GoT - Is Over, Post Your Drogon Sightings

random musings about the season. Don't think i spoil anything from ep 4, I believe this has all been shown as of ep 3 but i could be wrong.

what really has me curious is Brienne's arc and her end game. There was that rumor that a character dies this season that hasn't died (yet) in the books and I kinda had that pegged as Brienne. I know the actress is starting to get some work in film (Star Wars 7, Hunger Games etc, not sure how large the roles are but starting to get out there) and we really don't know what's going on with her character since she got sidetracked in the books (and ended up sidetracking Jaime's redemption arc as well) by LSH and co.

So there's two possibilities.
Either A: both characters end up dying in the books to LSH and co, thus both of these arcs are creative license, irrelevant and they both end up dying this season. Jaime ends up playing the Arys Oakheart role (dying to save myrcella) and brienne, idk, dies trying to save Sansa from the boltons or something like that. If this were the case they could of killed both characters off last season and used the time they free up and cast me some Greyjoy's. Or maybe a minor FAegon arc (not as indepth as the book but something similar)

Or more likely B: LSH is irrelevant and neither character dies, and both of these stories are, to a certain extent, winds of winter spoilers.

Let's go with Option B for a moment.

Maybe it's not Jaime, maybe he's tied up for the first half of book 6 dealing with LSH but there is an event that happens in book 6 that requires a dornish reaction, the reason GRRM added Arianne as a POV character. And there is a plot brewing by the dornish to kill Myrcella, and Myrcella does die at some point before Cersei (thx prophecy) which we can assume sparks a war vs dorne and the eventual death of Tommen as well. There's also an invasion of the storm lands (which was excised entirely) but also a follow on Invasion by Dany, and maybe that's what happens in Dorne? Putting Jaime in dorne lets the tv show basically show us the cersei/lannister reaction to whatever the event ends up being.

But more importantly, back to Brienne. We have no idea what's going on with her in the books. But TV Brienne has rather heavily been foreshadowing for several season's now that her end goal is to kill Stannis Baratheon, and now she's heading to Winterfell, which we know Stannis will be attacking rather soon. These are the kinda events that have no insight from the books. Book Brienne has the same knowledge as TV Brienne and the same anger towards Stannis, but she's been too straddled with her mission and then sidetracked by LSH to really dwell on it. Also we have the whole kinslaying meta aspect which Stannis must answer for eventually.

So maybe it's Stannis? Maybe he's the character that dies this season that isn't dead yet in the books? Maybe he's the actor who was upset upon reading the script and finding out he dies since he's read the books and knows he's not dead yet?

one thing I do know is that both the major battles which kick off the first half of book 6 (really, these are just the extra chapters of book 5 which got cut because book 5 was too long) aren't going to take place in the beginning of next season of GoT. Just cost wise you get 1 major battle a year and they tend to save them for the late season (ep 9 usually). So either the battle of winterfell or the battle of Mereen, one will get downgraded to skirmish, or one of them is getting moved to the end of this season. I originally thought that the battle of mereen would just be downgraded to the insurgency of Mereen and it would just play out this season, dany vs the son's of Harpy, and that might still go down that way, but Stannis is also marching on winterfell in the next episode or two, the wall has it's own arcs to play out (jon snow/wildlings), and too many character arcs are merging at winterfell for something major not to happen there this season. And also it's kinda hard to CGI up 80 foot snow drifts and keep everyone indoors and halt all actions until spring comes, it just makes for bad TV. Also we know that the show must go on. I expect everything to be wrapped up and dany ruling the 7 kingdoms by no later than half way through next season. That leaves only 1.5 seasons to wrap up the show, with season 6 ending with the white walker invasion of westeros and season 7 concluding the entire series, with hodor alone, surrounded by zombie corpses, sitting on the iron throne.

I don't even really count mance since he had only 2-3 scenes total and was barely present in the series.