Everything To Know Before Season 8

Seven seasons, 67 episodes—and soon to be 73 episodes, after Game of Thrones‘ final-season bows this May. An ensemble comprising some two dozen or more main characters, each belonging to families whose lineages bring with them an inheritance of conflict both internal and external, which informs the story at hand.

There’s a reason why virtually every Game of Thrones fan spent the unconscionably long hiatus leading up to the final season rewatching everything that came before. We’re six episodes away from the resolution to a conflict that’s been steadily brewing for nearly 10 years and within the show, well, millennia. That is a metric ton of plot and character information to keep track of, and this show has too much going on to hold viewers’ hands. To that end, there’s no better time than now to dedicate an encyclopedia with handy explanations, definitions, and summaries of every family, magical tool, nickname, and pertinent locale that has impacted this saga in a major way and may impact it even more in its final hours.

Some notes: This is, for all intents and purposes, a show adaptation only. If we truly committed to cataloging everything the incredibly dense books detail, we’d be at this forever, much like George R.R. Martin is re: finishing Book 6. The same goes for character names—there’s just too many people crucial to this series at one point or another. To that end, we’ve included surnames and the occasional nickname or job title as an opportunity to highlight some super key people.

Don’t go into the final episodes unprepared: Dive into our glossary, refresh yourself on major events and people, and get pumped. Winter is here.