For almost the entire series of Game Of Thrones, people have underestimated Samwell Tarly (John Bradley-West), but a compelling theory suggests that the maester-in-training could be more important to the plot than we ever knew, and Sunday night's episode might have confirmed it. Thanks to a small moment shared between Samwell and Archmaester Ebrose (Jim Broadbent), we have reason to believe that the former steward isn't just instrumental to the show's plot — he just might have written it.
Take a second look at this conversation between Ebrose and Samwell:
"If you want people to read your histories, you need a bit of style," the Archmaester explains. "I'm not writing, A Chronicle of the Wars of Following the Death of King Robert I so it can sit on a shelf unread." Samwell wrinkles his nose.
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"What? You don't like the title?" Ebrose asks. "What would you call it then?"
"Mm, possibly something a bit more poetic?"
Game Of Thrones sounds pretty poetic to me. Or perhaps even A Song Of Ice And Fire, the title of the book series written by George R.R. Martin that inspired the show. What I'm saying — along with the rest of the internet — is that this moment sure makes it sound like the Game Of Thrones we're watching is actually a book later written by Samwell — and John Bradley-West agrees. Or at least, he definitely sees the logic.
"One theory is that what we're seeing now and how we're experiencing Game of Thrones is Sam telling the story of Game of Thrones," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "If you take the logic of the story now, the story of Westeros and the story of the battle for the Iron Throne, it would be a book in that library. The visual motif of that is you're about to be told a story — the sense of an idea of being told a story, and people gaining that knowledge, the way Sam is absorbing knowledge in the library."
For the first time, I'm actually 100% on board with a Game Of Thrones fan theory, and anything that gives Samwell Tarly the credit he deserves is a-okay with me.