We do know that Ned Stark’s remains were buried in the crypts, as the return of his body was one of Robb’s demands when he first declared himself King in the North back in season 2. (Yet, with Catelyn’s body having not been recovered, we’re still not heading for the big Lady Stoneheart reveal that fans have been clamoring for over several seasons.) Even discounting that some of the more ancient bones are probably dust by now and that some of the more recently dead Starks aren’t down there - like Catelyn and Robb, whose corpses never made their way back to Winterfell after the Red Wedding - there are still plenty of potential wights down there. There are a few major questions here: how close does a White Walker need to be to resurrect a corpse? Is there any limit on how old a corpse can be before it can’t be brought back? There are currently thousands of years’ worth of dead Starks buried down there. Remember, every innocent person who hides in the crypts and gets cut down by zombified Stark ancestors will only bolster the numbers of the dead. Put those together, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. But I digress.) On the other side, we have an invading force of ice monsters, whose main power lies in… resurrecting corpses to fight for them. And maybe some dragon eggs, according to some of the more out-there theories. Given that the crypts are, well, crypts, there’s basically only one thing down there: corpses of dead Starks. But given the near-Chekov’s Gun levels of emphasis on how safe the crypts are, the crypts of Winterfell are obviously extremely not safe. Davos says it, Gilly says it, Daenerys says it, Jon says it: if you don’t want want to become a wight snack, the crypts are apparently the place to be. We’re barreling toward a big battle in next week’s Game of Thrones, and if there was one part of the plan that this week’s episode, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” went to great pains to underline, it was that all of the non-fighters would be safest in the crypts underneath Winterfell.

Mild spoilers ahead for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” season 8, episode 2 of Game of Thrones.

Sean bean game of thrones season 8