Game of Thrones: Pause 35 minutes into episode 4 and take a good look at Jon Snow above

Spoilers – Warning, the article below contains potential spoilers. If you do not wish to know its contents, please do not read the following…

The Ratatouille character on the front page of a magazine in Vice Versa, Kevin McCallister’s plane tickets trashed in Mom, I Missed the Plane, the 2001 space capsule stored at the scrap dealer Watto in La Phantom Menace, or even a photograph. Oppenheimer in the middle of Jurassic Park…

If you have the spirit of a treasure hunter and a sense of observation, know that you can find what you’re looking for by taking a closer look at some of the classics of pop culture, whether on the big or small screen. Today, with House of the Dragon season 2 in full swing on Max’s platform, let’s take a look in the rearview mirror and revisit the first season of Game of Thrones that aired on HBO in 2011.

In the 4th episode of the first season…

Indeed, in the fourth episode of the series titled Cripples, bastards and broken things hides a particularly disturbing little element that many fans believe could be a serious clue to one of the show’s most important revelations.

To see the details in question, I suggest you hit the pause button on your remote control at exactly 35 minutes and 20 seconds in, when Jon Snow and his Night’s Watch companions are having dinner in the Castle Black common room.

… Press pause at 35 minutes and 20 seconds

If you pay attention to the beam at the back of the room (in the middle of the screen, above Jon Snow’s head), you will see that there are two letters written there: R (the second leg is slightly erased and can. So it should be taken as P) and L.

Initials that are a priori nothing special when we first discover them in season 1, but which suddenly take on a completely different meaning in episode 1 of season 8, where Jon Snow learns his true parentage. Far from being a natural child as he always believed, he is actually the son of Rhaegar Targaryen (Daenerys’ brother) and Lyanna Stark (Ned Stark’s sister, the latter always pretending to be Jon’s father).

Rhaegar + Lyanna

In other words, through his direct descent from Rhaegar, the Young King of the North is thus the rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne.

Could it be that the two letters recorded in the common room at Castle Black were written there by John’s parents years ago? If that’s the case, the fact that we see them in Episode 4, where Jon Snow confides in Sam (and in the same place) that he’s been experiencing his illegitimacy, is surely no coincidence.

Either way, many fans feel that this was a very subtle little reference that was slipped on screen from the start of the series in order to further the viewer’s theories about the character’s origins.

(Re)discover all the hidden details of Game of Thrones…