Possible spoilers ahead for this week's episode of Game of Thrones.
The ninth episode of each Game of Thrones season is always the craziest. These penultimate episodes have brought some of the biggest WTF moments in the show's tenure, including the Red Wedding, Ned's beheading, and a few very memorable battles. This week's episode, titled "Battle of the Bastards" is set to be another one for the record books, as Jon Snow and his troops descend upon Winterfell in an attempt to win back the North from House Bolton. While all of the footage, images, and even the title of the episode seem to point at an episode which will only focus on the battle, we may been led astray, and more characters and plots may be appearing than we originally anticipated.
A UK magazine called TV & Satellite Week recently wrote up a story about "Battle of the Bastards", where they heavily implied that we'll be getting a few more characters and plots this week. One twitter user snapped a pic of the story, check it out.
I don't think anyone saw this coming. While we're not sure if this report is entirely accurate, Game of Thrones including more than the battle at Winterfell would be very different for the series as a whole.
Whenever there are big battles inGame of Thrones, we usually end up with a full episode dedicated to the fight. This first happened with the Battle of Blackwater in Season 2, where Stannis Baratheon's attempt at sieging King's Landing took the entirety of the episode. Sure, we were also given Joffrey's incompetence and Cersei's drinking problem, but the episode was set entirely in the capital. Another battle-centric episode also occurred when the Knight's Watch attempted to stop the Wildlings from taking Castle Black. That had even fewer subplots, and was basically bloodshed for the entirety of the episode. Since a clear precedent has been set for battle-centric episodes, adding the likes of Daenerys and Yara Greyjoy into the mix would be something entirely new.
Of course, adding more characters into this week's episodes makes a great deal of sense. We only have one more episode in Season 6 after "Battle of the Bastards", and the final few seasons are reportedly going to be much shorter than we're used to. The folks behind Game of Thrones need to speed up their pace if they're able to wrap up the plethora of stories currently happening in the show. Dany needs to get her ass to Westeros, and seeing another badass lady like Yara help her get there seems perfect.
Should "Battle of the Bastards" include more than the actual battle? Sound off in the comments below. Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO.
