All it took was a lot of wildfire and dead priests to put Cersei Lannister back on top, the Iron Throne indisputably hers for the first time. The trailer for Game of Thrones Season 7 shows just how ably she’ll wield her new power. The best part: it involves a very big map.
The new trailer hops around a few different perspectives, giving us a sense of the current alliances and how they’re arrayed against each other. Particularly dire is Queen Cersei’s situation. She lays it out simply. “Enemies to the East.” Grey Worm. “Enemies to the West.” A ship, probably Euron’s Silence . “Enemies to the South.” A Dornish sword. And most interesting of all, “Enemies to the North.” It’s not Jon Snow, King in the North, we see, it’s Arya, alone and on horseback. She’s the real danger to Cersei, or so it would seem.
“We’re the last Lannisters,” Cersei says, but can’t resist a dig at Tyrion: “The last ones that count.” Her situation is harrowing, but she seems just ruthless enough to put up a good fight against her enemies. And she’s got the right map for the job:
The most dangerous of those enemies, maybe aside from Arya, is Daenerys. She too has her battle map, this one carved into the table at Dragonstone (on top of which Melisandre and Stannis Baratheon sealed their mutual fates).
It’s hard to imagine it taking all that much strategy to capture King’s Landing from Cersei. Not only does she have the backing of Dorne, House Tyrell, the Iron Fleet, the Dothraki and her Unsullied army, but her dragons have grown to the size of winged whales.
And, what’s this, does Melisandre join Daenerys’ stupendous army?
But really, what Season 7 seems to be about, more than the actual footage attests, is the need to unite against the threat coming from the Night’s King (who appears in art released this week ) north of the Wall. We don’t see much of that in the trailer, except for some quick cuts of people running through the snow. And perhaps a wight?
Instead, it’s Davos Seaworth’s words, perhaps delivered to Cersei or to Daenerys, that loom most over the battle footage and coming conflicts: “If we don’t put aside our enmities and bound together we will die and then it doesn’t matter whose skeleton sits on the Iron Throne.”
Nearly any alliance against the White Walkers could save Cersei’s neck, but since Jon Snow is not likely to make a deal with the Lannisters, the most likely outcome is a Jon Snow and Daenerys team-up, preserving Cersei’s strength in the south as the real war rages in the north. Or Cersei could just get killed by Arya disguised as Tommen (though prophecy suggests she’ll be strangled by one of her brothers).
The final impression left by this trailer is war. It looks more battle-intensive than the past several seasons combined. And while dragons are impressive, the real reason to watch July 21: Dothraki horse tricks.
