"They have no idea what's going to happen" intones a sinister intriguing voice at the end of the very short 41 seconds-long teaser trailer released by HBO for Season 6 of The Game of Thrones. Ahh well, after watching the trailer neither do we have any idea of what's going to happen!
One thing seems certain prior to the release of Season 6 scheduled for April 2016, Jon Snow is set to make a reappearance, we do not know exactly how though there are speculations that he will return as a Targaryen and so on.
The 'game' gets trickier because one can no longer depend on George R R Martin's written tale to figure out what might happen. Season 6 depends on original material written for the TV series especially which only drawns upon bits and pieces from The Winds of Winter, a novel yet to be launched, and from the fourth and fifth novels, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.
So the teaser is exactly that, something to puzzle Game of Thrones fans and keep their minds crackling on past episodes and the intriguing matrix of its plots, sub-plots and multiple story lines and characters moving across a vast landscape of political skullduggery, sex, gore and some poignant, even startling and shocking moments.
We guess this is what the teaser invites the eager fans to do when it begins with the intoned statement: 'We watch, we listen, and we remember'. Who exactly is this 'we'?
And then 'we' are told that 'The past is already written, the ink is dry." It's a clear invitation, in one sense, to remember the past seasons but also to be alert and ready for all that's coming and might be unexpected or unprecedented in the upcoming Season 6.
The teaser trailer, after an ethereal slow mo vision of Jon Snow, launches us into the essential form and feel of the Game of Thrones series using quick cuts that emphasise the violence, the central characters including Daenerys the Dragon Queen and her brood and Bran Stark whose psychic abilities seem to put him in touch somehow with Jon Snow (that seems to be what the trailer hints at in the end). And by the way, Eddard Stark is also supposed to return in Season 6 in a flashback.