Winter is coming back. Lots for Thrones fans to get stuck into here.

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives". Granted, they're not the official words of House Stark in Game of Thrones but given the horror that fell upon The North's most famous house, it's a credit to Ned and Catelyn Stark that Sansa, Bran, Arya, and Jon were still a (relatively) solid unit when the final credits rolled on Game of Thrones. At this point, don't get us started on all those questions that we still have. Ok, Jon has decided to embrace his inner Jules Winnfield and simply 'walk the earth' beyond The Wall, but it's still fair to say that the members of House Stark are made of sterner stuff. The North remembers and in the prequel to Game of Thrones, we're about to learn just why the Starks are known as the Kings of Winter. During a recent interview with EW, George R.R. Martin provided a few more details about the prequel and he revealed that the direwolves and the Starks will be prominent. Of course, the Starks were descended from the First Men so their involvement was never in question, but Martin has said that “the Starks will definitely be there” along with the White Walkers. “Obviously the White Walkers are here — or as they’re called in my books, The Others — and that will be an aspect of it. Here are things like direwolves and mammoths," he said. Mammoths! Any chance of those ice spiders that are as big as hounds, George? Sadly, the timeline of the new show is set long before Aegon the Conqueror arrived in Westeros, so there will be no dragons. As for the other noble Houses in Westeros, Martin confirmed that the prequel predates the rise of the Lannister family, but there is another family that's residing in the future Lannister homestead. In Season 7, we finally got a look at Casterly Rock but sadly the gold deposits had run dry for House Lannister. Those that read the Song of Ice and Fire saga will know that House Casterly originally ruled the gold-rich Westerlands from their mighty seat of Casterly Rock. However, their lands and power were swindled from them by a legendary trickster, Lann the Clever. Ultimately, this treacherous and cunning man created House Lannister and it appears that this slow rise to power will be documented in the new show. “The Lannisters aren’t there yet, but Castlery Rock is certainly there; it’s like the Rock of Gibraltar. It’s actually occupied by the Casterlys — for whom it’s still named after in the time of Game of Thrones," said Martin. As the events in Game of Thrones came to a conclusion, we learned that Bran the Broken (there still has to be a better name?) was the King of the newly-formed Six Kingdoms of Westeros - Sansa successfully gained independence for The North. In the prequel, the geopolitical domain of Westeros is going to be far more fractured because the continent will be divided into roughly 100 kingdoms. “We talk about the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros; there were Seven Kingdoms at the time of Aegon’s Conquest. But if you go back further then there are nine kingdoms, and 12 kingdoms, and eventually you get back to where there are a hundred kingdoms — petty kingdoms — and that’s the era we’re talking about here," he said. At present, the show is currently filming in Belfast under the working title of Bloodmoon. We're confident that this won't be its actual name. A few months ago, Martin suggested that the show will be called The Long Night but he quickly retracted that statement after HBO got involved. It turns out that the reason for this confusion is very innocent because the third episode of Game of Thrones Season 8 is also titled 'The Long Night.' At present, The Long Night remains Martin’s preferred title for the new show, but he says that there's another possibility that's being considered. “I heard a suggestion that it could be called The Longest Night, which is a variant I wouldn’t mind. That would be pretty good.” If you're curious about what the show might cover, we've got a preview here. In terms of the official synopsis, here's what the show will involve: "Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world's descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros' history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend … it's not the story we think we know." Whatever happens, winter is coming back.