Remember when Game of Thrones first showed up on TV with its brutality and frankness and fearlessness? Even before the dragons showed up, there was enough drama going on to keep everyone interested, and the show wasn’t afraid to kill off popular characters.
But it all kicked off with an opening credits sequence unlike anything we’d seen before. We’re used to it now, but at the time, it was groundbreaking. Even The Simpsons riffed on it, so you know it struck a huge cultural chord.
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So why change something that very much wasn’t broken?
WARNING: Spoiler Alert!
For seven seasons, we could count on the intro to give us an idea of what to expect, and do it in singular style.
You could skip the intro, but if you were interested in watching, you’d get something new every time as the over-arching astrolabe wandered around the map, showing all the locations we’d be visiting during the episode.
That idea is still intact, but of course the action will be a bit more focused this season.
Since the majority of the scenes will be taking place in the North (Winterfell, Castle Black, etc.) or King’s Landing, we probably won’t move around the map too much. After all, that’s where everything important will be happening. What’s going on in Dorne or Meereen probably won’t have much effect on the army of the dead.
That gave the animators and art directors some opportunities, which they promptly jumped on and ran with.
Apparently they’ve been sitting on some big things since the very first season, and when the decision was made to alter the iconic intro, the floodgates opened.
“Every season, we’ve been talking about, ‘We should try to redo stuff,'” Season Eight’s credits art director Kirk Shintani told BuzzFeed News . “They said, ‘Let’s blow it out. All the things that you wanted to do, let’s do it.’ For us, seven years of ideas just started pouring out.”
Apart from the technology, which has clearly advanced greatly since 2011, the big difference is just how much detail the new intro can go into.
And it all starts at The Wall, with the big problem that’s going to loom over Season Eight: the breach created by the Night King on zombie dragon-back, where the army of the dead can march through to the Seven Kingdoms.
From there, we get our first glimpse of Last Hearth, home of House Umber.
As the northernmost settlement in Westeros, it’s directly in the path of the Night King’s army, and as we can see, there’s a new feature to the map: Flipping tiles that represent an army’s movement. In this case, the army of the dead is flipping tiles an icy blue — like a White Walker’s eyes — as it spreads south of The Wall. It is decidedly bad news for Last Hearth.
Note the spiral shape of the hill Last Hearth is sitting on? Hmmm, might be important.
And then there’s Winterfell, which the artists show off in more intimate detail than we’ve ever seen before.
For one thing, we get to see Winterfell’s layout, from the godswood to the great hall.
And as cool as that is, because it’s going to be such an important location for both Season Eight and the first episode in particular — it’s even called “Winterfell” — the artists gave us a look inside.
Getting a glimpse inside really helps Winterfell come alive.
We get a good sense of the space, and we can reasonably expect some big scenes to go down in the great hall and the crypt.
If you’ve seen the episode, I think you’ll agree that indeed some critical moments happened there, just as the intro hinted.
Also noteworthy, the artists reflected the change in management after the Battle of the Bastards.
After Season Two, when the Boltons burned Winterfell, it was portrayed as smoking in the credits for two seasons, and then the Boltons’ flayed man sigil displayed on it. Now, with the Starks back in charge, the dire wolf sigil is back. You need a sharp eye, though — it’s on top of Winterfell’s great hall.
From Winterfell, we head down to the episode’s only other location, King’s Landing — now minus the Great Sept of Baelor.
Technically the site is still there, in the middle of the city, but it’s been flattened thanks to Cersei, of course. The only major point of interest remaining is the Red Keep, looming above it all.
Again, we’ll get to see inside the city, and it has a distinctly mechanical feel to it, maybe metaphorically hinting at Cersei’s machinations.
Of particular interest, the producers wanted to show off the map room at the Red Keep and the spiraling, serpentine steps.
Also likely important is the addition of the dragon skull room, with Qyburn’s scorpion pointed right at one. Here’s hoping that’s not foreshadowing too much!
And of course it all ends where everyone’s gaze has always been: On the Iron Throne.
“The show is called Game of Thrones , and the Iron Throne is in King’s Landing,” said creative director Angus Wall. “I don’t know that this is going to be the case or not, but the entire show is moving towards the Iron Throne…So it made sense to end there.”
Note the Lannister lion over the throne, and not the Baratheon stag.
The astrolabe that casts its light over the map also got a makeover.
In the previous seven seasons, the band on the astrolabe depicted three key events in the world’s history: The Doom of Valyria, the Battle of the Trident, and the Rise of House Baratheon.
In Season Eight, they’re replaced by three other key moments, working backward in time: The fall of The Wall, the Red Wedding, and the birth of the dragons.
It’s hard to say for sure just how many hints the opening credits can offer, however.
Apparently the show’s producers don’t tell the graphics team at Elastic, which is responsible for creating the intro, much more than the rest of us when they’re setting up the episodes.
“They’re really good about giving us enough information to be able to make sense of what we need to do, but they’re really careful about not giving us more than we need,” said Shintani.
And given that they’re all big fans of the show, too, they’re okay with that arrangement.
“Quite honestly, I don’t want that information ahead of time,” said Wall. “I’d rather just know the bullet points of what we need to do in order to make an appropriate title sequence. I love watching the show, and honestly look forward to watching every story beat unfold.”
Guess we’ll have to keep watching and keep paying attention. Watch the whole new opening sequence below and see if you can pick up anything else that’s cool!
h/t BuzzFeed News
