'Game Of Thrones' Season 7 Trailer Breakdown: The Battle For Westeros Begins

If you haven't watched the latest trailer for Game of Thrones season 7 yet, put a pin in whatever you're doing and check it out – but, fair warning, there's a chance you might unconsciously pump your fist in celebration, so make sure you're in a place where you won't injure anyone in the process. I'm comfortable declaring this as the best trailer in the show's history so far, and a trailer with this much going on deserves a closer look. Let's dive in and go frame-by-frame through this glorious piece of work. The battle for Westeros has begun.

The previous trailer began with Cersei Lannister (Lena Heady) talking about how she's facing enemies in all directions, and this one opens with Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) advising a stoic Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to take a different tack with her strategy: "Don't fight in the North or the South. Fight every battle, everywhere, always...in your mind." Composer Ramin Djawadi's bone-chillingly gorgeous "Light of the Seven" piano track plays underneath his voiceover, and considering the last time we heard that track was in the lead up to Cersei blowing up the Sept of Baelor, it's safe to say a similar explosion is on the way here – in a thematic sense, if not a literal one. Let's just hope it's not an internal one between Sansa and Jon...Littlefinger's always scheming, and he's aiming to sow some serious discord between the two.

In the North, something stops Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and a couple of his men dead in their tracks. Jon has a grave look on his face, and considering that he's wearing the same comfy-looking pelt that he's rocking when he slices a dude later in this trailer, I'm guessing they're looking at a line of wights – the reanimated corpses of formerly living beings who are now under the Night King's control.

We get a couple of quick shots of Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) on horseback (with her sword Needle prominently displayed at her side), Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau) clad in his shiny Queensguard armor, and Littlefinger in his natural habitat: lurking in the shadows.

Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) finally makes it back to Westeros, landing at her ancestral home of Dragonstone, where she promptly pulls down a banner with the Baratheon family crest on it (Stannis called Dragonstone home for a while). Of course, she brought a few friends on the trip with her:

When someone as smart as Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), fan-favorite character and Hand of the Queen, looks this worried, I'm also worried. Might he be looking at an encroaching Lannister army, sent by Cersei from King's Landing to battle Dany's army?

We get a look at Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), who's thankfully slowly come out of his "Reek" days and united with his sister, Yara (Gemma Whelan). That light from behind him and a small floating spark in the bottom left of the frame is a dead giveaway of a fire, so this shot may take place on one of the boats that we've seen set ablaze in previous trailers.

Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson), clad in full Unsullied gear and a badass-looking face guard, turns back and gives someone a nod over his shoulder. Based on what we've seen in the first trailer – namely, the Lannister army getting absolutely wrecked in shot after shot – I'm wondering if Dany might actually be the one to go on the offensive, sending her Unsullied on a sneak attack into King's Landing. There's a chance this shot could be taking place in the water outside of the city.

Then we see a series of shots of some of my favorite characters:

Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and her squire, Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman), walk into what looks like a rebuilt Winterfell courtyard, slowly showing some signs of life after Ramsay Bolton and his men burned the Stark's former home.

We know the Brotherhood Without Banners get in a scrape somewhere up North because of something that happens later in the trailer (I'm so excited about that, but we'll get to it in a second), and first we see a quick shot of Sandor "The Hound" Clegane (Rory McCann) looking harried, perhaps mid-fight.

There are a couple more battle shots of the Lannister army facing off against the Unsullied (with one Unsullied soldier enduring a hard fall after taking an arrow to the chest), and then a glimpse of what looks like Yara jumping from the top ropes of a burning Greyjoy ship to join the fight on deck below.

The Lannister archers take aim on the battlefield, with Jamie and Bronn (Jerome Flynn) watching on horseback behind them.

How ominous is that? The shot is quick and pretty blurry, but that's definitely a murder of crows flying above a mass of bodies. Seems like a good bet that those bodies are wights, especially considering who shows up in the next shot.

That'd be the Night King, the terrifying leader of the White Walkers, whose gaze is always unsettling.

The new Three-Eyed Raven, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) is clearly unsettled. He may have been warging into one of those crows above to do some reconnaissance on the Night King's progress. It looks like Bran has made it back to Winterfell, but who is that man standing next to him? Is it a vision of Max von Sydow?

As all of this has been going on, Jon has been speaking in a voiceover, potentially addressing either a group of gathered Northern families at Castle Black or possibly even Dany herself. "For centuries, our families fought together against their common enemy. Despite their differences, together. We need to do the same if we're going to survive. Because the enemy is real...it's always been real."

Then we get one of this trailer's multiple money shots: Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) holding a sword that bursts into flames. The Lord of Light is strong with that guy. This is the kind of moment that takes your breath away.

A couple of shots later, it looks like Jaime has taken things into his own hands (or, more accurately, "hand") as he rides across the flaming battlefield with a lance.

Look at that face. The dude's pissed. What could make him that mad? The death of Bronn, perhaps? That looks like a revenge face. We are approaching the end of the series, and not everyone's going to make it to the end, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a lower level player like Bronn get knocked off this season.

Then we see Dany's khalasar of Dothraki warriors, and one of her "children" bearing down on the opposing forces ahead.

Jon, with the Brotherhood behind him (note Beric's flaming sword to his left), looks upon a horde of wights descending upon them. This is presumably beyond the Wall, but there's always a chance the White Walkers find a way to breach it and increase the tension by bringing the battle further south. Jon isn't calling this "The Great War" for nothing.

Here's a shot that's deliberately mysterious. The sun blots out this actor's face, but it looks to me like it might be young Ned Stark (Robert Aramayo) in another of Bran's flashbacks. I've also seen speculation that it's The Hound, so you'll have to let me know what you think.

All of Ser Davos' (Liam Cunningham) advice might be for naught if Jon can't convince the seven kingdoms that the White Walker threat is their most important challenge.

See that unhinged look in Euron Greyjoy's (Pilou Asbæk) eye? That's far more in line with the Euron I know from the books, as opposed to whatever the writers had this actor doing last season. I'm looking forward to seeing him go off on some people.

The trailer builds to a full body dragon shot of Drogon, but the one that really stopped me in my tracks was this close-up of his teeth, which looks like Jurassic World-quality effects. Again, if this trailer were for a blockbuster movie, film fans would be going absolutely bonkers.

As a mystery person rides through the snow (with some trouble, it should be noted – is he or she injured?), Sansa utters words that her father told her in back in the first book: "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies...but the pack survives."

The trailer wraps up with something I alluded to earlier: Jon Snow slices someone down and faces a group of zombie-like wights as flames burn behind them. While Cersei and Dany squabble in the south, Jon's fighting the only battle that matters in the North. Will he be able to hold the White Walkers off, or is the southern part of Westeros facing a full-scale invasion?

We'll find out when Game of Thrones season 7 premieres on July 16.