Though we’ve yet to see a full trailer for Game of Thrones Season 6, new posters released by HBO spoil pretty much everything about the show forever. Released on the Game of Thrones Twitter account, the posters for Season 6 promise the deaths of Nymeria Sand, Daario Naharis, Sansa Stark, Melisandre, Tormund Giantsbane, Jaime Lannister, Oberyn Martell, and Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. That’s a lot of death!
What’s even crazier about these posters is that they suggest that all of these characters will be hauled off across the Narrow Sea to be washed and prepared by the acolytes of the House of Black and White for inclusion in the Hall of Faces.
If my read of the posters proves accurate, even characters we think are long dead and buried could return as meat puppets for Faceless Men manipulators. The inclusion of dead people like Joffrey Baratheon in the Game of Thrones Season 6 posters highlight both the far-reaching power and remarkable depravity of the Faceless Men. Like Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they’ve got no problem wearing masks of cured human leather.
Is there a conspiracy of massive proportions running just under the surface of Game of Thrones? Are the Faceless Men murdering main characters, spiriting them away to Braavos, then stealing their faces and replacing them… right under the noses of everyone in Westeros? When Jon Snow “returns” will it just be Jaqen H’ghar in disguise?
Or is all of this just a marketing conceit—a riff on “Valar morghulis, all men must die”? Could it be that these new character posters for Game of Thrones Season 6 contain no spoilers at all, that they’re mere reminders of the “memento mori” thematic resonance of death in a fantasy world that constantly reminds us of the perils of power?
Actually, now that I say it, that makes a lot more sense. All of these characters will die eventually, if not in Game of Thrones Season 6.