New Game Of Thrones Season 7 Images Reveal Return Of Key Characters

Games of Thrones returns next month for its seventh--and penultimate--season. We've already a teaser and some images, and now a new batch of pictures have been revealed by Entertainment Weekly.

Check them out in the gallery below--be warned though, there are potential spoilers ahead.

The images include a first look at the return of Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) and The Hound (Rory McCann), riding through the snow. There are also more shots of Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington), plus Cersei and Jaime Lannister (Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).

Game of Thrones Season 7 premieres on Sunday, July 16. Although Season 8 will be the final one, there are already multiple scripts for prequels in the works. Last month, author George R.R. Martin revealed that there are five potential spinoffs being developed by HBO.

However, HBO boss Casey Bloys subsequently clarified this statement, and explained that fans shouldn't expect several new shows.

"I want to put the prequels in context. I wanted to make sure fans know this is a really embryonic process," he told EW. "I haven't even seen outlines. In the press at large, everybody said, 'there are four spinoffs' and they assume that means each one is happening and we're going to have a new Game Of Thrones show per quarter. That's not what's going on.

"The idea is not to do four shows. The bar set by is so high that my hope is to get one show that lives up to it. Also, this is a long-term plan. Our No. 1 goal is the seventh season this summer and getting the eighth season written and aired."