wangus12 said:
Good ole GRRM is gonna f everyone over when it is the most perfect little happy ending that could possibly happen.
It's not going to be a perfect little happy ending but it's also not going to be Jon becomes the new Night's King or Jamie is Azor Ahai. Several characters will die including main characters. More so, in prognosticating who will live and who will die, ask yourself what purpose does their death serve to finishing out the story?
Also remember that this is HBO not GRRM. Years ago GRRM provided a very small group of HBO execs a very high level end game to the series, not a granular closing to each character and arc. It's been in HBO's court for years now as to how to close this out. Furthermore, it's a series based on A Song of Ice and Fire. Based on.
It seemed to be too obvious that R + L = J. Yet, there it was. Confirmed.
I've had to put 5000 pages of the books aside, in the last few years, and focus on what HBO is doing here and separate it from GRRM. And in doing so, focus on key scenes and dialogue that HBO made sure to include:
- Melisandre' telling Arya they would meet again
- The Children of the Forest creating the Night's King (basically a biological weapon against the Andals and a very huge mistake on their part)
- Sam stealing Heartsbane from his father's castle
- and IMO, the most key one of the series.....Missandei correcting Dany on the high Valerian translation of the Prince who is promised (AA) to understand that the terms are gender neutral so it could mean prince or princess. Why go to that trouble?
The viewing audience is not going to be able to keep up with hundreds of very subtle details that could support far flung, confusing, if not irritating, closure(s) to the story. And this is a franchise now and HBO needs to protect it and not alienate customers.
Rambling at this point. I still think it's going to be a lot more vanilla that the fan theories suggest.
Dany is Azor Ahai, the pricess that was promised. She is fire. The Night's King is ice. This will be realized when she takes up either Heartsbane or Long Claw, one of which is Lightbringer. The true war will end when the Night's King is killed. Dany will die in the process. The coalition will turn south to King's Landing. There will be no siege. The massive battle scene that took something like two months to film was in the north, not the south. Jamie will fulfill his destiny as the Valonqar and kill Cersei to save Kings Landing. Jon will not assume the throne as the legitimate ruler and son of Rhaegar, but rather release the seven kingdoms to their own fates. I think about 1/3 of the cast will perish. But there will remain some bittersweet outcomes such as Brienne carrying Jamie's child, their heir to Casterly Rock. And I also think Arya rides off in to the sunset with Gendry (why else bring him back?).IMHO of course.
edit - three edits and spoiler tags not working, not that there is really any spoilers though