Three-Eyed Raven brings its final visions–finally with clues

HBO’s Three-Eyed Raven Snapchat-style viral marketing scheme to promote Game of Thrones has finally come to an end. Once again, your final “vision” depended on who you were. Some people saw Brienne and Pod–a pair of characters we have the least amount of information on. Others saw a snippet of Jon and Mance Rayder.

These were a big change up from the other “visions” we’ve had. It wasn’t a set of instantaneous clips of Season 4 footage flashing before our eyes, ending with a single image from Season 5. Instead we got a pair of full-dialogue clips from the upcoming season. Also, for the first time, we heard people speak.

Videos of both clips below.

Yes, it’s sideways. But you get the idea. Brienne frustrated with her mission, is losing her idealism. Since this seems to be just post-Arya, I’m guessing it’s from the premiere episode. Not that it tells us where she and Pod will aim next, but it’s interesting she’s giving the classic trope of a “real hero”: “I don’t want anyone following me. I’m not a leader.”

Jon and Mance are a lot blurrier, but at least they’re right-side ’round.

“Fuck my pride.” This scene looks to be Jon’s first visit with Mance, post-Wildling defeat. This holds to my theory that both these clips are probably from the premiere episode.

As for this marketing ploy HBO used over the last two months, I’ll hand it to them that it’s been an interesting experiment, even if it was not the greatest results. And I appreciate that they attempted to do something different. The idea seemed to be to take social media and use it to demonstrate what it is like for characters like Bran or Jojen to have “The Sight.” But for superfans, it was something of an exercise in frustration. Also, as a side note, many of the friends I have in real life who are into Game of Thrones had no idea this campaign was going on. When told about it, even the more hard core ones only were interested in it for a minute–seeing those first couple of clips that were mostly Season 4 footage usually elicited a “what’s the point then?” response. If the show had been more willing to put out Season 5 footage–if say, clips like this were what hit the web in those early rounds–this might have gone over better, even with all the bugs of people not actually being able to see it.

At least these last two clips were worth it though. Hopefully when Season 6 comes round, HBO will build on that for their “Three Eyed Raven” website.

• Published on 02/27/2015 at 8:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:06 PM CDT