The sixth season of Game of Thrones debuts on Sunday, April 24. What this means, primarily, is that we’re now in the home stretch, and will soon be getting answers to a bunch of questions that have been floating around in the air for months now. What this also means is that soon Kit Harington’s life will stop being a living hell where everyone on the planet uses geolocation and strand-by-strand analysis of the length of his hair to try to determine if Jon Snow really died in the season five finale. And in news that is relevant to both of those developments, HBO has released the episode title and official description for the season six premiere.
SPOILERS IN THE FORM OF A DESCRIPTION BECAUSE WHY NOT, WHO KNOWS?
Episode title: “The Red Woman”
Episode description: “Jon Snow is dead. Daenerys meets a strong man. Cersei sees her daughter again.”
Is it me, or is that episode description borderline Mad Men-ian? It’s definitely a little more concrete than the most classic, infuriately vague freeform poems AMC puts out, but it’s really only one or two steps removed from, like, “Daenerys has an unexpected visitor. Jon Snow faces difficulties. Roger asks Joan for help with a clerical error.” If Matthew Weiner gets a “Written by” credit this season, we’ll know something is up.
But more important, “Jon Snow is dead.” HBO would really like us to accept that, so much so that what appeared to be kind of a cliffhanger at the time has been insisted upon by anyone from the show who gets within five feet of a microphone, and now is literally the first sentence of the episode description for the season premiere. They might skywrite it over the Hollywood sign before the season starts.
The show also released the summary for the season, which is as follows:
Following the shocking developments at the conclusion of season five, including Jon Snow’s bloody fate at the hands of Castle Black mutineers, Daenerys’ near-demise at the fighting pits of Meereen, and Cersei’s public humiliation in the streets of King’s Landing, survivors from all parts of Westeros and Essos regroup to press forward, inexorably, towards their uncertain individual fates. Familiar faces will forge new alliances to bolster their strategic chances at survival, while new characters will emerge to challenge the balance of power in the east, west, north and south.
Yeah, none of that means anything either, except for the fact that the show is close enough to premiering to warrant releasing it. And that’s the best news of all.
