Last night's Game of Thrones season premiere ends with a big surprise that shows how one character is definitely not who we think she is. Melisandre (Carice van Houten), The Red Woman, takes off her choker and voila, she's an old woman. She looks at her decrepit figure in the mirror, and then crawls into bed, leaving us to wonder. The hag-like witch masquerading as a beautiful woman is not a new trope, but given that this is Thrones, the theories about its application here are running wild. Meanwhile, information about this shocker is trickling out, thanks to interviews with the cast and creators, and some close reading of the books.In an interview with Entertainment Weekly following the episode's airing, van Houten discussed how the transformation highlights the cracks in the armor of her fearsome character. "It makes her immediately more vulnerable, but also more wise and even more mysterious," van Houten said. "There’s also a vulnerability in her age." Co-creator D.B. Weiss is also thinking along those lines, as evidenced by his comments in HBO's "Inside the Episode" clip. He said that as Melisandre gazes in the mirror, she confronts the "reality of her situation." He explained that "her appearance is a lie, just as the Lord of Light's supposed promises to her and messages to her were lies." And finally: "At the end of episode 1, she's in a place where she really needs to look her real self in the eye and come to terms with where she stands now." Director Jeremy Podeswa told EW that we are seeing her at her "lowest point," and the manner in which she gets into her bed is a "sign of her frailty." Speaking with Variety , Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, noted how the moment lifts the veil on Melisandre. "It’s the real woman you get to see, the broken woman… Everything she believed in is gone," he said. "It’s remarkable because for the past five seasons, everything you’ve known about Melisandre is now a lie, so you’re never going to be able to look at her the same way again. From what we’ve got coming up, you’re always, as an audience member, going ‘what I’m looking at there… [I] don’t know what the f*ck is going on,’ and that’s incredibly interesting as an audience member, because it doesn’t happen in real life. You’re allowing it to sit in your brain as a reality." But while she may seem feeble, van Houten also made the point that age brings knowledge. Her being so old "makes everything even more meta," she said.