"The Big Tree"

TL;DR: New information seems to confirm that the title "The Big Tree" that we saw on a sheet back in September does not refer to a certain episode, but might be the project title for the upcoming season 7 of Game of Thrones as a whole.

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Back in September, in one of the pictures shot by paparazzo PAP4U at the Linen Mill Studios in Corbet we could see a sheet containing supposed information on the shooting:



The Big Tree - Director: Jeremy Podeswa - WOLF CREW
Episodes: 704/7xx or 701/7xx - Saturday, 24th September 

While the numbers of the episodes were hard to read and therefore disputed, most of the information was self-explaining: Director, shooting crew, date.

One thing though was not clear - the title "The Big Tree" at the top of the sheet. First idea was of course that this could be the name of the episode shot that day - but usually episode names are not chosen this early in production. So it might just have been some preliminary working title; but as there are clearly two episodes referenced on that sheet, that didn't sound too convincing neither.

Now, two pieces of information have shown up that might shed some light on "The Big Tree".

First, reddit user u/conordmcmahon posted a couple of answers he claims to have gotten from  reddit leaker u/awayforthelads a while ago. While we can not verify this at all, the information he presented is well aligned with the leaks u/awayforthelads gave us before. In fact, there's not even a lot of new information at all.

But one remark is very interesting because it directly adresses the title "The Big Tree" in said sheet:

"All of the scripts have The Big Tree written at the start. It's not an episode title, it's a project title for this season - think 'Blue Harvest' for Star Wars back in the day. Take it from that - the episodes don't actually have titles yet, Just episode numbers."

Does this make any sense at all? We haven't heard of any project titles or code names for complete GoT seasons before, and it's unclear what the advantage of talking about "The Big Tree" instead of GoT season 7 would be. One idea might be that sheets / scripts with the title "The Big Tree" instead of "Game of Thrones Season 7" on the first page would not attract so much interest from people accidentally seeing them. Other reasons? No idea.

On the other hand, there was an image posted by Twitter user ‏@IpsyGypsy a month ago that immediately came into my mind when reading u/conordmcmahon's post. It shows a name badge belonging to storyboard artist Jane Wu, and it goes very well along with the claim that "The Big Tree" is the project title for this season:


It could be pure coincidence that the picture of Bran arriving at the big weirwood tree in S04E10 was selected as background for the badge of season 7 crew members. But my guess is that this selection rather confirms that "The Big Tree" has importance as a symbol and / or project name for this season.

Plus, it gives me hope that Bran's storyline in S07 will be more important than we know right now... ;-)