'Game of Thrones' Season 8, Episode 3 Easter Egg Revives a Long-Dead Hero

You’ll be safer in the crypts. That’s what everyone said ahead of Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3, but anyone with half a brain should have realized that the worst place to be during a zombie attack is in a basement full of corpses. It was no surprise when all hell broke look in the Winterfell crypts, but you may have missed one major Easter egg in the revival of a beloved Stark ally we haven’t seen on Game of Thrones for many seasons: Maester Luwin.

Warning: Light spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3 ahead.

If you didn’t rewatch Game of Thrones ahead of Season 8, you might not remember good old Maester Luwin. Played by Donald Sumpter, he served Winterfell and House Stark for the first few seasons of the show. After Ned Stark was murdered and his son Robb rode off to war, Luwin helped young Bran Stark rule over Winterfell.

Then, things went from bad to worse. Theon Greyjoy invaded Winterfell (his former home) and brutally killed Maester Luwin. (He also beheaded Rodrik Cassel and pretended to kill Bran and Rickon Stark after they managed to escape.) In the end, Theon got what was coming to him (and more) before redeeming himself in Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3.

But what about Luwin? The kindly old maester didn’t need to be redeemed, but he still showed up at the Great Battle of Winterfell. More specifically, it looks like his bony old corpse was revived by the Night King in a scene where the dead suddenly rose and the Winterfell crypts became the last place you’d ever want to be.

Here’s the undead wight version of Maester Luwin:

And here he is as a living character from earlier in Game of Thrones:

On Reddit, some Game of Thrones fans also speculated that another wight wearing armor might have been a knight of Winterfell, but others noted that anyone can buy armor, and the Starks were never that into the whole knighthood thing to begin with.

It’s also worth noting that, like much of the episode, the scenes in the crypts were very poorly lit. So it’s possible a few other fan-favorites rose from the dead in Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3, but we wouldn’t count on it.

After all, if Ned Stark had been reanimated by the Night King, they would have made a point of showing it, right?

Game of Thrones Season 8 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO.