When the people are being entered into the skulls they must get the skull symbol branded on their wrist, it was 7 or 8 people to be branded but there was one extra. If there was nobody to be branded why would they have removed it? or who was branded?
If you don't know the number of people to be branded (it was eight) then how do you know there was an extra. Also, there didn't show a clean shot of nine different branding devices. They just show it from the side, and a partial shot from the circle of men.
Just wondering, but maybe they are just there for extras? In case one doesn't heat up enough for some random reason, just to "be prepared" as boyscouts say?