‘Game of Thrones’: “Think Back To Where We Started…”

The endgame begins April 14 as the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones gets underway with a saga that will unite all the living souls of Westeros or snuff them out altogether. Three new video clips were released today by HBO to stir the hearts and minds of fans who have made the sword and sorcery series an international phenomenon.

The first promo video, which you can find above, is titled simply Together. The first image is of armored pikemen on the march toward war under the determined gaze of two rulers riding horseback side-by-side: Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), a pair who have been lovers and seem destined to play a major part in the clash between the living and the undead hordes that travel south to conquer them. (Many Thrones fans theorize that Snow and Targaryen will have a second, more personal confrontation to deal with, too, if indelicate revelations about the couple’s past emerge and force them apart.)

The promo also shows another figure of destiny, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinkladge), summing up the grim realities of the invasion by a moldering, supernatural enemy. “We must fight now together…or die,” says the bearded statesman of House Lannister who is far-removed from the decadent and apathetic figure introduced in Season 1.

Here’s the second promo…

The second promo video released today by HBO is titled Survival, and it begins with the solemn voice of Snow in a reflective moment. “Think back to where we started…now it’s just us.” Game of Thrones, which is based on the George R.R. Martin novels in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, which began with the 1991 novel that shares its name with the HBO series.

In grey tones and a mood of wintry dread, the 40-second promo shows the beleaguered souls of the Seven Kingdoms preparing to confront a grotesque enemy that is death itself on the march with clanging steel and decayed flesh. On the side of the living are the dragons that wheel and glide in the promo as skyward symbols of Daenerys Targaryen’s birthright and wrath. The promo ends with Jaime Lannister, the King Slayer of Casterly Rock, appraising the desperation of the situation, which surpasses the blood feuds and power struggles that have defined the saga since its start. “This goes beyond loyalty,” says Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). “This is about survival.”

The third video released is a teaser that has neither dialogue nor characters — at least none beyond the snarling wolf and cawing ravens that reign at the abandoned grounds of Winterfell, once home to the Starks. The family’s tattered flag is still overhead but, as the winding camera shows, the living are gone, the ramparts are unmanned and corridors empty. The teaser, titled Aftermath, makes on thing clear: Winter is no longer coming, winter is here.