Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers: Timeline trouble

Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers may have just thrown a wrench into theories for how the season itself will play out, at least for one character.

Warning: Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers are back again for us to pore over!

Let’s just dive right back in to Game of Thrones season 8 spoilers. No messing around here, not for us, not today! Our sister site, Winter is Coming, has the goods (and the non-filming photo from Carice van Houten herself), which show that Carice van Houten is back in Belfast. Moreover, recent photos from Magheramorne show some very significant red, including someone who appears to have red hair and be wearing red.

Look just to the left of center in these photos as well:

Now, this complicates the timeline significantly for a couple of reasons. As WiC notes in its write-up of the van Houten image, Melisandre could be participating in the battle. However, the sheer amount of people present here makes this writer think this isn’t really combat so much as people fleeing and being protected by a small cadre of soldiers, a bit like the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back.

Granted, the pictures themselves aren’t particularly detailed — distance is, as always, a factor — but this doesn’t look like full combat so much as a group of important people fleeing an attack.

This could mean that this is another part of the sequence surrounding Winterfell. We don’t disagree with the idea that Melisandre would head right back to the North at all. We merely don’t think she’d participate in true combat so quickly. It would feel out of place for her, as if she were trying to force the issue of her death, which WiC also brings up just in general rather than attempting to contextualize it as we are here.

Next: More season 8 spoilers: A starry theory

What do you make of these images? Do you agree with our interpretation?