WARNING: This article is dark and full of spoilers.
Game of Thrones cleaned house in a big way in season 6 - thanks is no small part to Cersei taking out pretty much EVERYBODY in the finale - but for the survivors there is still one looming threat on the horizon in the Night King. The villain has made his presence felt on multiple occasions during the series, and he's done it without uttering a single word. According to Game of Thrones' producers, we shouldn't expect that to change in season 7:
"I don’t think of the Night King as a villain as much as, Death", Dan Weiss told Deadline. "He is not like Joffrey, or [Ramsay]. He’s not really human anymore. To me, evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way. The Night King doesn’t have a choice; he was created that way, and that’s what he is. In some ways, he’s just death, coming for everyone in the story, coming for all of us. In some ways, it’s appropriate he doesn’t speak. What’s death going to say? Anything would diminish him. He’s just a force of destruction. I don’t think we’ve ever been tempted to write dialogue for the Night King. Anything he said would be anticlimactic".
While Weiss certainly has a point here, I for one am curious to hear what the villain sounds like and with the right dialogue such a scene could be quite memorable while also making the Night King immediately more interesting. However, although the chances of hearing the baddie speak in season 7 are unlikely, the producers have some big plans for the character when the show returns:
"There are the books, and the show, and it would be a disservice to both if we went into too much detail on whether we’re going to use [the books’ Horn of Joramund] or that", noted David Benioff. "What is laid out in this season is, very clearly, that the wall isn’t just a physical structure keeping the army of the dead out. If the Wildlings managed to make it over, which they have, and the Night King has so much more in the way of both power and troops who’ll do literally anything he says … we’ll keep it at that for now".
Season 7 of Game of Thrones will debut in 2017.
Images: HBO
