Game of Thrones Season 8: Theories, Speculation, and Guesses

A week has passed since HBO aired the final episode in Game of Thrones penultimate season. While fans have gotten time to digest the events they’re left with the big question: How will it all end? All we know for sure at the moment is that season eight will have five episodes that will run anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours. Rumors have even been spreading that the season won’t premiere until 2019. If it’s true we have at the very least 16 months of waiting ahead of us. Let’s put some of that time to good use and begin wonder what will happen in those five episodes. Without further ado, let’s begin. And to avoid any ire there will be SPOILERS in this article

-The Structure-

Five episodes doesn’t give much time for the action to unfold. With that if they stick to a traditional structure this will be five acts or three. So one episode for each act, or two episodes for the first act, one episode of the second act, and two episodes for the third act. Either way we can assume that episodes one & two will be rising action (setting up the events between all of our characters), episode three will be the crisis (The War with the Dead), episode four will be the falling action (The War for The Iron Throne), and episode five will be the climax (who is still alive and where their place will be in this kingdom). Not that in-depth, but it gives us an idea of how all the pieces of the story will fall into place.

-Samwell’s Knowledge and Where He Could Go-

With his exodus from the Citadel Samwell has made a point of making sure he can offer as much help to Jon and those who intend to take part in fighting the Night King and his Army of the Dead. Before leaving he took numerous documents that could reveal the secrets key to their victory. Finding out how to make Valyrian steel would be the best way to turn the tide in the living’s favor. What if all the items necessary were in their grasp? It could be all that’s needed is steel, dragonglass, and dragon fire to craft it. With the magical properties of dragonglass and knowing that it can kill white walkers, it might be that combining it with steel and melting them together with dragon fire will create the much needed weapon.

If Sam discovers this and makes sure everyone is armed when the war comes he will have accomplished something not done in hundreds of years. With that whoever comes out on top might see fit to pardon Sam from his duty with the Night’s Watch. Knowing his father and brother (Randyll and Dickon) are both deceased Sam could possibly claim lordship of Horn Hill. That would be a nice reward to our beloved Sam and big middle finger to his dead father.

-Prophecy One-

With three major prophecies in play let’s dig into two of them now and leave a major one for a little later. First, we have Daenerys’ vision in The House of the Undying that spoke of three treasons, “…once for blood and once for gold and once for love”. If we assume that two of these treasons have already happened there’s still one to go. Once for love could be Jorah Mormont. The prophecy states that she will know the treasons, not that they will befall her. When Jorah fell in love with Dany he betrayed King Robert and the possibility of receiving a royal pardon. Once for gold could be Doreah. Having sold Dany out to Daxos she chose to live in luxury only to be left sealed in a vault. Now, what about blood? In season seven’s finale our final sight of Tyrion is him with a rather grim look on his face. What does it mean? It could be that after his conversation with Cersei he is questioning his loyalties to Dany. As we saw with the Stark girls recently, blood is thicker than water. Tyrion may not like his family, but he does love them and would possibly want to help House Lannister survive.

-Prophecy Two-

Now let’s take a look at what Maggy the Frog told Cersei as a child. In a nutshell: Cersei would become queen, but a younger queen would take her place. She would have three children all of whom she will outlive. And finally her younger brother will be the person who killed her. So far, most of this has happened with the exception of her death and the new queen. With her recent pregnancy we can assume Cersei is feeling like she has bested this curse. If she were to miscarry Cersei may realize that her fate is sealed and begin acting irrationally. With the Golden Company and Euron Greyjoy on her side she could drive an army north scorching everything she touches along the way. While she always assumed it would be Tyrion that would be the one who killed her, there is another younger brother. Jaime was technically born after her. He’s already left her side to go north knowing she has no plans to help. Seeing her cruelty reach further heights he might sacrifice the woman he loves to save Westeros. He’s already killed a Mad King, so killing a Mad Queen wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

-The Tullys-

With the end in sight there are a lot of major threads left dangling. While some of them may not be key to the main story it’d still be nice to get some resolution. Edmure and Brynden “The Blackfish” Tully haven’t been seen since season six, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be back. Edmure might still be locked away in a cell at The Twins, but what about The Blackfish? While director Mark Mylod has stated that The Blackfish did die off-screen we have no hard evidence. No corpse was seen and characters who’ve been considered dead (The Hound, Jon Snow) turned out to be alive. Both of which the creators kept mum about their fates until they were brought back into the fold. Edmure or The Blackfish would be a key ally to Jon and Dany by rallying the forces of Riverrun to their cause.

-Grains of Sand-

In season seven we saw the fall of two key allies to Dany. The Tyrells were reduced to nothing with the death of Olenna and Jaime sacking Highgarden to “pay their debts”. The Martells were left in ruin with capture of Ellaria Sand and death of the Sand Snakes. Ellaria now sits in a dungeon to watch her daughter Tyene slowly be killed from the Long Farewell. While this could be the last we see of Ellaria it seems like a rather improper send off. There could and should be more for her story.

It seems this article has run long and doesn’t nearly cover enough ground as I had hoped. Funny, when writing about George R.R. Martin’s work I’m now going to take a page from his own playbook. I will split this article in half and continue these discussions in next week’s entry. So if I didn’t talk about something pertinent this time around stay tuned.

These are my thoughts, but as usual what are yours? Do you have an alternative theory to anything written in this article? Are you going to avoid articles like this in hopes of being surprised next season? Will you be back next week where I continue to extrapolating my harebrained theories? Let me know. Remember you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @sdfilmthoughts. As always, thanks for reading.