The Small Council: What Stood Out About Season 5 Trailer #2?

Welcome back to The Small Council, where our staff and contributors give quick answers to the pressing questions about Game of Thrones! This week, we welcome two members of the most illustrious comment section on the internet, The Horde, to the Council: Kate, who has read the books, and Amaranth, an Unsullied. The question this week: After our questions for Unsullied and readers, what was the most striking thing about the second Season 5 trailer to you?

David: What stood out to me the most was Sansa’s homecoming to Winterfell and the fact that she visits the Winterfell crypts, while there. Fans of the books will get to experience what it feels like to watch Game of Thrones, from an Unsullied’s point of view.

Throw in the fact that Little Finger has been coaching Sansa on how to avenge her family (in the first trailer for Season 5), and there is potential for some extremely gratifying revenge. Sansa has come a long way from pining over Joffrey, while cramming lemon cakes in her mouth.

Kate: It’s hard (impossible) to miss how strongly the whole thing implies that Dany will come out on top in the end. Sure, it seems to say, all thee players are busy running around Westeros dealing not only with each other but also with the onset of winter, but who cares? There’s a Targaryen with dragons in a place where it’s still warm.

Based on how meandering the books have gotten it’s sometimes kind of hard to remember that someone in the end is supposed to end up beating all the other players and, as much as possible, winning the game. There’s no strong case for Dany in the show yet but, hell, why not Dany? She’s certainly as decent as anyone else who has yet to be killed one or more times. It’s a direction to go and a goal to move toward so I’m all in favor. Particularly as the power vacuums in all the other families just grow and grow and grow…

Cameron: The biggest thing that stood out to me from this trailer is something that probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does: the sheer focus on savage fighting. I mean, yes, Game of Thrones is a show about constant warfare and violent things happen on it all the time, but there’s something wearying, almost miserable, about how much blood we and the people of Westeros are going to be drenched in this season. I agree with Kate in that the trailer frames Dany as a kind of heroic figure, but that too is problematic because the show has not been very subtle with that angle for Dany, and she is a character that requires a subtle approach given her family history and life story. It’s something I think Emilia Clarke brings to the table more often than not, even though those moments almost never make it into the season trailers.

To put it another way, I’m far less confident in Dany’s analysis of the game of thrones as an endlessly turning wheel and her ability to “break” it than I was in Varys’s analysis of power that was used for the season 2 trailer. But maybe that’s intentional. This season will have everyone on a razor’s edge, after all.

Amaranth: To be honest it’s hard for me to think of things that stand out, because as someone who hasn’t read the books, I don’t have any specific expectations that are met or undermined by the trailers. But I’m glad we’re going to Dorne. I think I’m going to like Dorne. I thought Oberyn was a really refreshingly different character from the inhabitants of Westeros – his conspiring was so candid, and yet it still felt conspiratorial – so I’m curious to see more of what Dorne is like. And, from a plot perspective, given the apparent emphasis on vengeance in Dorne, I am curious to see how Oberyn’s family reacts to his death. I think it will be especially interesting to see what the consequences are, if any, to the Lannister daughter who was sent away to Dorne – or, at least on Cersei’s state of mind where she’s concerned.

But this all seems kind of small potatoes compared to what clearly is the arc hinted at in the trailer, which is that all this petty feuding on Westeros is insignificant compared to what Daenerys is bringing. But I feel like everybody is underestimating the White Walkers, so Daenerys seems like kind of an unreliable narrator, too. “The main conflict is not what you think it is” appears to be kind of a reoccurring theme.

Ani: So I know it’s a visual thing, but Dany’s loss of blue in her outfits disturbs me.

Dany is a character in trouble this season I fear. Ser Jorah was her sanity in an insane world. She was never going to love him back–not that way. Putting two of her three dragons away in the catacombs–when thye’re not even full grown! was a terrible mistake. Not only did it break her heart (and mine) but it was closing away the source of her power and the thing that made her who she is.

But I never expected to see that manifest itself so clearly in her costume design. Dany has always worn blue and silver, except for a few few times, like when she was crossing the Great Waste. It was something of a strange choice, considering her House colors are red and black. Everyone else wears something vaguely suggestive of their House colors, from the grey and black Starks to the red and gold Lannisters to the blue and yellow makes green Tyrells. I have always thought eventually she would don red and black, it was just a matter of when.

But seeing her instead loose her signature color, and wearing only a silvery white in every outfit. I suppose it’s befitting a ruler, but if there was a way to show that she’s cut off half of who she is, I couldn’t come up with a better visual statement.

• Published on 03/13/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:06 PM CDT