The ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 Trailer, Explained

"The Great War is coming." Also Winter. And Dragons. And horse-lord parkour.

2. Meanwhile, at Dragonstone.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for. Daenerys Targaryen back on her home soil. We see a few shots of her company arriving at what appears to be Dragonstone, her place of birth and former home base of Stannis “Grammar Nazi” Baratheon.

It’s not quite the Iron Throne, but the seat of power on Dragonstone will do for now as Dany prepares her army to re-conquer Westeros in the name of the Targaryens. This means we’re about to get a few interesting things:

Dany and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) strategy sessions in Stannis’ old strategy room. Which has, in my opinion, the very finest war map in all of Westeros.

The Dothraki being awesome again — including Horse Lord Parkour. It’s been so long since we’ve seen the Dothraki really show off their warrior chops. Since the death of Khal Drogo, they’ve either been (a) sad (b) dicks or (c) both.

We also see numerous shots of both the Dothraki and the Unsullied doing battle with soldiers flying the red Lannister banners or wearing the red Lannister armor. They wear red so that their enemies can’t see them bleed. Or because they are the red shirts of season 7. I’m mixing up my references. A bunch of Lannister soldiers are going to die horribly, okay?

I can’t wait to see the reverse angle of the shot below. My expectation is that it’s just a battalion of Lannister soldiers running away.

Despite all of the massive action promises it’s making, the trailer does take the time to do some character development. Here we see Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) finally getting some answers to all of our most pressing questions about eunuchs.

And we check in with the red woman Melissandre (Carice van Houten), who appears to be keeping a close eye on the Targaryen fraction near Dragonstone.

We also get this interesting shot of someone’s hand — Tyrion would be my guess — knocking over a Lannister lion chess piece in the Dragonstone war room. Whether or not this is a preemptive moment or a celebratory moment is yet to be seen. At the very least, we know his heart’s in the right place.

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Neil Miller: Neil Miller is the persistently-bearded Publisher of Film School Rejects, Nonfics, and One Perfect Shot. He's also the Executive Producer of the One Perfect Shot TV show (currently streaming on HBO Max) and the co-host of Trial By Content on The Ringer Podcast Network. He can be found on Twitter here: @rejects (He/Him)