The Most Plausible Theories on How 'Game of Thrones' Could End
Cersei Lannister tried to warn Ned Stark right before he died in the first season of Game of Thrones: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." That simple, iconic statement has only gotten more complicated as the episodes have rolled by and the stakes have ratcheted up. Medieval kings and queens have made political plays; Jon Snow has discovered some truths; Daenerys has learned how to govern and is proper pissed; the two leaders' budding romance is getting tense; and now that the Night King has fallen, Cersei looks like she actually has a pretty decent chance of keeping the throne, if she doesn't get killed first. The battle for the Iron Throne is the series' front-and-center conflict once again.
But who's going to win it all? Here, we'll analyze the many theories still in play and attempt to predict the ultimate winner of Game of Thrones as we barrel towards the end of the final season. Some of these characters will see their chances of dominating the heap dwindle away as the clock ticks down, while new faces might be added if their power ranking increases (we see you, deadly and politically motivated Sansa Stark). Some will definitely die. But how will the show actually end, and who will be declared the winner (if anyone)? Here's the current leaderboard; check back throughout Season 8 as the battle rages on.
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6 Game-Changers That Could Make or Break the End of 'Game of Thrones'
1. Daenerys Targaryen
Since the very beginning, Game of Thrones has been paving the way for Daenerys Targaryen to seize control of the Seven Kingdoms and become the benevolent ruler worthy of... a proto-democracy? "Break the wheel," as she puts it. To do so, she'll have to deal with Cersei Lannister and the raging Euron Greyjoy, who took out her sweet Rhaegal. But with her Dothraki and Unsullied armies more or less totally wiped out, she'll be doing it mostly with her sole still-living dragon Drogon and whoever is willing to bend the knee. With the threat of the White Walkers and wights neutralized (no thanks to Dany, quite honestly), she's taken the fight directly to Cersei, which so far has not gone that well, quite frankly. It looks like the armies of the North will stand behind her initially, but the Dragon Queen needs to keep a hold on the hearts and minds of her allies -- most of whom did not sign up for a protracted war against the Lannisters.
Dany’s claim to the throne has been further complicated by the knowledge of another male Targaryen heir with a legitimate, but mostly secret, claim to it: Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen. Jon’s sister/cousin Sansa is also keen to keep the North under northern rule, complicating Dany's quest to unite the Seven Kingdoms. The best-case scenario for Dany would have been that Jon kept his true parentage to himself for the good of the realm and the Aunt-Queen he loves -- but, of course, that didn't happen.
Now that the people surrounding her are secretly debating her future as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Dany’s best move is to follow Missandei's advice and burn her way to Cersei. It would undo a lot of her goodwill that she spent her time in Essos building as a champion of the lesser people, but it would win her the Throne and spare her from death (if she also, you know, killed Jon).
Killing Jon might not be a bad idea: In Dany's visions in the House of the Undying, she saw snow falling on the Iron Throne, so her former lover is probably a threat. Either way, Dany has the firepower and the alliances to be able to hold the city and claim the Throne, with the future of Westeros at her fingertips if she can weed out Cersei by the roots.
2. Cersei Lannister
Cersei had quite a week. With Euron taking out a dragon and The Mountain beheading Dany's trusted aide Missandei, the ball has moved firmly into Cersei's court. For everyone else on this list, having someone with their House name end up on the Iron Throne is the same thing as "winning." Not to Cersei. The first queen of the Seven Kingdoms to ascend to her position by blowing up all of her son's political rivals (including his queen) has one loyalty: whoever she perceives as her family at any given moment. In the Season 7 episode "Dragonstone," she mentions making a dynasty for two, and in that season's final episode, it looked like that second party won't be Jaime Lannister like we thought, but their next child, raised as a fake Greyjoy. The winning conditions for the eldest Lannister involves holding the Iron Throne (which she already does) and keeping her kid safe from Dany and the Northern armies descending on King's Landing. Oh, and getting revenge on Tyrion and maybe even Jaime, who has reverted to his incest-loving ways and is headed back to his dear sister in the wake of the Long Night.
Cersei finds joy in crushing her enemies and, hey, that seems to be working out well! She's conquered every other obstacle fate has put in her path, and has used her time off from fighting a war to get Qyburn to add more giant, dragon-felling ballistas to Euron's ships and the walls of King's Landing. She may be the last living villain of the series (besides Euron, whom she controls), but she's fierce about holding on to the Throne and willing to kill everyone to keep it. No one promised us a happy ending.
3. Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen
Jon Snow, actually Aegon Targaryen, son of Daenerys’ brother, might just win this thing against his will. The argument for Jon’s rule was plainly laid out by Varys in episode 4 of this season: The people are behind him, he has the most legitimate claim (thanks to his genitals), and a reluctant ruler could be the best thing for the Seven Kingdoms after so many years of war.
The biggest hurdles Jon Snow has to leap to seize the Throne are himself and the honor he inherited from Ned Stark. Right now, Jon is sworn to Daenerys, but he's also not into the idea of being romantically involved with his aunt, so the romance has been sucked out of the relationship. If there’s no love left, then Jon is only tied to Dany by the code that Ned taught him to live by. The Throne could easily be in his grasp if he married Daenerys or if he betrayed her and took the Throne.
Jon could also be thrust into the position of having to choose between his belief system and his life, and react emotionally (like Jon Snow occasionally does), giving in to a political plot to assassinate his Aunt Queen rather than kneel or die. Jon might not be playing the Game of Thrones in the best way, but with dumb luck, the Lord of Light, and a good bloodline, he deserves to be towards the top of any contender’s list.
4. Sansa Stark
Since Sansa has absorbed firsthand the best lessons in manipulation from Littlefinger, aka Petyr Baelish, and Cersei Lannister, she has become a political mind that might be unrivaled in the Seven Kingdoms. Cersei taught her the beauty of a well-delivered underhanded compliment or a dithering stare, both of which she's deployed on Jon and Daenerys in Season 8. Littlefinger taught her to fight all battles, all the time, so she's never fazed by developments that take others by surprise. With her position as Lady of Winterfell and the eldest Stark in the ancestral home, Sansa is in a position of real power.
The conflict between Jon/Aegon and Dany about who has the most legitimate Targaryen claim to the Iron Throne has already split loyalties between the resurrected former Lord Commander and the Dragon Queen. Sansa's spilling the beans to Tyrion, who told Varys, deepens the split within Daenerys’ staff -- if Sansa can break Dany through politics after Dany’s beaten Cersei, it makes room for the Stark, the only character who had been planning on how to feed the North through the (now-canceled) Long Night. The Northmen are stubborn, but one consistency is their embrace of Sansa as their leader since she helped reclaim Winterfell during the Battle of the Bastards. She's the Lady of Winterfell.
Moreso, if it came down to a choice between Sansa and Jon, Arya Stark -- slayer of the Night King -- would choose her sister over her Jon Targaryen. Arya is decidedly not a lady, and hasn’t been developing the skills to be a ruler. But she is capable of great feats in battle, she does have supernatural training, and she keeps tremendous composure in the most difficult of situations. She has the making of a mythical hero, and the people -- Northmen and those from Essos -- look to mythical heroes for political guidance. Arya could aid Sansa in getting to the throne and Westeros' smallest assassin could get to kill Cersei and gift the Kingdom to her sister -- if she makes it out of King's Landing alive.
In order to seize control of the Seven Kingdoms and the throne, Sansa needs to wait out the battle between Cersei and Daenerys, then politically challenge the loser using her position and wits. Or, if disaster strikes and AeJon ends up on the Throne, the sad boi King might abdicate the throne to the greatest political mind he knows: Queen of the North, Lady of Winterfell, Sansa Stark. As she's promised, the North will never kneel again.
5. Euron Greyjoy
Euron Greyjoy was the surprise MVP villain of Game of Thrones Season 7. Then, he didn’t stop winning, even when Yara was being rescued from his capture, he missed it because he was having sex with the Queen. Euron controls the Iron Fleet (now with ballista mounts, which makes him a valuable battle asset to Cersei, especially since he proved he can take out a dragon in a few quick shots. In exchange for helping Cersei win her wars, Euron has been presented with the fantasy of Cersei’s child being his. If this secret is kept, and he can live through a dragon attack, he might win a loveless marriage to Cersei. If Euron does marry Cersei, that makes him a king, and then anything that happened to House Lannister afterward wouldn't matter, as House Greyjoy would control the throne.
While the other armies marched North to fight the Night King, Euron sailed to get the Golden Company, a mercenary group in Essos who have supposedly never broken a contract. Now that they only have to face the armies of the North, it seems they'll sooner die in combat than break their word -- but their word to whom? Is it possible Euron has been playing Cersei against herself this whole time, keeping the ultimate allegiance to the Golden Company with Cersei's gold and promises of more once he's King? It's all messy, for sure, but hang in there, Euron! Winning it all is within your grasp, sort of! Just please learn how pregnancy timelines work.
6. Baby Lannister
There's another child of incest besides the hypothetical and miraculous Targaryen that could end up winning the game of thrones: Cersei's kid. Though this is even less likely with the Night King out of the picture, and the Northern armies on their way to King's Landing, Cersei doesn't need to be alive after the conflict for Baby Lannister to have a legitimate claim to the throne (at least as much as Cersei does as the Lannister-born, ex-Queen-Regent).
However, this would require both of the baby's Lannister parents out of the picture, which would actually fit into a long-running fan theory about how Cersei is supposed to die. As part of the prophecy from Maggie the Frog we saw in the first episode of Season 4, the novel's interpretation includes an allusion to Cersei dying when a "valonqar" kills her -- that's Valyrian for "little brother." Many people take this to mean Jaime (her twin born moments after her) or Tyrion (her actual little brother, unless he's a Targaryen), but if Cersei were to have a boy, he would be the "valonqar" to her previous children. On the flip side of prophecy: The Valonquar prophecy hasn’t appeared in the show, unlike a more recently revisited prophecy that's directly in conflict with that one: It might be Arya who kills Cerseiafter all.
Since Cersei hasn’t given birth to her child yet, this theory also assumes Cersei lives through Daenerys’ assault on King’s Landing and gives birth to a healthy child.
The darkest view of the ending of Game of Thrones is that something happens to kill off all of our main characters, and Literal Baby Lannister is considered so young and untainted by the wars between old houses that it's installed as ruler with the vague idea of hope for a better Westeros. Everyone's dead. Baby King. End of story. Weirder things have happened.
7. Bran Stark
This call came from inside the Thrillist house, but the events of Season 6’s "The Door" seemed to confirm it. Bran's traveling into the past and warging into Hodor set off a time loop that changed history, or more accurately, has always been changing history. As Bran became the Three-Eyed Raven, he's increasingly more detached from his physical and temporal presence and unmooring himself from the present events in this series -- as he’s told Tyrion, he mostly lives in the past.
Bran's position of power has increased now that his main opposition, the Night King, is out of the picture. As far as powerful beings in Westeros go, the Three-Eyed Raven and the Night King were at the top of the corporeal pyramid (don't blaspheme the Lord of Light). Whoever has Bran on their side might be capable of knowing the outcome of battles, or even how to prevent future events. Bran gave Arya the Valyrian steel dagger when he was well in Three-Eyed Raven mode; did he know she was going to off the Night King all along?
We know that Bran is the literal keeper and symbol of all knowledge in the Realm. That means Bran has to live, and if he does, he could possibly take the throne... whenever he wants. Even if Bran doesn’t have visions of the future that help him win battles, who would the people want if all the main contenders die in battle? Why not the physical embodiment of knowledge for the entire human race?
8. Tyrion Lannister
Kingly prospects for Tyrion are looking less promising lately, but there are still a few ways it would make sense for the Lannister to go home victorious. Tyrion made a good show of keeping a level head at the gates of King’s Landing. If Dany and Cersei end up killing each other, and Jon won’t step forward to be king, Tyrion is a very good option for the Realm. He would at least rebuild King's Landing with better plumbing.
Tyrion is currently the Hand of the Queen and a Lannister killer, plus he has experience running King's Landing and Meereen as a ruler. It's hard to imagine Tyrion seizing the Throne while Daenerys still lives, but if the Dragon Queen does start to murder innocent civilians his perspective on her might change. Tyrion killed Shae, whom he loved, for betraying him: What if he’s faced with the reality that Daenerys is a monster?
One way that Tyrion could sit on the Iron Throne and not have to betray everyone he's stood for is if Daenerys falls and Sansa rises up through the ranks. Sansa has had many husbands, but she counts Tyrion as the best. If the only way to calm a panicked nation after a final war is to show unity between the Starks and Targaryens, the two families who kicked this round of wars off, would King Tyrion and Queen Sansa be that terrible for either party?
The most distant possibility, but one that cannot technically be proven wrong yet, is that Tyrion is also a secret Targaryen. The show hasn't made much mention of it (and we don't really have many episodes left to reveal more Targaryens), but the books say that the Mad King Aerys lusted after Tyrion's mother and possibly could have fathered Tyrion. It would make Tywin's hatred of his dwarf son even more complex, because he'd also be covering up what happened to his wife.
9. Miracle Baby Targaryen
The final two episodes of Season 7 featured a lot of talking about babies among the young, attractive leads on the show. Daenerys continued to insist she was infertile and Jorah Mormont told Jon Snow that he should keep his sword to give to his children. It seems like we're building to the reveal of a miracle baby, born of Targaryen incest, assuming both parties were surprisingly fertile during their brief romance. This is a long shot, but if it works out, this kid would have the two most extreme warrior-leaders/dragon-riders as parents, and the miracle baby Targaryen would be the next in the line of succession.
George R.R. Martin has teased that the ending of A Song of Ice and Fire would be "bittersweet," so miracle baby probably wouldn't get to live a long life with both parents around. It’s possible the child could be thrust into leadership at a very young age (like, infant-aged) with someone like Tyrion serving as the Protector of the Realm until it comes of age. Sure, we don't know if the option even exists yet, but Miracle Baby Targaryen is at least a potential winner, which is more than we can say for, like, 90% of the characters still on the show.
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