Game of Thrones returns to HBO in Summer 2017 for its seven-episode penultimate season. Details about season 7 are naturally being kept under the tightest possible wraps, but there have been a few tantalizing information leaks, including one concerning the fate of Sophie Turner's Sansa Stark that was dropped by Turner herself. According to Arya Stark actress Maisie Williams (who herself is not a big fan of spoilers), the season will end with a "huge cliffhanger." And of course there will be battles with dragons.

When it comes to accumulating clues about a show like Game of Thrones, casting news is always very helpful, especially when fans are able to tie a newly-cast actor to a character from the source books. Such theorizing ensued when it was announced that actor Jim Broadbent had joined the cast in a significant role.

Though new Game of Thrones actors generally try to keep spoilers to a minimum, sometimes they do let information get out there, as Ian McShane famously did ahead of Season 6. Jim Broadbent would not go so far as to tell the name of his own character, but he did spill the beans to Screen Crush about his character's job, and that makes it easy for fans to fill in the blanks from there. As Broadbent revealed:

I’m a maester, an archmaester. I’m an old professor character.

Broadbent said he appears in five of the season's seven episodes and has at least one big scene in each episode. Another key piece of info dropped by Broadbent: he worked extensively with actor John Bradley aka Sam Tarley. This will lead book fans to the conclusion that Broadbent's archmaester is in fact Maester Marwyn, a key character from the book, A Feast For Crows. Broadbent has experience playing characters with magical knowledge after his turn as Horace Slughorn in the Harry Potter films.

In George R.R. Martin's A Feast For Crows, Marwyn listens to Sam's stories about The Wall and decides to go meet up with Daenerys in Mereen, counseling Sam to stay mum about Daenerys and her dragons and return to The Wall as fast as he can. We'll have to find out whether Marwyn gets to Mereen during the course of Season 7 or arrives there in Season 8, and what effect his presumed meeting with Daenerys has on the course of events.

These scenes between Sam and Marwyn, which sound like they are spread across much of the season, would represent a key piece of the puzzle as everything comes together for a presumed final spectacular war between the allied forces of the Seven Kingdoms and the army of the Night's King. Of course, no one knows for sure if the story is really developing in that direction, or whether there could be a twist or two as Game of Thrones unfolds through its final two sure-to-be-epic seasons. We'll keep our eye out for more clues.

NEXT: What We Want to See in Game of Thrones Season 7

Game of Thrones season 7 premieres on HBO this summer.

Source: Screen Crush