Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers: Where is everyone going?

A new quote suggests that Game of Thrones season 8 might actually shuffle everyone around, but where haven’t these characters been?

Note: Game of Thrones fans, this post will contain lots of speculation and a very hint-laden quote.

Thanks to both Entertainment Weekly and ultimately TV Guide, it seems like John Bradley has given Game of Thrones fans an early holiday gift in the ability to speculate more on what the last season has in store for everyone. (What, you don’t think that’s a gift?)

Now, both EW and TV Guide seem to think that the following quote refers concretely to every character going someplace they haven’t been before. That’s not an unworthy interpretation, but it certainly seems like it misses some of Bradley’s nuance:

"Each of the characters this year is placed in a completely alien environment at some point in the season that they’ve never been placed in before."

Since he’s talking right before then about “circumstance,” it’s possible that the “environment” he’s discussing is not necessarily physical or literal for every single character. It’s certainly possible that it is for some — how fascinating would it be to see Jon Snow visit the Tower of Joy, for example, or the Red Keep? However, to completely scramble everyone by dumping them somewhere physically new, and finding plausible excuses to put them there, seems like a huge stretch for not a lot of time left in the show.

However, it’s entirely possible that it could happen. We haven’t seen everyone at the Eyrie for example; not all characters have been to Winterfell or the Red Keep that we know of or have seen. And, in the case of those two latter locations, they look to be, as they normally are, major, with spoilers already surfacing for the two of them.

But to get back to the idea that not everything is as it seems with this quote, there are situations that we haven’t found characters in yet that could be part of what Bradley’s talking about … and that’s saying something, considering all of the weird things that have happened to characters over the course of this show. Take, for example, Daenerys. One situation she really hasn’t been in is … well … following the Targaryen tradition of incest with someone of her choosing (as opposed to Viserys creeping on her), and knowingly. It’s not necessarily “completely alien,” but for someone who has famously been wishing to “break the wheel” for several seasons now, it is a huge conflict with her stated goals and interests.

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What do you make of this, Game of Thrones fans?