Game Of Thrones is all about intense battle scenes and fire-breathing dragons, but what if the most dangerous threat to Westeros is actually something really simple? While Cersei (Lena Headey) tries to take over the Seven Kingdoms and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) tries to convince everyone to fight the White Walkers, a more pressing issue is slowly getting worse, and they talk about it pretty much every episode.
Uproxx noticed that there's been a running theme throughout all seven seasons of the HBO series: food. Just last episode, the Lannisters were transporting sacks of grain to King's Landing when Drogon swooped in and burned it all to crisp, and over in Winterfell, Sansa (Sophie Turner) also has grain on the brain.
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"Whatever direction the threat comes from, this is the best place to be," she told Maester Wolkan (Richard Rycroft). "We need to start building up our grain stores with regular shipments from every keep in the North. If we don’t use it by winter’s end, we’ll give it back to them. But if the entire north has to flee to Winterfell, they won’t have time to bring wagon loads of grain with them."
The significance of all this? Dragonglass and armour is no use if everyone is starving to death — and, according to Bronn (Jerome Flynn), this nightmare scenario has happened before.
"Have you ever been in a city under siege?" he asked Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Varys (Conleth Hill) in season two. "Maybe this part’s not in your books. See, it’s not the fighting that kills most people; it’s the starving. Food’s worth more than gold."
To make matters worse, Uproxx points out that Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) once told the Small Council that there's only enough food for five years of winter — but winter could go on for much, much longer. If everyone keeps squabbling instead of focusing on a solution, it won't matter who's right or wrong. Everyone could die out before there's even a chance to battle the White Walkers. What an anticlimactic ending that would be.