Winter has been a long time coming — six years, in fact — but it looks like it’s finally here, and the shit is really going to hit the fan when the snow starts falling: it’s nearly Game of Thrones time, and today saw the release of the second trailer for the show’s seventh season. This two-minute teaser starts with Sansa Stark walking through the snow with the words of perpetual creeper Littlefinger echoing inside her head: “Don’t fight in the north, or fight in the south. Fight every battle, everywhere, always in your mind.”
That’s all very well in theory, but there’s going to be a whole lot of corporeal fighting this season: the three claimants for the Iron Throne are about to meet at last, with Jon Snow marching south, Daenerys Targaryen sailing west, and the increasingly batshit Queen Cersei waiting for them in King’s Landing. And if that weren’t enough, up north, there’s a giant army of frozen dead people amassing and preparing invade the lands of men. In an ideal world, the three claimants would put aside their differences and unite to face this common threat. As the trailer progresses, we hear Jon Snow’s voice appealing for exactly that: “For centuries, our families fought together against their common enemy, despite their differences. Together. We need to do the same if we’re going to survive, because the enemy is real. It’s always been real.”
But Westeros is about as far from an “ideal world” as you can get, and one gets the feeling that there’ll be none of that setting-aside-of-differences business here: instead, there’s going to be one almighty battle (or, y’know, several almighty battles), and whoever’s left standing is going to have to hope that he or she can work out a way to stop the Night King and his frostbitten zombies. Good luck with that.
Season 7 begins on HBO on July 16.