White Walkers will reach them before dawn, and it seems that the episode will feature preparations for the Battle of Winterfell, which will likely take up the entirety of episode 3, as it’s been described as “the longest consecutive battle sequence ever committed to film.”
As revealed in the promo, a photo also shows Jaime Lannister in Winterfell’s Great Hall, where he not only has to answer for pushing Bran out of a window and paralyzing him (if Bran chooses to reveal that information to Jon and Dany), but also for being the infamous “Kingslayer” who murdered Daenerys’ father, the Mad King Aerys.
And although Jon learned the truth about his real parents, Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, at the end of episode 1, the photos unsurprisingly don’t give any indication whether Jon tells Daenerys that he’s her nephew – the two don’t appear in any of the images together – but we have a theory that the Jon and Daenerys conflict being teased in episode 1 won’t go the way people might be predicting.
What other clues did you spot in the photos? Share your predictions for episode 2 in the comments, and for more on Game of Thrones, check out the biggest changes in the opening credits, where we’ve seen those spiral White Walker symbols before, our theory on Cersei’s pregnancy and when we might see Jon’s direwolf Ghost again.