We just learned a crucial detail about the key to defeating the White Walkers on 'Game of Thrones'

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Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Game of Thrones" season seven.

In "Beyond the Wall," fans learned several key new details about the White Walkers and wights. Most importantly, Jon and his dream team realized that killing a White Walker also destroyed the wights following it — which makes ultimately defeating the army of the dead much easier than previously assumed.

White Walkers (the sentient humanoid beings who were first created by the Children of the Forest) have the power to resurrect the dead and turn them into wights — zombies who do the White Walkers bidding. But as Jon figured out, killing a White Walker means any wight that it had "turned" will also fall. 

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Then Beric Dondarrion took this one step further, and pointed out that the Night King likely created every White Walker, which means killing the Night King would create a domino-effect of death and destroy the whole army.  This is very much in the same vein as "Lord of the Rings" — once Frodo destroyed the ring and thereby Sauron, the rest of his army was rendered useless.

Also worth noting is that "Game of Thrones" just implied that dragonglass kills wights, too. Previously we only knew that fire killed wights, but Jon and his team were all using dragonglass daggers and axes against the skeletal foes. 

This bolsters the importance of Valyrian steel

We always knew Valyrian steel was one of the rare substances capable of killing White Walkers, and now that killing White Walkers means eliminating possibly dozens (if not hundreds) of wights, then these weapons just got even more valuable.

There are a finite number of Valryian blades in Westeros. Here's the short list of everyone who currently is in possession of one:

• Jon Snow — Longclaw
• Arya Stark — the Catspaw dagger
• Brienne of Tarth — Oathkeeper
• Jaime Lannister — Widow's Wail
• Sam Tarly — Heartsbane

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Jon, Brienne, and Jaime will all be in King's Landing for the finale episode, while Arya and Sam are both presumably in the north (we're guessing Sam was heading back to Castle Black after his failed time in Oldtown). Will all five of these heroes get together in the eighth and final season to fight against the White Walkers? We hope so.

What we still don't know about the Night King

Even though this piece of information is great and all, there are still plenty of mysteries surrounding the Night King and the White Walkers. How exactly does their magic work? Why are they marching on the realm of the living now after thousands of years of hibernation? What do they want?

We know George R.R. Martin avoids writing pure black or white characters, which means the White Walkers must have some motivation other than destruction of all humanity ... right? 

HBO

It would be quite anti-climatic if all Jon (or even another hero wielding Valryian steel like Arya, Brienne, or Jaime) simply stabbed the Night King and ended the whole war without us ever understanding the underlying conflict.

The final season of "Game of Thrones" will hopefully reveal more depth to the stories of the White Walkers, and we have our fingers crossed that every Valyrian steel owner of Westeros fights for the side of the living in an epic showdown.

The "Game of Thrones" season seven finale airs Sunday, August 27 on HBO. In the meantime read our roundup of seven details you might have missed in "Beyond the Wall."

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