Only One Rule for Season Four

A few more weeks and Game of Thrones comes back. HBO released a set of new photographs from Season 4—the kind of careful, high-production stills that give you just enough to feel the world again without telling you anything you can actually use. Everyone looks like they’ve been through something. At this point in the story, they have.

The images don’t change what I already know going in: I have exactly one rule for this season, the same rule I’ve had since the beginning. Nothing happens to Daenerys Targaryen. That’s it. Everything else—the scheming, the betrayals, the relentless procession of deaths that make you question why you got attached to anyone in the first place—all of that is survivable. The Red Wedding needed a week. But Daenerys is the axis the whole thing turns on. She’s the one character the show hasn’t found a way to make me doubt yet, and I’m not ready for the season that changes that.

The photos look cold. Everyone looks cold. There are a lot of furs and gray skies and expressions that say things are about to get considerably worse. I’m going to watch every episode anyway. That’s the contract I signed somewhere around Season 1 and never found a way out of.