Game of Thrones’ Daenerys teases anticipated meetup in seventh season

Game of Thrones is preparing to enter its second-to-last season and, if ever there were a time for characters to meet or reunite, it would be now.

[Warning: The following contains possible spoilers for the upcoming season of Game of Thrones.]

We finally got confirmation last year that Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow are indeed related. This long-standing theory has been around for quite some time, but readers of the Song of Ice and Fire series couldn’t know for certain because the next book in author George R.R. Martin’s series had yet to be released. With the HBO series now outpacing the novels, it appears like that was always Martin’s plan. With that confirmation now known, we’ve been left to wonder whether or not Jon and Daenerys would ever meet.

According to Emilia Clarke, the actress who plays Daenerys, it looks like that’s more than likely that meetup will happen this season. During an interview with Rolling Stone, Clarke hinted that she spent more time than usual in Northern Ireland filming scenes for this upcoming season. Die-hard Game of Thrones fans will already know that Northern Ireland is where the show films most of its scenes that take place in the North, home of the Stark family. Although Clarke was coy about it, she did refer to the location as a possible spoiler, making the meetup seem all the more likely.

“Spoiler alert — I normally don’t spend very much time in Belfast, but this last season I spent a little more time there,” Clarke said. "It's a really interesting season in terms of some loose ends that have been tied, some really satisfying plot points, some things where you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. I forgot about that!’ Rumors are going to be confirmed or denied.”

Clarke wouldn’t say anything more, understandably, but the penultimate season looks like it may answer the biggest questions we have, possible leaving the eighth season to tackle the all-out war we’ve been promised since the first season.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, co-showrunner D.B. Weiss said one of the more interesting aspects of the seventh season will be watching characters who have never been able to interact — like Daenerys and Jon Snow — finally get to do so. As the war becomes central, there will be opportunity for all of the show’s key players to eventually meet.

“There’s a whole bunch of reunions and first time meetings that people have been waiting for for a long time and when you put it on paper you just want to do justice to the work that these guys have done building these characters over so many years,” Weiss said. “You want to give them as much as you can.”

Game of Thrones’ seventh season will premiere on July 16 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.