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Game of Thrones

How are White Walkers created from Craster’s sons?

Definitive Verdict

The Night King creates White Walkers by touching Craster’s living sons at the icy altar, transforming them instantly.

Competing Theories

We've gathered the strongest arguments from across the internet. Here's how they stack up.

Touch-of-the-Night-King Conversion

Best Supported

TV canon (S4E4 Oathkeeper) reinforced by showrunner commentary and episode guides

Craster’s living male infants are transformed into White Walkers instantly by the Night King’s touch at the icy altar.

  • Onscreen ritual: Night King’s touch immediately turns the baby’s eyes vivid blue at the altar.
  • Dialogue/script state Craster offers sons specifically to the White Walkers, setting up the altar scene’s answer.
  • Showrunners describe the scene as revealing what the Walkers do with the babies—i.e., turning them.
  • Series establishes transformation magic as Walker‑making precedent (Children created the Night King).

Background Context

In Game of Thrones, wildling Craster offers his newborn sons to the beings beyond the Wall. Fans long wondered how these infants became White Walkers and who performed the change, making the mechanics of their creation a key lore question.

Full Analysis

A detailed breakdown of each theory with supporting evidence.

Core Claim

Craster’s living male infants are transformed into White Walkers instantly by the Night King’s touch at the icy altar.

The show explicitly stages the altar sequence to answer what becomes of Craster’s sons: a horn‑crowned Walker (identified by the producers as the Night King) touches the living infant’s cheek, the ice cracks, and the baby’s eyes turn an unnatural blue in that moment. This is presented as a revelation scene, not an ambiguity: the released scripts and dialogue establish the boys are offered to the White Walkers, and the Inside the Episode remarks frame the sequence as depicting that fate. The immediacy of the eye change, the ritual setting in the Land of Always Winter, and the agency of the Night King together convey a conversion, not mere abduction.

Core Claim

Infants converted at the altar later develop—through aging or magical growth—into the adult White Walkers seen leading the dead, making many of them literal brothers as Craster’s sons.

If the Night King is turning Craster’s living infants into White Walkers, those beings must subsequently become the adult‑sized commanders the show depicts; the series never shows juvenile Walkers in the field, implying development occurs offscreen. This fills an obvious lifecycle gap while aligning with the show’s pattern of revealing the Walkers in selective glimpses without exhaustive exposition.

Supporting Evidence

Core Claim

After conversion, the infants are kept in magical stasis or slow-growth conditions in the Land of Always Winter until they emerge as ready White Walkers.

The altar’s remote, hyper‑icy setting and ritualized presentation suggest an ongoing magical environment, not a one‑and‑done moment. Given that no child Walkers are ever shown and the series never returns to depict the Walkers’ domestic sphere, a stasis/incubation phase neatly explains both the time lag between sacrifices and later appearances of only adult commanders and the lack of visible ‘nursery’ scenes.

Supporting Evidence

Core Claim

Only a subset of Craster’s sons are elevated into true White Walkers, with the remainder serving other ritual or magical purposes, which explains why few distinct Walkers are seen.

Across the series, the Night King is accompanied by a relatively small cadre of distinct White Walkers, despite years of Craster’s offerings. This numerical disparity suggests not every infant is promoted; the altar scene can be read as illustrating the elevation of a chosen few rather than a universal outcome. Given that the army’s mass is made of wights and the show withholds the Walkers’ inner workings, reserving true Walker creation for select cases preserves their rarity and mystique while aligning with what we actually see on the battlefield.

Supporting Evidence

  • Canoncomplicates

    Across later episodes (e.g., Hardhome, Beyond the Wall), only adult male White Walkers are seen leading the undead; no child or adolescent Walkers are depicted and none are linked to specific Craster infants.

    S5E8 Hardhome; S7E6 Beyond the Wall (multiple scenes)

  • Canoncomplicates

    The show depicts only a small cadre of distinct White Walkers (“generals”) accompanying the Night King, without giving an on‑screen count or explaining selection.

    S5E8 Hardhome (cliff shot and battle), multiple later appearances

The Verdict

Definitive Verdict

Best Supported Theory

Touch-of-the-Night-King Conversion

How We Weighed the Evidence

I prioritized aired episodes first. Oathkeeper (S4E4) shows a living Craster infant taken to an icy altar where the horn‑crowned White Walker (later identified as the Night King) touches the baby’s cheek, ice spreads, and the eyes turn vivid blue in that moment—direct, visual, and unambiguous transformation. Second, official HBO commentary (Inside the Episode) frames this scene as revealing what happens to Craster’s sons: the Night King makes more White Walkers. That word‑of‑god corroborates the on‑screen depiction. Inferences about later growth are secondary and not required to answer how creation occurs.

Our Conclusion

Craster’s living male infants are transformed into White Walkers by the Night King’s touch at the Land of Always Winter altar. The change is shown to occur instantly as the baby’s eyes turn an unnatural blue upon contact. While the series does not detail post‑conversion development (e.g., aging into adult Walkers), the mechanism of creation itself is clearly depicted and confirmed by official commentary. Therefore, Theory 1 is decisively best supported.

Sources (12)

  1. 1
    S4E4 Oathkeeper (altar sequence)Canon
  2. 2
    S4E4 Oathkeeper (released script)Canon
  3. 3
    Post‑episode comments by Benioff & Weiss (2014)Word of God
  4. 4
    Production Q&A anecdote (Benioff)Word of God
  5. 5
    S2E2 The Night Lands (dialogue); released scriptCanon