*SPOILER ALERT: This article talks a LOT about the eighth season of Game of Thrones!*
Let's talk Night King. Who is this guy? More importantly, how do you kill him? I think we can all agree the Night King is a total tool and SOMEBODY'S going to have to take him out.
But how?
Game of Thrones superfans on Reddit believe they might just have the answer.
It all comes down to the symbols the White Walkers keep leaving behind—in particular the one they put around the Umber Boy before he went all...you know...wight-y.
Redditor u/zyuko22 believes that scene, and the symbol itself, may have been foreshadowing how the Night King will finally meet his end.
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He reminded everyone that another notable instance of the symbol could be seen while Bran was traveling through the past.
The Children of the Forest created the Night King by tying a human man to a weirwood tree surrounded by stones arranged in the symbol and stabbing him with dragonglass!
Meanwhile, the white walkers also have a habit of leaving another notable symbol behind. It looks like this:
What could this second symbol mean? Fans think it might have something to do with the Gods Eye, a massive Westeros lake with an island in its center.
That island is known as the Isle of Faces, the location of a giant grove of weirwood trees where the Children of the Forest just happened to sign their final peace treaty with the humans.
GFDL / awoiaf.westeros.org
People don't really go to the Isle of Faces because of the mists which surround it and rumors of it being haunted, but it's been mentioned as far back as the first chapter of the first book.
Putting all the pieces together, zyuko22 theorizes that a giant, all-powerful weirwood tree is located on the Isle.
This tree, he believes, is the source of the magical energy of all weirwood trees, the Children of the Forest, and (hopefully) the Night King himself.
Destroy the tree, destroy the white walkers.
Following zyuko22's reasoning, this scene from the first episode of season 8 could be a more direct foreshadowing of the series's finale than we originally thought.
Perhaps the only way to shut that Night King down is by plunging a flaming sword right into the center of the symbol—the weirwood at the the heart of this whole "white walker" issue.
Of course, destroying the source of the weirwood's power could also have some pretty bad implications for our beloved heroes.
Bran is, as we know, inextricably linked to the weirwoods (he kind of won't shut up about it). Could Jon Snow destroying them also kill Jon Snow's own brother?
What's more, if the power of the weirwoods is linked in some way to the other returning magic of the world, could it have an affect on them as well?
Jon Snow himself was brought back to life through the power of the Lord of Light—if he destroys the weirwoods could he be put back to death?
Could Daenerys's dragons have some sort of connection to the weirwoods persistent magic?
There are many questions still left to answer, not last among them being why the white walkers would leave these hints as to their defeat behind.
Some fans have been guessing that life as a white walker is basically never-ending pain and torture and they're basically asking to be put out of their misery.
So what will actually come to pass at the end of season 8? We'll all know soon enough.
Game of Thrones | Season 8 | Official Trailer (HBO)www.youtube.com
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