Note: Contains spoilers for GoT.
Fans everywhere can’t wait to see how HBO’s Game of the Thrones, one of the most popular TV series of all time, will end. Will the combined forces of Westeros repel the invasion of White Walkers? Will petty infighting bring ruination to the entire Seven Kingdoms before that can happen? Will Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen eventually discover that their intimate relations are uncomfortably Lannister-like in nature? Unfortunately, the highly anticipated final season won’t be released till sometime in 2019.
But fear not—Discovery Channel has you covered! Thanks to our upcoming, special season of Naked and Afraid: Game of Thrones, fans will be treated to all-new, never-before-seen footage of the Starks, the Lannisters, and the Targaryens as they take on reality TV’s ultimate survival challenge without food, clothes, and water. Featuring almost as much nudity and primitive, survival-based killings as the smash-hit HBO series, Naked and Afraid: Game of Thrones is sure to be the can’t-miss reality show of the year.
Some of this special season’s most dramatic episodes include:
Exile in Essos
In the exhilarating season opener, Tyrion Lannister reaches his point of insertion at Pentos via a filthy crate aboard a ship after having murdered his father. A master strategist who repeatedly displays excellent fortitude in numerous life-threatening situations, Lord Tyrion has nonetheless habitually relied on his family’s gold to save him throughout the course of most of his adult life. With no extreme survival training under his belt to speak of, and a distinct physical disadvantage embodied by his diminutive stature, Tyrion’s initial Primitive Survival Rating (PSR) is set at a meagerly 1.7.
Joining Tyrion is Lord Varys, who never even once imagined that he would actually publicly reveal his missing manhood to the dwarf, much less for such a long duration of time. Like Tyrion, Varys is skilled in the art of strategy, diplomacy, and manipulation, but his mettle in extreme outdoor survival techniques has never been truly tested. His unparalleled ability to ensnare vulnerable avian lifeforms, however, may help the pair acquire the critical protein that they’ll need to maintain their strength if they’re ever to reach their eventual point of extraction, elevating Varys’ initial PSR to 4.4.
Equipped with only a single bottle of wine and a map to Volantis to share between them, do the dwarf and the eunuch have what it takes to survive the burning hot wastes of the Flatlands and avoid the marauding bands of sell-swords of the Disputed Lands in order to overcome the most primal survival challenge of their lives?
Cold and Crippled
A little lord and highborn son of a noble family, Brandon Stark lost the use of his legs when he was pushed off of a tall tower as a young child. A terrible marksman even before the “accident” left him unable to walk, Bran nonetheless possesses the ability to exert mind control over wild animals and people of low IQ, though it remains to be seen just exactly how this special skill will be of assistance as he lies nude and immobilized on a rudimentary sledge in the midst of endless permafrost on a quest to find a deranged, mutant raven that may or may not exist only in his hallucinatory dreams, bringing his initial PSR to an even 1.0 and breaking Naked and Afraid’s previous record for lowest-ever initial score.
Joining Bran for insertion at the Nightfort are three companions who likewise plunge into the sub-zero degree temperatures beyond the Wall, bare-skinned and empty-handed. A lifelong friend and devoted companion, the gentle giant, Hodor, possesses uncanny strength that will undoubtedly benefit the team as they traverse the severe winter landscape, but his ineptitude at problem-solving and inability to formulate coherent sentences, combined with his general inexperience in wilderness survival techniques, are mediating factors that lower his initial PSR to 5.7.
Meera and Jojen Reed round out the company in this icy cold episode of Naked and Afraid: Game of Thrones. Unlike her companions, Meera is a highly capable survivalist who has spent her formative years hunting and skinning wild animals and building fires and shelters among the treacherous swamps of her native homeland, making her the only useful individual among the four. Her younger brother, Jojen, mostly pontificates at length and suffers from recurring seizures. Meera enters the episode with a PSR of 7.8 while Jojen enters with a score of 2.9.
The Tomboy and the Hound
Agile and adept at weapon-play, Arya Stark has displayed remarkable survival skills over the course of a disastrous childhood that ranges from living homeless in King’s Landing’s most violent district, traveling the King’s Road with the Night’s Watch and a hoard of rapists and murderers, and being held captive by sadistic psychopaths at Harrenhal. While not yet a true master of the sword, she nonetheless shows great promise with her own Needle, which she has chosen to accompany her as her sole personal survival item in this special double-length episode. Arya enters the show with an initial PSR of 9.1.
Sandor “The Hound” Clegane is an anti-social, murderous misfit with a great talent for killing and, like Arya, has chosen a sword to be his sole personal survival item. Unlike Arya, however, his hideously scarred face is instantly recognizable across all Seven Kingdoms and his apathy towards his own life undermines his otherwise excellent, battle-hardened extreme survival skills, lowering his initial PSR to 8.6.
After their awkward introduction in the uncharted woods outside the Brotherhood Without Banners’ secret lair, Arya and the Hound form an unlikely alliance in their joint effort to overcome the untamed wilderness of the Riverlands and the Vale of Arryn while evading bounty hunters and rogue outlaws as they pursue a seemingly shifting point of extraction. Believing it first to be the Twins, and then the Eyrie, will Arya and the Hound find the food, clothing, water, and horse that they need in order to survive long enough to realize that the show’s producers have left them in an unusually sick and twisted predicament—in proper Game of Thrones fashion—in which there actually is no designated point of extraction?
Walk of Atonement
For the first time ever, Naked and Afraid features a single, hand-picked survivalist to take on one of the show’s most daunting challenges yet, completely solo. Perhaps the most hated and most hateful woman in all of Westeros, Cersei Lannister is a childless mother, a mass murderer, and a ruthless strategist par excellence who has learned a great deal about extreme survival skills during her long and arduous years in the capital city. Unfortunately, her specific area of expertise has taught her very little about the skills needed to survive the mean streets of King’s Landing and the wrath of its common people, lowering her initial PSR to 6.7.
From her point of insertion at the Sept of Baelor, Cersei faces an unrelenting onslaught of danger in the urban wild, encountering public shame, verbal abuse, and violently thrown projectiles as she makes her way towards the point of extraction. Does Cersei have what it takes to atone for her sins and survive the walk all the way to the Red Keep, naked and afraid?