Cool. Cool cool cool.

I did get a vibe from the other three horsemen that they weren't totally cool with Ice King Robert hogging the limelight. Plus, all the drinking and siring of bastards isn't good for the realm. (What do they call it? The North North North?)

Yeah, I like this idea. Not so much that they disbelieve the old texts, but that they see them as exaggerations of more mundane threats.

|hopefully the creators are as interested in these kind of things as the WW become more prevalent, and we get some answers.

Yeah, it's hard (at least, for me) to keep that several thousand years in perspective. (Another commenter said the wiki says 8000+ years.)

I'm probably an order of magnitude more of a Coldplay fan than the average AV Club commenter, but even so, I found it funny and smart in several places.

Yes. I had this reaction to Sansa confronting Theon in this episode. Finally the truth about Bran and Rickon is out! Another Stark knows!

By the Old Gods and the New, can we please discuss Coldplay's Game of Thrones: The Musical?

Oh, that's right — thanks! I guess there's a difference between the belief that magic existed once but no longer and the belief that it's even possible.

Great — thanks! I'm so afraid to Google anything related to this show that I just amble along reliant on half-recollections instead.

As he started raising his hands, I thought, "Well, that's it. He's gonna freeze the ocean and everyone's gonna die." This show has conditioned me to always expect the worst.

| The thing is we know what the source material says.

I was thinking the WW came cyclically, too, like the long seasons. But if not, that raises more interesting questions.

Good point re: Jericho. But on the other hand, we have these papyrus and Dead Sea Scrolls and such that give us some sense of events from thousands of years ago — seems like something of that nature should exist in the NW library. (Or still be known by the Maesters.)

Yeah, it's not exactly clear the difference between this "long night" and "Winter is Coming", eg. winters that can last several years. Maybe the reason for the long summer, as explained in S1, is that this coming winter is the "long night" version?

Did he? But he didn't (or wouldn't have) believe in magic or dragons or smoke monsters or any of that in S1, did he? Maybe he said it along the lines of, "Supposedly, as the legend goes…"

Thanks, SG. I guess this is what I was thinking of: that the theory that the Wall had been constructed to keep out WW was presented, but we didn't see any evidence of it in-show, and none of the characters' POV at the start of the series backed it up. (Even Tyrion, the most well-read dwarf in Westeros, says something…

Good point! Yeah, if anyone should remember the last WW invasion, and hence the real reason for the Wall, it's the Wildlings.

Oh… hmm. Yeah, I guess I lost track of that somewhere — that sounds right that the origin of the Wall was explained early, but now I can't remember who told us that information (despite watching S1 and S2 at least 3x each — guh.) Was that explained to Tyrion when he visited?

[newbie speculation]