As Game of Thrones Season 7 approaches, actors involved in the popular HBO series are starting up their press cycle to promote the new season. With this come exciting new details about what fans can expect from Game of Thrones’ penultimate season.
In an exclusive interview with EW, actor Iain Glen (who plays Jorah Mormont on the show) said the scripts for Season 7 excited him so much that he contacted showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss immediately. “I wrote to Dan and David and I said I thought they were the best seven episodes they’ve ever written,” the Scottish actor says.
Glen elaborated on what to expect from the new season as a whole, explaining, “The story is going toward a conclusion. There’s no sense of treading water. You have storylines colliding. And the evolving drama and relationships are as good as they have ever been. It definitely feels like the beginning of the end game.” Many fans complained about the fact that HBO and showrunners Benioff and Weiss decided to reduce the number of episodes from 10 to 7 for the new season, but Glen’s sentiments seem extremely promising in terms of how this reduction will fare for Season 7.
Iain Glen’s Jorah Mormont has had particularly tough time in the past few seasons of Game of Thrones. Back in Season 4, Daenerys Targaryen banished Jorah from her service when she discovered Jorah was working as a spy for King Robert Baratheon. Ever since then, Jorah has committed himself to finding his way back to Daenerys. He finally succeeded in his mission last season – but found himself caught in a cruel twist of fate, as is typical in Game of Thrones.
In his last scene of Season 6, though finally back in his Queen’s presence, Jorah prepared to leave Daenerys forever after revealing his contraction of greyscale to her, a deadly disease that eventually consumes the entire affected person and turns them into something subhuman. Daenerys, however, commanded him to find the cure and return to her in order to help her command when she takes the Seven Kingdoms.
While it is questionable if Jorah will be able to save his life and find a cure, viewers will remember that back in Season 5 Stannis Baratheon told the story of how his daughter, Shireen, contracted greyscale on the side of her face, and how he relentlessly hunted down a cure in order to save her life. This confirms that a cure does exist in the Game of Thrones universe, and it may have even been an effort by showrunners David Benioff and Daniel Weiss to foreshadow the fact that Jorah himself will be able to hunt down the same cure. As Iain Glen himself says, Jorah’s story arc for Season 7 ““is all about whether he will survive this horrendous sickness he’s contracted.” Fans of Jorah Mormont can only hope he can be as fortunate as Shireen Baratheon in the show’s new season.
Season 7 of Game of Thrones will premiere July 16 on HBO.