For the past 3 and some odd seasons of GAME OF THRONES there has been a subset of the George R.R. Martin books fandom who have taken to acting like smug asshats who wear their readership of the books ass a badge of honor that makes them better than the sad sacks who have only watched the TV show. They also love to go to anyplace that show watchers gather and drop spoilers all willy nilly…well, now those folks know how show watchers feel.

Last night we found out just what happens to those babies that Craster was handing over to the White Walkers.It seems they are scooped up by one of the barbarian looking White Walkers and taken on a really long trek to the White Walker Fortress of Solitude to be presented to the head muckety-mucks of White Walker-dom.

The Top Dog, resplendent in what looks like an outfit from the Tywin Lannister Winter collection, then scoops up the little baby and lays a frozen pointy finger on the kid’s cheek and seemingly turns the poor kid into a mini White Walker, I guess that is how they replenish the ranks with the non-zombie faction of their army.

Aside from being a pretty freaky scene, this scene served to send a total curveball to the TV show and book reading audiences both. Was this a sneak peek at a development to come in Martin’s next book? If so millions of book readers just got smacked in the face with a massive spoiler. Was it the folks behind the TV show taking creative license with the material and creating their own mythology for the White Walkers? If so this is a huge development because for as much as the show has taken baby steps in moving away from the source material, this heralds a new almost limitless realm of possibilities where no one can ever say they know what will happen next because showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will be making decisions that have nothing to do with the books. Either way I am stoked because this one subplot has really needed something to give it a jolt of life and this scene is a heckuva start.