‘Westworld’ Keeps Referencing ‘Game Of Thrones’ & It’s So Suspicious

Spoilers ahead for Westworld Season 2, Episode 3. Game Of Thrones and Westworld obviously share a lot of fans: not only do both shows air on the same network, but they're both genre series featuring lavish production values, lots of action, and plenty of mind-blowing twists. So was the recent Game Of Thrones reference on Westworld just an amiable nod at the fans the shows have in common? Or was it a major breadcrumb pointing towards the future of the series?

The reference comes as Maeve, Hector, and Lee are traversing the underground tunnels throughout the park in the episode "Virtù e Fortuna," attempting to find a path that would bring them closer to Sector 6 and the location of Maeve's missing daughter. Hearing gunshots up ahead, the trio is surprised to see a screaming man on fire running towards them… and then the long-missing Armistice following close behind with a flamethrower she found somewhere inside the facility. (The last time viewers saw Armistice, she was sawing off her own trapped arm in the Season 1 finale's post-credits scene.)

Seeing his outlaw ally running towards him spitting flames, Hector whispers in awe, "She has a dragon." Daenerys Targaryen would be proud… and then she'd help Armistice mow down her slavers with her own trio of fearsome fire-breathing weapons.

This might seem like a throwaway line, but on a show with such a meticulous attention to detail, where no moment — no matter how seemingly insignificant — goes un-dissected by viewers on Reddit, it was surely intentional. But whether that intention was a small Easter egg for fans or a major clue is difficult to divine at this point.

Given that the hosts are programmed not to recognize things that are out-of-place in their world — like photographs of Times Square or mentions of cars — why on Earth would they be specifically programmed to know about dragons? Sure, dragons have been part of mythology for centuries, but I'm not sure how majorly they figured into the folklore of the Wild West. Could the hosts be programmed with knowledge of dragons on the off-chance that they run into one… you know, in case one of them escapes from an adjacent park? (Like that Bengal tiger that washed up on the beach in the Season 2 premiere.)

I might be inclined to put less stock in this oblique nod towards GoT if this was the first time Westworld had referenced the fantasy series. But in Season 1, viewers noticed that Logan, after hooking up with the Confederados, started sporting a pin that looked an awful lot like the Hand Of The King pin worn by Tyrion and others in GoT.

Ever since it was confirmed that there are at least six parks in the Delos complex — including Westworld and Shogun World — fans have been theorizing about what the other four parks could be. One of them appears to be India-themed, based on the tiger. But that still leaves three parks with unknown themes. Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have remained mum on whether their show would explore the other parks from the original film and its sequel — Roman World, Medieval World, Future World, and Spa World — but could one of the three remaining parks possibly be Westeros World?

It's impossible to imagine how hard fans would geek out if it was cheekily revealed that Game Of Thrones was just a narrative playing out within a Delos park this whole time. While such a direct crossover is probably unlikely to happen, it turns out that George R.R. Martin himself is a fan of the idea, per Vanity Fair. But while Hector's dragon line might not be hinting at an impending mash-up between the two HBO shows, it's likely that the writers will continue dropping subtle GoT references as long as fans continue to enjoy finding them.