Theres no way Jon and Dany live to co-rule. Thats way too close to a happy ending.
“Lots of planets have a North.”
Yes…maybe.
We do know if you kill a White Walker (WW) the wights under him collapse immediately. We were shown this when Jon & Co. capture a wight. Jon kills a WW and all but one wight stop functioning on the spot. We are led to assume any wight converted by a given WW can not operate if that White Walker is killed.
We do not know, however, if other WWs are linked in the same way to the one who created them. WWs are certainly far above your average wight and different rules may apply.
We know that
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The Night King was the first White Walker, created by the Children of the Forest by stabbing him in the heart with a dragonstone blade.
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The Night King can turn living humans into White Walkers with a touch.
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If you kill a White Walker, then the wights he controls (and presumably created) also are destroyed.
I suppose we don’t know for sure if the Night King made all the White Walkers, or if some additional ones were made by the Children of the Forest. And we don’t know for sure if killing a White Walker kills all the Walkers it made. But killing the Night King would at least take out a big chunk of his army. During the battle during the Wight Hunt, Jon and party thought that if they could kill the King it would wipe out his whole army.
I think ive sussed out the big twist…maybe not…seems a little ham-fisted but ill give some spoiler space
In the preview…Danys tone on the line “The dead are already here!!!” has an air of realization about it. As if her and Jon are asking “where are the dead?? Why are the white walkers just sitting there? Where is their army?”
Theres not enough dead in the crypts to overwhelm Winterfell…but i’ll betcha they didn’t burn the dead after…The Battle of the Bastards.
What is Benjen Stark? The Children of the Forest saved him after he was mortally wounded by a White Walker and, seemingly, doomed to become a wight. But the CotF stuck some dragon glass into him too and that stopped him from becoming a wight.
So, he is undead but still intelligent and has his own will intact. But he does not seem like other White Walkers either. Not sure where we put him in the scheme.
Oooh…good point. And there is the giant Wun Wun among them.
IIRC we have seen other giants in the army of the undead but we like Wun Wun (I do anyway). Seeing him resurrected as a wight will hurt.
Is there anything to make us think Jon should be fireproof in the first place? I mean, just because Dany is, doesn’t mean he has to be, right? Viserys didn’t react well to having molten gold poured on his head.
Question for the Mods:
Are we allowed to introduce things George R.R. Martin has said in interviews with the media? What about the showrunners or actors?
Benjen seems to be unique. He says he rescued Bran and Meera because he was “called by the Three-eyed Raven,” by which he means Bran. He uses fire to kill wights. He says he can’t pass through the Wall because he is dead. So he’s not alive, but not a Walker or a wight either.
Also, remember when Benjen saves Jon by pulling him out of the water and giving him a horse to escape the undead pile on Benjen so, despite being undead himself, he is still identified by the undead as an enemy. (Maybe a wight on its own would leave Benjen alone and needs a White Walker, which can identify Benjen as “not us”, to direct the undead to attack…we just do not know.)
Moderating
Since this is not my primary forum, and since I was not participating in these threads when the rules were formulated, I’m going to refer everyone to the original Game of Thrones Peacekeeping Rules. Given repeated questions about this, I have restickied the thread. I also edited the title to make it clear this thread is SHOW ONLY.
These rules have been somewhat relaxed over the years, but when in doubt, you should adhere to them. For example, the OP specified that if something were leaked elsewhere, it could be posted if spoilered and described. Information from the previews should be indicated beforehand. Personally, I think that info from the “Inside the Episode” interviews posted on the HBO website are OK since they are publicly available and only deal with episodes already aired.
If you feel you really, really, really must discuss things that are not on the TV show, go over to the open book/show discussion thread. That’s what it’s there for.
If you want to question or dispute these rules, open a thread in ATMB or PM me. Do not bring up the subject here again.
Colibri
I expect both her and Meera Reed to show up with armies, BoB style, just when the battle seems lost.
Or he will see her as a wight and be challenged with whether to burn her. I think he won’t, and he’ll die because of it.
No, cremation is a wildling thing, and the night’s watch learned it. Starks are laid in the crypt, with a statue of themselves at their feet and an iron sword across their laps to keep them from leaving.
Agree. And furthermore, until recently her desire was not to turn the wheel, but to break it. When did the throne become her primary concern?
The director said in an interview that this episode was meant to be a loveletter to the characters. Then he broke down as he said “'cause I love them so much.”
It was a little creepy.
I think that they’ll get smart at last. The Night King doesn’t know where the three-eyed raven is, he knows where Bran’s body is, because that’s where he left the mark. If the raven wargs into Tyrion, he could take off now, and head for Greywater watch, or the God’s Eye, or someplace random that the Night King could never find him. I predict Tyrion will figure that out, and that he would welcome having this fount of knowledge bestowed upon him at any risk.
Bran will still be used as bait, but the raven won’t be.
One hook for the show that really made it go was GRRM’s resistance to Deus Ex Machina kind of solutions. Which is to say, someone comes out of nowhere at the time he/she is most needed to save the day but seemingly out of nowhere. As far as you knew they were anywhere but there but, fortuitously, they just happened to be there at the exact right time.
We got that in the Battle of the Bastards and while I am happy the day was saved were we given any reason to expect this clutch save?
Nope. Came out of the blue and I really think the show has gotten sloppy with this sort of thing which is a shame. I think a hallmark of what makes GoT great is every twist and turn is earned and not just something that “happens” because reasons.
The show hasn’t been written by GRRM for a couple of seasons at least. A whole bunch of decisions last season wasn’t his. He probably provided an endpoint and its up to D&D to get there. So I’d not consider this an issue.
D&D completely forgetting about the likes of Meera Reed, now that’s a more likely explanation. Like Ghost for the last 15 odd episode.
Bran has only really warged into Hodor, hasn’t he, and he did that regularly to in effect walk in emergency situations. To me having a large simplistic gap in personality is the hook needed to do that with a human, and the only prospect for that to me is… Reek.
But as with my previous post, I don’t expect D&D to be so complex. They haven’t been so far.
One would think that when D&D approached GRRM to make the show that GRRM laid down some guiding principles he wanted followed. Why would D&D abandon those principles? It is part of what made the show successful.
D&D have done a great job on the show to be sure but the one decision of theirs I most disagree with is minimizing the role of the dire wolves.
How do you get that was the Night King in that scene?
I believe D&D have confirmed it in interviews.
I’ve seen some very convincing theories that Bran and the Night King are one in the same due to some weird time travel/three eyed raven magic type stuff. This article outlines it pretty well. 9 Reasons Bran Stark Is Most Certainly The Night King
Obviously there are a few holes in the theory but it’s one of the more interesting ones I’ve come across and I can definitely see that being the case.