Game of Thrones Season 6 is coming!

[Game of Thrones contains mature themes in all formats. Viewer and reader discretion is advised.]

Season 6 premieres on April 24!  If you haven’t already seen the official trailer, start here.

The internet abounds with fan analyses of the trailer's content. If you’re curious about the different interpretations, try this academic article from Time Magazine, this saucy British YouTube commentary, and this lite pop culture take.

The biggest question for this season is whether or not Jon Snow is actually dead. To voice your opinion, you can vote in The Hollywood Reporter’s poll. The cast members have been dodging this question with a variety of ways running the gamut from cryptic to confrontational.


In his most recent interview, the actor who plays Jon Snow insists that his character is dead and will not be resurrected in the upcoming episodes. But fan speculation dismisses this as mere subterfuge.

If you need a refresher for the television series, the Game of Thrones Wiki provides a season by season, episode by episode recap as does the Internet Movie Database. You can also check out the previous seasons on DVD for a binge-watching marathon.

Do you have trouble keeping the characters straight? There are several online character encyclopedias that can help you keep track of who is who and their complex series of interrelationships.

The fan site Westeros breaks down characters by television season, fictional region, and alphabetically by first name. The Game of Thrones wiki sorts character entries alphabetically and by popularity and includes a variety of subcategories by subject. The Tower of the Hand offers information on the different houses and provides handy family trees. 

If you’re interested in a character’s strictly literary life, a Wiki of Ice and Fire has entries categorized by point of view, affiliation, and region as well as organized alphabetically.

If you want to reread your favorite characters' story lines in anticipation of the sixth season or sixth book, a Wiki of Ice and Fire has created tables of contents for all five published novels. For each book, there is a list the point of view characters along with the corresponding page numbers for the hardcover, paperback, and eBook formats. And don't forget KHCPL has the entire series available in print, on eBook, on audio CD, and on audio download.

George R. R. Martin announced that The Winds of Winter, the upcoming book in the series, will not be finished before Season 6 airs as he had previously hoped. Disappointed fans who are tempted to lash out in anger over this turn of events may want to revisit Neil Gaiman’s legendary blog post on this very subject. But not to despair, Martin has promised readers that he is working exclusively on The Winds of Winter and will not write anything else until he has finished it. He even released a chapter excerpt as a teaser. 

Following up on his word of warning about the divergence between the novels and the television series, Martin revealed that the plot twist in The Winds of Winter will involve a character who, while still alive in the books, had been killed off in the television show. 

See who wins and who dies as they play the game of thrones!