Isn't the theory that the Night King is actually one of the earliest Lord Commanders of the Night's Watch and very likely a Stark to boot?
Holy shit! From an interview with Jared Harris (who is apparently a Game of Thrones superfan). I had not noticed that yet (the opening titles map thing).
I hadn't heard that. There was a flashback showing how the Night King was created, by the Children of the Forest. A former Nightswatch Lord Commander, Mance Rayder, was the King Beyond the Wall.
Interesting, the only thing I noticed was that in Ep 2 when they showed Winterfel in the opening credits it had the trenches around it, unlike in Ep 2. I also noticed that when they show the 3 dragons we see what looks like a shooting star in front of them. This could reference Dany possibly being the one "born" under the "red star that bleeds" that we say in season 2.
It seems like you can see tiles turn on the map in an icey color and they do seem to progress along with the plot of the show (the location of the Night King's army of White Walkers and Wights).
The map during the opening credits. The one that goes from location to location. This season's map has small differences per episode that sort of track the progress of the army of the dead.
Epîsode one Episode two Interestingly, since Tormund, Beric and Edd found the Last Hearth overrun by White Walkers at the end of episode one, the map thing conceivably shows the army's position at the start of the episode. Which would make sense.
If that progression tracks, then episode three should have a map that has those blueish titles up to the very outskirts of Winterfell.
Not sure if that is just related to the map thing, since that is too vague to be an indication either way on the Night King's location. I do agree that it's telling that they ended the episode with a handful of random White Walkers arriving near Winterfell instead of (the expected) shot of the Night King. One thing I do wonder: is the Army of the Dead taking a straight shot to Winterfell? Or are they mopping things up more broadly? That would be the difference between only Last Hearth being lost to them or also seats like Karhold, Deepwood Motte and the Dreadfort.
I just mean, how do you know they are not just your average White Walkers? They seem to use the same CGI template for all of them!