A horrific (in the best way) new poster has been released to accompany the “Aftermath” tease from earlier today, which you can also watch above. Get ready: as beautiful as the poster design is (the best yet for any season, in my opinion), it’s pretty damn grisly!
All characters lie dead, their corpses turned into the swords that make up the Iron Throne. Damn it if it isn’t as evocative and thematically appropriate as it is horrifying.
That looks cool!
HBO is going bloody insane with all the marketing lately, keep it up.
Also the poster looks bloody brilliant!!!!
I think that’s better then the first Season 8 poster. Hope that’s the Blu Ray cover. Maybe they’ll do multiple versions with different covers.
Definitely the best poster they’ve ever done and I’d love to see the official DVD of season 8 have this cover. Although the first poster they released is fairly nice as well.
Love this poster! It’s also reminiscent of the designs and symbols the white walkers make with corpses as well.
I can find just about everyone but haven’t found Cersei? Is she under a snowball somewhere I just haven’t seen?
Top right after the White Walker.
I think this is one of my favourite Game of Thrones posters ever. There aren’t many that I love as much as this one. It would be nice to have this as a DVD and Blu Ray cover option. Would also make an amazing poster to display on my wall lol.
I’m starting to think I am going to cry and be devastated every minute of this season.
Any one else concerned all the build up of hype and expectation may lead to a palable sense of deflation and disappointment? Especially if the scenes we want to see don’t play out the way we’ve imagined they will – with out any great aplomb. I think I’m going to find myself sitting at home muttering to my self like Muttley.
isildur,
Well that’s a pretty negative way to look at it. I wouldn’t let the amount of hype or lack thereof change how you feel about the show. Don’t let the hype get to you.
Ignore the noise.
Wow! The Apotheosis of War II and better than the initial one. Everyone will die, everyone will make history and the throne. Including the Night King.
What is that thing lying between Jon and Dany??
This season poster is going into my media center artwork!
Rizzo T,
Cersei is next to the Night King, to his left.
This would make a great “Where’s Waldo?” themed poster.
Anon,
I’m wondering about that, too. Looks like someone lying upside down (I can see only the leg) covered with Stark banner. Maybe, Ned?
Best poster of got for sure.
I just had to pop by and say WOW!
That poster!!!!!!!! The artwork is divine.
This is the first time I have felt like I would like a GOT poster – geez.
I hope the art team is included in the GOT documentary in the 7th week. They are such an important part of the viewer experience.
Tormund, Bronn or Pod in there? Did they leave them out again while including em-effin Euron?
Clob,
It’s hard to tell, but Pod COULD be to Cersei’s left (our right). The one with the sword sticking up in the air.
Or maybe he’s the one just above the O for GoT. Next to Missandei
OR……..maybe I’m wrong on both accounts, lol.
Who is that next to Varys? Jaqen?
Whose head is floating around in the ‘G’? I thought it was Jorah, but it doesn’t quite look like him.
Pigeon,
I don’t think you want the answer to that one 🙁
I see Euron. No Theon or Yara?
Upon further review, I think Podrick is the one with the sword raised next to Cersei. The outfit matches
So a few people are left our like Yara, Bronn, Beric and Pod.
But at the “G” is Jorah. Then from bottom left is Greyworm, Sam, Sandor, Melisandre, Jaime, Arya, Jon, Dany, NK, Cersei, Varys, Davos. Then the inner ring from left is Brienne, Tyrion, Bran, Sansa, Missandei, Theon to her left, then Euron. The other faceless corpses are for decor. 😂
Isn’t that one Jorah?
Could be correct. It does look like his outfit.
Yeah it must be Jorah, but it looks off. Then again so does Cersei. Then again, they’re dead, so they might BE a little ‘off’. 🤪
Jon doing quite the Ned pose.
Everyone who got their own personal on-the-throne poster. No more, no less. Makes one wonder about the longevity of the series regulars who didn’t get a poster like Bronn, Gendry, Beric, Tormund….
isildur,
A LOT of hype but at least most of it is very peripheral to the story at hand and the sheer magnitude of all the tie-ins will likely be noticed by us super-fans but not the general viewer.
Anyone else finding themselves being extra careful, to make sure nothing dire happens to keep you from being ready on April 14? HA!
You’re just in denial at this point 😉
I was really hoping for a coquettish ingénue pose, myself.
Now THAT is a real season poster
so the frozen one you guys are saying is the night king, is it really King Fishstick?
To me that looks like one of his lieutenants aka a white-walker like Jon killed at Hardhome?
Hmmm, The NK is a Tully, confirmed! 😉
Hard to tell. All the WW/Night King wear pretty much the same outfit, but looks specifically like the NK’s outfit to me. Like Pigeon said, all their faces look a bit “off” anyway, so my money is on the NK.
Yes I do. We know the writing has had gaps w/o GRRM’s rudder in the past couple seasons. But then again, maybe D&D have mastered this too. If not, we’ll grapple our heads with leaps, no matter what all the hype has stormed us with on how perfectly it ends.
Wow!
Finally they do a great poster to rival the iconic S1 one.
Put this side by side with the S1 poster. It tells the whole story in two pictures.
The S1 poster is Ned on the Iron Throne, warm tones. The man might be troubled but he’s in control, sitting on that ugly chair.
Seven seasons on, the colour scheme is cold, oh so cold. All the characters are just spikes in the chair, being overcome by winter, by snow and ice. The base of the chair seems to be a Hieronymus Boschesque nightmare of the dead.
I love the poster.
(I’ve been underwhelmed by all GoT season posters since S1.)
“The Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych is perhaps my favorite painting of all time.
Davos to the right of Euron and The Mountain below the T.
AND… Today…. Oreos… YouTube….
Hype!!!
Who is between Arya and Jaime?
I’ve been expecting Jorah to die since Season 4, so at this point it’s all been a lovely bonus. 😁
I think a little Betty Boop style pose would have been pretty great for Jon, personally.
“Always the artists.”
Amazing poster! Such a clever and morbid idea. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during that planning session in the art department. “Hey, let’s make the iron throne out of the frozen corpses of everyone we love!” “Neat!”
It really is a thing of beauty. I was staring at Cersei for ages wondering who that boy was 😬 I think the darkened hair was really doing a number on my perceptiveness (which is pretty crappy anyway). I also wonder what that thing is in the middle at the top. I too thought it looked like an upside down corpse, but the bit at the top is a bit dragon-wing like. I wonder if the cast frame these and put them up – they could have themselves as a peeled off face from season 6 and now, a corpse! Fun!
ETA: oh wait, I see the dragon-wing like thing was a Stark banner. See, not at all perceptive!
Death has been part of most the characters story arc… which partly makes them who they are in Season 8 #forthethrone @ the end of season 8???????
Jon – Ned Robb Ygritte… Rickon Stark Olly Brothers of the Night Watch
Daenerys – Khal Drogo Viserys Rhaego Viserion
Sansa – Lady Ned Robb Catelyn Ramsey Bolton Littlefinger
Arya – Ned Syrio Farel Yoren Lommy Robb Catelyn
Davos – His son
Jaime – His Hand and children
Cersei – her children
Beric – His Eye and his Red Priest Thoros
Lord Varys – Sorcerer in the box
Tyrion – Joanna Lannister Tywin Lannister the Greyjoy Fleet of Ships
That poster is beautiful but scaring me a little.
Right? I love him, I’ll admit he’s been on my “Probably going to die for Dany” list since they were in Qarth back in Season 2.
“And yet here I stand.”
Wow, that poster is amazing!!
If anyone wants to take a break from thinking about the morbid S8 poster, here are Sophie and Maisie on “Good Morning America.” The sound isn’t that great (though neither is my hearing).
Also, my apologies if this video has been posted already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zGw5Ws2T0
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/video/game-thrones-screen-sisters-real-life-bffs-talk-62108745
A great trailer and poster. I think the bottom line here is things will be pretty much fucked up at Winterfell which is hardly surprising seeing what’s coming 😮
From filming leaks (at Belfast), Kings Landing also, but don’t think the war against the WW and what happens at King’s Landing are related? Two seperate issues that will have to be resolved.
Ten Bears,
Hee! You beat me to it. I was going to say, that dude has some obsession with Joe Jonas, geez. Talk about GoT dammit.
Oh no. I bet the Jonas bro dudes are gonna be in Season 8.
That’s the problem right there. the scenes we want to see don’t play out the way we’ve imagined they will.
Hardly anybody is going to have the same headcanon or wants or needs or imagination. I’m sure a lot of the more fanatical fans, especially fans of particular characters, are not going to be happy because their wishes and headcanons will not be catered to and fulfilled. Tough shit.
More general fans might be satisfied about how this great, hulking story comes to an end.
My favourite character is 99% sure to die. I’ve mourned for years. But when the time comes, I’ll probably cry.
Che,
Possibly a Stark banner covering a body… kind of looks like a furry tail peeking out from the top? Ghost?
Hello Brothers. Is Longclaw’s hilt fiery in the promo? What does that mean?
Mango,
Hi, Mango.
My brain is trying to organize it into something and it kind of looks like it’s a body, but where is the face? Maybe that thing at the top left is a foot? Then there’s a scalloped edge beside the thing that looks like a foot.. that could be part of a banner. It would be hilarious if it’s just a stupid banner in a very prominent position. Could be a body covered by a banner, like you say.
It’s bloody in this one
Does anyone else also see a person at the end of the video right above Longclaw in the distance?
Rei,
It’s Jaqen Forel Stoneheart. Didn’t you know? 🙂
Yeah that’s the Night King milling about looking for his keys.
Ten Bears,
Thanks for sharing those links, much appreciated. Often times when I get home from work and try to watch some of the US chat show interviews like that, I get a ‘not available on your country’ so it was nice to be able to watch their GMA appearance!
Great poster!
For the living
Dany, Jon, Sansa, Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, Sam, Brienne, Pod, Jorah, Grey Worm, Varys, Missandei, Melisandre, Theon, The Hound, Ser Beric.
For the dead
Night King
For themselves
Cersei, Euron
Left Out
Bronn, Gendry, Thormund, Gilly, Qyburn, The Mountain, and Yara.
Nope, just you!
Anon,
Warm greetings, Anon.
(looks around suspiciously, wondering if this is a trick of some sort)
But that’s always the way with these sorts of series. In a big way, fandoms sort of guarantee this. Stories like this, Lost, Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, were never meant to be subjected to “group think”: the storytellers laid out the tales just like storytellers always have. Many fans convince themselves that storytellers will not do things because “it’s too obvious”: but the things are “obvious” only because of 1000s of people are sharing ideas as the story is being told. If one was to read or watch the GoT series from start to end without taking sizable breaks or discussing it with others, then a huge proportion of the audience would be gobbstoppered by the revelation about Jon’s parents or Harry’s scar, etc.
The related problem is that fans discuss these things so much that they often forget what was presented as a possibility in the story, and what is something that he/she or others imagined on their own.
And that creates an almost ironic situation in which fans criticize storytellers for good storytelling: the authors develop characters & hang guns, and then fire the guns and have the characters follow the trajectory (just like your literature or film-studies prof told you tales are supposed to do!), and fans (largely in their anger for having been wrong in their imaginings) claim that the authors did bad jobs of telling the stories because they were “obvious!”
Crap! I wanted it to be Aegon Glover….
The Mountain is under the T.
I feel your misgivings are rather funny because your fear of disappointment is caused by the exact opposite of a lot of those impatient people before the trailer came out. I was reading so many of those people whining that HBO marketing sucks since they weren’t releasing anything, and the reason they weren’t was because the final season is disappointing. They were just so incredibly impatient for the marketing period that they wanted it to start two months earlier.
HBO/GoT is doing it properly; wait for the last few weeks before premiere and then start the push. That’s long enough to get the buzz everywhere but not too long that it becomes overdone before premiere night.
The more I look at that upside-down body in the middle at the top, the more I feel that is someone important who is going to be revealed in the final season – either someone we thought was dead, or someone from long ago pre-show. Why include them? Why in the prime position in the centre at the top? Why between Jon and Dany? I’s such a significant placement and nowhere else between mains is there a random body thrown in. They are lying on their back with their left leg straight and the right resting to the side with the knee bent. A Stark banner is draped over their legs. Their trousers seem distinctive and those boots have some decoration on them. I just have a strong feeling this is a massive trolling tease and they’re showing us someone important. Who could it be? Tin-foil mind is going into overdrive!
Wow. And yikes.
(For me, “Game of Thrones” and “Gotham” really know how to make gruesome stuff alluring.)
The Drogon Throne poster was cool, but THIS is fucking high art. It would be criminal of HBO not to use this one as this season’s poster/DVD/Blu-Ray cover.
Dornish red sprayed on screen.
This oster reminds me of the one with the Faces from the House of Black and White.
Jack Bauer 24,
Good catch, thanks.
Any idea who is right next to Missandei (on her left side almost on top on her), and who is between Jaime and Arya? Both seem to have a face partially visible but I can’t make out who if anyone they are.
Wimsey,
Yeah, I said the same thing to Isildur but not in so many words.
What I find interesting in a fandom is fans taking possession of the story, each in their own way, focussing on their favourite bit, and losing sight of the bigger picture. Then getting angry when the bigger picture or details do not confirm to their headcanon. It must be somebody else’s fault. D&D have butchered GRRM’s story, GRRM has lost his way etc.
It’s not easy to admit you were plain wrong, especially if you’ve made an online presence preaching your headcanon.
Che,
Ned?
Che,
TBH, I’m not seeing all that you are. Maybe I’m just blind. Willfully blind.
Looks like Beric, can kind of see an eye patch. Not sure about the other one.
Rizzo T,
Cersei is just between the night king and pod.
She has her hands clasped to together.
Melisandre is placed in front of a bloody sword.
Jon is (maybe) the only one still holding a weapon…
And is that tyrion beneath him , tyrion looks like he’ about to sit down.
I noticed in the other s8 poster tyrion appears repeatedly in the dragons eyes …at certain angles he looked like he was burning and the a monster or something
.
I think he will be executed by burning and he will then morph into a serpernt/dragon.
That’s my newest theories based on the other poster.
Fabulous poster! A clever bookend of “ice” to buttress the “fire” of the first official season8 poster.
Fantastic.
I wonder, did they derive the idea for the poster from this quote, A Game of Thrones, Arya One:
But Arya isn’t holding Needle, though.
Wow! I your observations are stunning! You’ve peaked my interest.
That shot of Drogon seemingly sitting/crouched in a very dark place and obviously looking down at someone before roasting them might support your thesis. None of the YouTubers I watch has “had the ordinary courage” to mention or devine the meaning of this shot. But I keep pondering Its meaning. Upon first viewing, I immediately thought of Quentyn Martell and his attempting to tame the dragons in Mereen and being roasted by Rhaegal. Hummmm.
There’s an even more gruesome painting by Hieronymus Bosch. It’s doing the rounds in the Twittersphere as a pictorial metaphor for Brexit.
Today’s politics aside, Hieronymus Bosch gives us a window into the minds of 14th century people. Kind of what GoT/ASoIaF people are supposed to be.
I like the literary references in the writing, but I love the painterly pictures the directors and especially DOPs have given us. We’ve had a couple of Pietas, some Caravaggios, and of course the Akira Kurosawa scene with the flapping banners. The makers of GoT know their stuff.
Rizzo T,
She is between the Night King and Jaime.
What/Who is between Jon and Dany?
At this point, if the gun has not been hung, then it’s not going to be fired. After all, throughout the entire series, B&W have never once introduced a gun at the same time it was being fired (i.e., classic Deus ex Machina).
It could be the return of a character thought to be dead, but that strikes me as improbable simply because the narrative is going to be crowded as it is.
At any rate, I would not put much stock in this as showing us anything that will happen: like the crypt trailer, it is almost certainly just an artistic trailer designed to convey mood and to show familiar images. It’s entirely possible that the persons who made it are not privy to what is going to happen, anyway!
Indeed, you nail the problem: fans too often are rooting for their ending rather than rooting for a good ending. Sure, we’d all like to predict/guess it correctly because we all like to predict/guess everything correctly!
For my part, I do have a couple of pet conjectures that I would be tickled to see turn out to be correct. However, what I really want is an ending of the sort where, looking back, it will be obvious how the story & plots were heading that way all along. B&W fairly Chekhovian storytelling style makes it seem probable that this will be the case.
Apart from the unrecognizable, but probably “known” corpses between Jaime and Arya (no idea, Harry Strickland?), Jon and Daenerys (maybe Ghost?) and Varys and Davos (two, maybe Yara and Edd or Bronn?), I wonder what this red flag means we can see below Bran’s hands. Nobody mentioned that yet, but it immediately popped into my eye. Wikipedia writes: “A signal of danger or a problem can be referred to as a red flag, a usage that originated in the 18th century.” POSSIBLE SPOILER: B=NK theory, anyone (Bran is also the most central character in the upper half of the poster)?!? 😉
Wimsey,
Many fans think THEIR ending is the only really GOOD ending, so wanting their ending and wanting a good ending is the same thing.
I wish the over-photoshopped character posters back then were more of this style/artistic direction.
My She-Cave is going to morph into a GoT Middle-Aged Fangirl Cave. I’m not one to collect stuff, but I had to have the McFarlane Drogon and Ice Viserion, and I’ll need both these posters too!!!
Che,
IMO the body between Jon and Dany should represent Ned: it’s covered with the Stark banner and it’s inbetween them. In the books Dany thinks that she would have married Rhaegar’s son, had he survived. So, Ned kind of interferred between them, when he took Jon and passed him for his bastard. This also correates with the position of the body: upside down – like a hint that everything was the opposite of what you thought initially. And Ned’s body woud be headless anyway, so it makes sense to show legs.
But one way or another I agree with Wimsey: the artist were not privy to S8. Even the costumes are from S7.
That might be the greatest poster of the series. Wow.
Several are quite difficult to make out; I expected to see someone having circled and identified each. xD
Varys looks handcuffed, lol.
And is it just me…or does it look like Ghost’s face between Brienne and Tyrion? Like, it’s been staring at me (or rather, off to the right) since I first looked at the poster. Tyrion’s hair forms the right eye (from your perspective looking at it.) Maybe I’m really Rorschaching or pareidoliating it or whatever, but then again, the last one had a dragon face planted in it…! ^.^;
Rizzo T,
Ohhh She deaaad… right next to the Night King..
I’m not able to recognize the Bloke between Arya and Jaime. Can anyone help me out?
Sadly, that is only too true. Amusingly, there seems to be a strong correlation between how emphatically fans feel that way, and how awful their ending actually would be!
Did anyone else think that the broken wheeled device that they show at the bottom of the stairs while the crow caws is Bran’s wheelchair?
Ember MacDonald,
Yes…check out the previous/original post on the Aftermath tease (and the comments).
(Good catch, I didn’t pick up on that when I watched it!)
Loving the poster – HBO have gone crazy with the marketing and press junkets yet still no mention of the premiere title?