So, Will We Ever Get An Explanation Of The Night King's Symbol On 'GoT'?

Gather 'round Game of Thrones fans, those of us who watched Lost can tell you all about what it feels to have your most burning mythological mysteries remain unsolved in the final season of a favorite show. With the White Walker threat presumably over and done with, all those clues that fans pored over don't seem to matter anymore. Will we even learn the meaning behind the Night King's symbol on Game of Thrones? Maybe, but don't get your hopes up.

Sure, the symbol that the White Walkers left as a calling card at the seat of House Umber in Season 8, Episode 1, isn't the most prominent thing on Game of Thrones. It's shown up a few times, but not always exactly the same. Still, the fact that it was lit on fire in its latest appearance made a heck of an impression, and unless Bran takes us on another flashback through his Three-Eyed Raven mind, we may never know what it meant.

The symbol likely had something to do with the Children of the Forest who created the Night King, and then ended up in a war against his army. One of the places the symbol turned up was in the caves under Dragonstone, where Jon Snow took Daenerys Targaryen and reminded her that the ancient conflict united Children and men against the White Walkers.

However, currently the Children of the Forest are way up North, pretty far from the action and unbothered by what just went down at Winterfell. That is, if any are still alive after the Night King attacked them, Hodor, and the previous Three-Eyed Raven in Season 6. So we probably won't get any answers from them, either.

Perhaps Game of Thrones pulled a big one over on us by introducing Big Bad who died without ever speaking a single word or officially unveiling a master plan. If everyone was wrong to assume that Ned Stark was the hero in Season 1, why should we be right to assume that the Night King is the villain in Season 8? (That excludes book readers, for the sake of argument, and rightly so as the White Walkers are way less significant in George R. R. Martin's books.) These supernatural details make the world of Game of Thrones rich, so that the plot can focus on the human stories and conflicts between royal siblings and everyone else.

On the other hand, this stuff is interesting, and probably had some kind of meaning at some point. Maybe we'll learn more about the Children, the White Walkers, and all of Westeros' mythological past in the Game of Thrones prequel spin-off. That series was, at one point, going to be called The Long Night. While the title has likely been changed to avoid confusion with the Battle of Winterfell episode on Thrones, it still hints that the plot of the series is connected to these parts of Westeros lore.

There's also, you know, a chance that a new Night King or Queen will emerge and this cycle will start all over again. If that's the case, this spiral-y symbol may not have been a big flaming red herring after all. So don't completely file away all of your theories and translation attempts. Just don't be surprised if it wasn't the real mystery all along.