Game of Thrones Season 6 is rapidly approaching. What do we hope the first scene of Season 6 will show? What do we think it will show? Is there a difference? The Small Council is in session.
DAN: Now that the show is marching towards its endgame, I think it’d be a good idea to take the opening scene of Season 6 and remind everyone who the real villains of the piece are: the White Walkers.
I’d love a cold open that recalls the one that kicked off Season 1. Maybe there are a couple of wildlings who weren’t at Hardhome. They wander through a dark forest, making their way south so they can outright beg the Night’s Watch to let them through the Wall, desperate times calling for desperate measures and all. They come upon some weirdly arranged body parts, the White Walkers’ calling cards. (“Always the artists.”) Then there are creepy sounds, and weird sights, and the wildlings scream bloody murder before Bran opens his eyes, having seen the whole thing using his new powers. Begin show.
The White Walkers made their biggest splash yet in Season 5, but we still know alarmingly little about them, and that goes for book-readers, too. With the show over halfway over, they’re going to have to become a bigger presence. Beginning Season 6 with a new look at them could set the tone and warn everybody that Winter is really and truly Coming.
On a slight tangent, while I love the opening of the pilot episode, I think my favorite opening scene is the one at the top of Season 4, where Tywin melts down Ice into two separate Valyrian steel swords. What a powerful way to say that House Stark is well and truly finished. It doesn’t hurt that Charles Dance lends his powerful screen presence to the scene, either. Still, he’s gone, so bring on the White Walkers for Season 6.
LEXI: Season 5 opened to Cersei’s childhood encounter with a woods witch in the show’s first-ever flashback scene. I’d love that to continue and have Season 6 start with Bran using his greenseer skills to look into the past. Even if it’s not a flashback scene, I’d still like to see Bran kick off the season. We’ve been teased that he and his abilities are key to saving Westeros, so I’m excited for them to finally come into play, as well as about his big return after last year’s absence.
If Bran doesn’t play into the intro scene, my second choice is a scene involving our currently deceased Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Even though I don’t think it will happen, I’d like for Melisandre to resolve this situation as quickly as possible. She can wiggle her nose, roast Olly like a s’more, and poof: Jon is resurrected by the end of episode one. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be that easy, but as long as he’s a living human man again by the first few episodes, I’ll be happy.
KATIE: I’m 100% behind another flashback opener. We all love a good origin story, and Cersei’s flashback last year certainly offered some insight into her motivations and overall character, and I’d love to see another scene in the same vein with different characters. Casting calls for Season 6 suggest we’ll be seeing young Ned and Robert at some point, and seeing their backstory would be an intriguing way to kick off the next 10 episodes. We have fewer seasons to go than we’ve left behind, so it’s high time we get to the bottom of all the animosity that’s led us to this point. While we’ve seen plenty of that begin and end within the show’s timeline, there’s definitely a heavy history that could use some dipping into.
If the flashback opener is a no-go, I’d love to see some kind of secret band of rebels scheming to overthrow their enemies, perhaps some Northerners plotting to take down the Bolton regime (the North remembers, after all), or maybe a little meet-up between Doran and Ellaria that settles what’s going on with the Dornish once and for all. (Did Doran know about Ellaria’s poisoned lipstick? What’s their next move?) While Season 5’s Dornish plot was a complete bust, the Dornish themselves are salvageable as long as they prove interesting. It might do us all some good if Doran was plotting against the Lannisters the whole time, although I’m not sure how much they have to lose with Myrcella dead, Cersei disgraced, and Tyrion on the run.
Regardless, I’d be really into some underground revolution. The antics of the High Sparrow proved that it happens within the Game of Thrones universe, but I’d like something that captures my interest more than the Faith Militant did last year. (Ah, well; perhaps that’s what I get for not reading the books yet, but as with the Dornish, I’m hoping that that religious sect comes into Season 6 with a little more punch.)
RAZOR: I think Season 6 will open the way Season 5 closed…with Jon Snow. How better to tell a story than to pick up right where you left off? Does that mean that Jon will be resurrected in Episode 1? I have no idea. In fact, I highly doubt it, but I think that the very first shot will be a continual aerial zoom-out of Jon Snow, as he lies bleeding on the snow.
What I would love to see is chaos as the camera pans out to show Castle Black. Perhaps the wildlings are set upon by Alliser Thorne’s murderous Black Brothers. Tormund and his people realize what is happening and they try to get to Jon. Melisandre is hurling fireballs at random Night’s Watchmen, Edd is making terrible yet hilarious puns about the smell of cooking human flesh, while Wun Wun is wrecking walls and stomping on Olly…wait, I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself and reading from my personal fan-fiction. Move along, nothing to see here.
ANI: Nikolaj Coster Waldau already told us how the show will open: with confirmation that Jon Snow is definitely dead. Now, how that will be confirmed has not been said. Does Bran see the present and what has happened, and freak out in the middle of a greenseer vision, a la Luke seeing his friends in trouble in The Empire Strikes Back? Will we cut to the riot that’s about to take place when Edd and the wildlings realize what happened to Jon? Can we open with Ghost taking out Olly by tearing out his throat?
Or will we open the next day, with Jon Snow’s funeral, as his body is being placed upon the wooden pyre, ready for burning? (Remember, the Night’s Watch don’t just burn their dead; they do it in a damn hurry.)
The problem is that it’s predictable and yet necessary. I get everyone else wanting to open with flashbacks, with greenseer stuff, with the unexpected. After all, Game of Thrones‘ pilot originally opened on the White Walkers. But considering the absolute LACK of information we’ve gotten so far, and the continuing dearth of anything we’re likely to see in the next eight weeks, I think the show doesn’t have a choice. Even with That Spoiler Out There For All To See, they HAVE to continue as planned, and that is by having everyone insist that Jon Snow in dead in every interview from now until April 24th, and then by opening the new season with the scene that nails that coffin shut….until they hand Melisandre the metaphorical crowbar. (Get it, Crow-bar? Fine, I’ll see myself out.)
RICHARD: Fade in to the smoking ruins of Castle Black. Heavy snow falls in the firelit darkness. A great mass of bodies stagger through the wrecked gate. It is the White Walkers and their army, heading south. Every member of the Night’s Watch-, including Alliser Thorne and Olly, walks with them, bloody, ravaged, and with ice-blue eyes. The army vanishes into the blizzard and the camera moves into the bloodstained, trampled snow of the castle courtyard. Melisandre, disemboweled, lies dead at the foot of a smoking funeral pyre (yes, I know we saw preview pictures of her on a horse, but that could easily be flashback—just hang with me here), the scorched ‘traitor’ sign hanging upon it, clunking in the wind. The camera cranes over the top of the collapsed pyre to reveal the bare, soot-coated body of Jon Snow lying on the fire-thawed ground. His face is completely black. His eyes open. CUT to next scene.
Okay, so that was a lot of fantasy, but hey, why not? Surely the new season will open with a bang, so why not a dramatic glimpse of our ultimate bad guy, the White Walkers, moving south, overwhelming Castle Black, and a shot of whatever is left of our favorite hero, Jon Snow (whether his eyes open or not). Something like this would be great, and why not start by starting to answer the biggest question GRRM and D&D dropped on us at the end of Season 5?
CAMERON: Balon Greyjoy plummeting to his death. They forgot about him until now, so why bother pretending he mattered to them at all? Drop him on day one and let the kingsmoot story take its natural course over the season.
Note on the poll: these choices are pulled from out imaginings and suggestions on Twitter.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/02/19/small-council-what-do-you-hopethink-the-first-scene-of-season-6-will-be/
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