Is The Ice Dragon Leak for Game of Thrones Real?

All of the Game of Thrones Season 7 plot may have leaked to reddit. Most of the spoilers sound plausible, particularly if you’ve been paying attention to the various set leaks and snuck photos emanating from the Game of Thrones shoot. But one spoiler-y detail in particular is worth a deeper look. What is the Ice Dragon and should we have seen this coming?

According to the reddit thread (since taken down), Jon Snow plans to capture a wight in order to prove to Daenerys that the threat from the White Walkers in the North is real. “There is a huge battle around an ice-covered lake,” the OP, u/awayforthelads, writes. Some mid-tier characters die and Daenerys shows up at the last minute to rescue Jon Snow and the other adventurers. But the White Walkers manage to bring down the dragon Viserion. The Night’s King reanimates the dragon and flies off.

Ice dragons, those creatures of terror and myth, have been reborn in Westeros.

The wind was blowing from the east along the Wall, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan used to tell. pic.twitter.com/dpqkaNnFw4
— Awais (@akakiyani) October 27, 2016

Without any actual proof that this massive leak accurately represents the plot of Game of Thrones Season 7 we can only judge the evidence on its narrative plausibility. And the evidence is strong that this could be a very real plot point in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones.

There are indeed ice dragons within the mythology of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels. They are creatures of legend, “said to roam the Shivering Sea and the White Waste,” according to the Game of Thrones wiki. They also feature prominently in the mythology of the ongoing, episodic Game of Thrones video game.

Plus, George R.R. Martin wrote a kids book about an ice dragon, called… The Ice Dragon! But despite claims from its publisher that Martin’s story, about a girl who tames one, is set “ in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire,” GRRM himself denies it, writing on his LiveJournal, “no, it is not.”

But none of that matters in the face of the best evidence of all: George R.R. Martin started seeding the return of the ice dragons in the latest novel, A Dance with Dragons. Jon Snow thinks of ice dragons three times. “The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan told when Jon was a boy,” Martin writes, in one instance.

While some of the leaked Game of Thrones Season 7 plot points sound a little farfetched, it really does seem likely that the Night’s King will ride an ice dragon into battle next year on Game of Thrones.