In between the wildfire explosions and “King in the North!” chants in the Season 6 finale of Game of Thrones, “The Winds of Winter,” Samwell Tarly, played by John Bradley, finally landed at Oldtown and visited the Citadel. A visible joy spread across Sam’s face when he saw the massive library of books housed by the Citadel, but another feature caught the eye of many fans. Hanging in that same library is a gyroscope that looks similar to the one that shoots across the map of Westeros and Essos in the show’s opening credits sequence.
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Coincidence? Maybe, or maybe not. Bradley himself wasn’t aware that the gyroscope was in the scene during production, but now that he’s seen the episode, he has a theory about what the gyroscope presence could mean.
“I only became aware of that after I saw the episode,” Bradley told THR. “On the day, it was all green screen. It’s only after I saw the episode and people started telling me about the gyroscope. I think it could mean any number of things. One theory is that what we’re seeing now and how we’re experiencing Game of Thrones is Sam telling the story of Game of Thrones. If you take the logic of the story now, the story of Westeros and the story of the battle for the Iron Throne, it would be a book in that library. The visual motif of that is you’re about to be told a story — the sense of an idea of being told a story, and people gaining that knowledge, the way Sam is absorbing knowledge in the library.”
As Bradley points out, that kind of long-game planning is what showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are known for.
“The one thing I found moving about that object being the same in the Citadel and in the opening titles is that it’s a testament to [showrunner David Benioff and Dan Weiss’] foresight, that they can plan something that only comes to fruition much later on,” Bradley says. “It shows an incredible kind of long game, in terms of giving people drips of information and being brave enough to puzzle people for a while. I think once that becomes apparent, that this is something we’ve seen every week, and now we’re finally having it explained to us at the end of season six, shows us how much control they have as writers and how in charge of the form and structure they are. They’ll only give out information when they feel you should get that information. I think it’s a testament to the pace and the overall detail of the show.”
Game of Thrones will return for Season 7 on HBO in 2017.
