I tried my best, you know, but with little more than a month to go, I've been finally forced to look at a trailer for the final season of Game of Thrones.
I'm not usually one who cares too much about spoilers, but click on any forum about George RR Martin's fantasy come to life, and you're overloaded with fan theories about pretty much everything.
And I mean everything, folks - from the symbolic meaning of Bran Stark looking taller and thinner in recent seasons (the actor's getting older, you dorks), to screengrabbed frames from the opening credits that secretly reveal how your favourite character is going to die.
Some people have already figured out the ending to the entire thing, for crying out loud.
But ahead of the final trailer for the final season of the HBO fantasy epic, Game of Thrones fans (hereafter referred to as 'Throners') have zeroed in on a very tiny, but potentially very important, bit of footage. Take a look at the trailer above, let the shivers run down your spine once more, and then have a look at this bit:
Arya Stark is running panicked; something you rarely see of the actress played by Maisie Williams, even back in season one when she was just a little girl, rather than the sword-wielding badass in the body of a little girl that she is now.
Eagled-eyed Throners (probably with a fair bit of time on their hands) have theorised that Arya is either running toward or away from something (as opposed to going for an intense morning jog).
But a couple of frames reveal all of the information we needed. Let's head to Reddit, where that two-second clip of Arya running you saw above has already been completely dissected for all the information we need. Here's that CSI classic - a zoom and enhance - courtesy of Reddit user FadedAndJaded.
What's that in the background? Folks, is something chasing Arya? What could be chasing Arya Stark, you're probably asking, but then if that wasn't enough, Reddit person KINGSLAYER_117 drops another info bomb on us. What's exactly going on here - are there two people chasing Arya?
And who does the guy on the right remind you of? That's right - Jaime Lannister. A really blurry picture of what could be Jaime Lannister. But you're probably thinking - was Arya that scared of Jaime before? Why would she be running so hard from some guy with one hand - a guy we know from the end of last season has abandoned twin sister/baby mama Cersei for an alliance with the rest of the gang?
That's where things get interesting. Could these be the impending White Walkers, finally infiltrating the final stronghold of our heroes? More interestingly: could the White Walker be a twisted resurrection of someone she knows - for example, the nefarious Littlefinger, or even her own dead father?
Of course, this is a screengrab from a specific frame of a trailer, folks. Let's hold our (bright blue and undead) horses here. Showrunners DB Weiss and David Benioff are well aware of the lengths people will go through to glean even a hint of a spoiler from something. But still, with more than a month left to go, it gives a little something to sink our teeth into before we go crazy waiting for season eight to drop.
