Game of Thrones Season 1, Ep. 7

• Courtesy of HBO
• IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE FINGER... Aiden Gillen as Littlefinger

Except for Tony Soprano’s ducks and bear, you don’t see animals that often on today’s prestige dramas. “Game of Thrones” makes up for that absence, in that nearly every time you see or even hear about a beast, it carries some symbolic value. Remember how on the first episode, Ned and his boys found the stag slain by the direwolf? Once you know that the stag and direwolf are the sigils of House Baratheon and Stark, respectively, the scene portends all kind of sinister conflicts.

This week, Jon Snow’s white direwolf Ghost found a hand, which not only provides evidence of the violence “over the Wall,” it doesn’t bode well given that Jon’s father’s title is The Hand of the King. Also, this week we hear (but don’t see) that King Robert was gravely wounded while hunting a boar. On hid deathbed, the King boasts of killing the beast and insists that at his funeral, “I want everyone to taste the bear that got me.” Can it be a coincidence that House Crakehall, who swear loyalty to the Lannisters, has a boar as their sigil? (I looked it up.)