And in the first season, when Jon asked Ned, who deferred, and then Robert asked him about it too, and also got the runaround. Pretty clear it was supposed to be something interesting. You could write it off as Ned’s honor, just not wanting to talk about his failure as a husband or something; but all these years, and during a nostalgic conversation about war and women being straight-up prompted by his Best Friend in the Whole World and professional womanizer Robert, still refusing to talk about it?
I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I’m always terrible at predicting where any movie, TV or literary series is going. I was right abut Severus Snape being in love with Lily Potter, but other than that, my batting average for plot predictions is pretty weak.
Jon Snow COULD be dead, certainly. GRRM has proven many times that he isn’t above toying with his readers. And hey, let’s face it, in real life LOTS of people die without living up to the great potential they seem to have, and without fulfilling the destinies that seem to lie before them. It’s anticlimactic, obviously, but Jon Snow’s death is no more unlikely than John F. Kennedy’s (to use another guy who was killed before he could accomplish any of the great things his admirers were sure he was Just About To carry out).
BUT (and you knew a but was coming), GRRM must know dang well that, having tantalized his readers for years with the mystery of Jon’s parentage, if he doesn’t answer those questions, it will be perceived as a giant “F. Hugh” to those loyal fans.
The question is, does Martin care if his fans take it that way? He may not. Many of his most shocking and effective stories have succeeded precisely because he didn’t give us what we hoped for or expected. Ned Stark’s death shocked us because it came out of left field (but you CAN’T kill off your main character at the start of the series! You CAN’T"). The Red Wedding shocked us because it deprived us of the justice and revenge we always expect in this kind of tale! Martin has always loved teasing us, leading us to EXPECT a particular kind of payoff, and then pulling the rug out from under us.
There are VERY few authors who’d lead us to place a huge amount of importance on a character, to tease us with riddles about his true identity, and then kill him off without every answering our questions. But Martin is one of those few authors who MIGHT!!!
My HUNCH is that Jon Snow is still alive and still important, and that Martin WILL get around to answering our many questions. But I wouldn’t put it past him to chuckle and say, “Life is filled with mysteries and riddles we never quite figure out the answers to, isn’t it?”
Oh, bs. It’s heavily heavily heavily hinted at in the books. Adding in the hints from Martin, D&D, and others and I think it’s almost delusional to think R+L=J isn’t true. 100% lock that it’s true.
The hints in the show are definitely there too. It’s significantly less than in the books, but it’s picked up recently. Most obviously with Littlefinger in the crypt.
Eh, not really. It’s mostly based off what, a single phrase uttered by Lyanna? Either way, I hope GRRM Josses the hell out of that theory in the next book. If I were him that’s what I’d do even if I had been planning on the fan theory from the beginning, just because I would like to see the virtual look on their proverbially smug, collective virtual faces when proved wrong.
Which is important, because if the whole R+L = J business is true, then Robert would be determined to have Jon killed (or sent to the Wall, but at that point in the tale, that’s not a done deal yet), as he would represent a threat to his throne.
Beyond that… ISTR that at the point that Ned and his compatriots fought Arthur Dayne & the other Kingsguard members at the Tower of Joy, Rhaegar and the rest of Targaryens were already dead and/or exiled. So why would the Kingsguard be protecting Lyanna at that point?
Erm, no.
One reference to a tall hooded man in one sentence one chapter somewhere, does not a spring make.
I’ve no more belief in Sandor being alive than I do that Howland Reed is a specific person, based on a one off comment on how he wears his hair.
I buy into some out there theories in GOT, and talk up some of them, but those two are incredibly tenuous based on people going through the books with fine tooth combs. I don’t think GRMM writes like that. But a number of his readers read like that…
The only reason I could ever see that being ‘clear in the books’ would be sarcasm.
No, it’s a lot more than that. Jon looks like Arya, and Arya is said to look like Lyanna Stark. Jon’s wolf Ghost has white fur, just like the Targaryen white hair. Ned thinks of Jon Snow, Rhaegar Targaryen, and Lyanna Stark (and his promise to her) when he is thinking about Robert’s bastards. Dany has a vision of a blue winter rose (which Lyanna loved) growing from a chink in a wall of ice.
And there’s more, IIRC.
You know and THREE Kingsguard guarding the tower where Lyanna was - including the Sword of Morning Arthur Dayne (best knight in the realm) and Gerold Hightower the White Bull, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard (the third was Oswell Whent). Guarding a tower with Lyanna… rather than fighting with Rheagar on the Trident (where there were only 2 Kingsguard with him, including Barristan Selmy) or guarding the King, Aerys II (only 1, Jamie Lannister) (the final Kingsguard, FWIW, was with Viserys and Dany)?
What were they possibly guarding in Dorne, away from any of the fighting?
Makes no sense otherwise if they weren’t guarding the future heir.
Check that, Ser William Darry (who guarding Viserys and Dany) wasn’t a member of the KG, but Jonothor Darry was - who died at the Trident.
So, 3 KG at the Trident, 1 at King’s Landing, 3 at the Tower of Joy guarding Lyanna.
They have absolutely hinted at R+L=J in the show. They did so as early as season 1 episode 2. Watch the scene where Robert is going on about the Targaryen’s and notice Ned’s answers and reactions to him. I do agree with you about the Cleganebowl however.
Well, he did still have his head so anything’s possible, right?
OK, here we go.
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There was a lot of time in the books spent physically describing this random septon who claims to have buried the Hound, and specific remarks about how his physical features look like those of a warrior and how he looks nothing like a septon. This was emphasized multiple times, as well as him being huge in stature and even bigger than Brienne, which is not typical.
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Probably the biggest piece of evidence for me - Stranger, the Hound’s notoriously unruly black destrier, is stabled with this small group of septons. It is described how nobody but the Hound could ever handle him or ride him without him throwing a fit and the horse is notorious for that reason. Yet the septon is tending to him without any apparent problems.
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The mystery septon is described as having a healing injury which is (supposedly) consistent with the one the Hound received, though I don’t recall the exact passage. But he is also described as wearing a scarf that covers his face, which sounds like an obvious callout to Sandor’s burned face.
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There’s a scene where he stops to pet some dogs, which could be an extra little hint from GRRM (else why describe it? Well, he does tend to go into verbose detail about all kinds of things that might not be important but it still stands as a possible hint).
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The above are book hints, but from the show perspective we don’t see him die on-camera, which is usually plenty of reason to suspect someone isn’t really dead, as far as GoT goes. Also, cutting out the mystery septon is an obvious necessity since we would recognize the actor on-screen even with a covered face, but in the Magical Land of Books, an author can afford to have a meeting of characters like that without the reader being sure of his identity.
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Maggy prophesied that Cersei would die at the hands of “the valonqar” (meaning “little brother”). The (imo too) straightforward interpretation of that would be Tyrion. Possibly even Jaime, which would be more twisty (we know they are twins but one of them had to have popped out first- I’m not sure we know which one of them did, though). But a better, even twistier interpretation is that it’s not Cersei’s little brother but the little brother of house Clegane, Sandor, that seals her fate.
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We know that the Mountain is risen as Ser Robert Strong and that he will be Cersei’s champion in the trial by combat, so that half of the theory is already sealed. So the only question that remains is who will champion the Faith? Who better than this mysterious new septon who happens to have a longstanding and unresolved super-grudge against The Mountain himself and also happens to be his little brother?
It’s happening. That’s one thing I’ll bet on.
Yes, Cersei is the older twin. I think she’s always believed “little brother” to mean Tyrion, and is one reason why she’s so cruel and quick to have him exiled, killed, or whatever she can have done to him. Partly because she’s a bitch, but also because she literally thinks it’s either him, or her.
Thing about the Red Wedding is that not everyone who died there actually stayed dead in the books.
But even in the show there is a precedent for a Red Priest raising the dead, so if Melissandre gets Jon up and running again it wouldn’t be the first time we see it.
I’ve seen interviews with GRRM where he talks about fans guessing outcomes. His position is that changing it would be silly because it then renders all the foreshadowing pointless, they’d just become dead end red herrings that make no sense in retrospect. He also doesn’t read a lot of internet speculation because he doesn’t want to be inadvertently influenced.
Nitpick, but the septon on the Quiet Isle who claims to have buried Sandor (Elder Brother) is a different person than the gravedigger whose description strongly resembles the Hound.
R+L=J is absolutely not just based on “promise me Ned.” There are dozens of hints spread out across all the books. Ned thinking about Jon immediately after thinking about the lies he’s had to live and thinking about Jon after thinking about Lyanna and whatnot is enough on it’s own, but we get heavy heavy hints especially in the House of the Undying visions.
Rigamarole, you’ve just finished the books, right? Well there are literally hundreds of pages on different message boards discussing this going back to 1996. This is a very well documented theory with lots and lots of annotated passages backing it up. Benioff and Weiss also heavily hint at this being true in interview.
While I agree that Sandor is alive, there’s far far less evidence for that than for R+L=J. Interesting you’ve so intent on Cleganebowl when there’s really no evidence for that even if Sandor is alive.
But come on, who else is gonna face The Mountain That Rises From the Dead? It’s just too perfect an opportunity not to happen.
10% seems fair.
Roughly speaking, recent episodes drew around 10 million viewers, and each individual book has sold around a million copies.
Regarding Cleganebowl, how would that work in the show?
The crown sentenced The Hound to death, even going so far as to offer a bounty to anyone who kills him. We last saw him begging Arya to kill him due to grievous injuries.
Is the idea here that in the very near future (maybe a month?) Cersei will invoke trial by combat to get out of the religious trial, and then The Hound will just magically appear out of nowhere and with his death sentence magically lifted?
Seems kind of ham-fisted.