Game of Thrones writer Dave Hill, who is responsible for “Winterfell”, the first episode of season 8, has revealed to the New York Post the significance of one of the fantasy series’ most enigmatic symbols: the White Walkers’ spiral pattern.
“As we saw with Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven, the spiral pattern was sacred to the Children of the Forest, who created the Night King by sacrificing a captured man in a spiral ‘henge of stones’. The Night King then adopted the symbol as part of blasphemy, like Satan with the upside-down cross”.
As the Wall came down in the season 7 finale in a dramatic plot twist, fans were suspicious that the Night King’s army would first hit Last Hearth in the eighth season: and they were right.
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The first episode of the newest season showed that the army of the dead had left a chilling message to those living in Westeros, having hung a child in the middle of the pattern and surrounded his corpse with extra body parts that made a spiral shape.
The symbol has repeatedly occurred on Game of Thrones beyond the Wall: in fact, a similar pattern was spotted in the pilot episode, when three Night’s Watchmen discover it and are then attacked by a wight child.
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Then, viewers can see the spiral pattern in Season 3 when Jon Snow and Mance Rayder discover horse corpses left by the White Walkers from the battle with the Night’s Watch.
Some have noticed that the symbol can be seen at the cave on Dragonstone, the home place of the Targaryens; what’s more is that fans speculate that the spiral image resembles the sigil of the Targaryen House, sparking a theory that it might be evidence that the Night King was once a Targaryen.