The real villains and the real heroes of Season 8: predictions and foreshadowings
Back when the character posters for Season 8 was released, a few folks in the JonSa fandom speculated about how Daenerys, Euron Greyjoy, and the Night King, were shown to be seated on the Iron Throne with the Stanley Kubrick glare. Here are the pictures of what I am talking about.
Kubrick stare is a typical characterising feature of villainy. Given that Euron Greyjoy, Daenerys Stormborn, and the Night King all sport this, it is safe to say that Team Storm are the main villains.
The Crypts of Winterfell teaser provided us the real heroes of this season and they are these three:
Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, and Arya Stark, poised to face the threats of Ice and Fire with their best weapons, and are the real heroes of Season 8 and the story at large.
Longclaw for Jon, Sansa has her wits and charm, intelligence, and realpolitik, I mean I could go on but you get the point. Last but not the least, Arya Stark, newly minted Night King Slayer, with her Valyrian steel dagger, with which she killed the NK and Needle.
Thanks to Arya being the NK Slayer, this picture makes a whole lot of sense now and I believe we will have Jon and Sansa take down the other two villains in the story. 3 villains vs 3 heroes.
Daenerys Stormborn:
The show actually teased that Jon and Sansa will stand against Daenerys Stormborn back in Season 6.
The S06E09 Battle of the Bastards Inside the Episode commentary by David Benioff, where he says:
“If you are one of the Lords of Westeros or one of her potential opponents in the wars to come, and you get word of what happened here in Meereen, you have to be pretty nervous because this is an unprecedented threat. You’ve got a woman who has somehow formed an alliance where she’s got a Dothraki horde, a legion of Unsullied, she’s got the mercenary army of the Second Sons, and she’s got three dragons, who are now pretty close to full-grown. So if she can make it all the way across the Narrow Sea and get to Westeros, who’s gonna stand in her way?”
over shots of Daenerys about to destroy Meereen and burning people, is immediately followed by this shot of Sansa and Jon, from the tent scene, prior to Battle of Bastards, where they discuss how to defeat Ramsay (another villain).
Sneaky.
In Season 8 so far, we have seen Sansa go toe-to-toe with Daenerys, either by making her displeasure known in feeding the “greatest army the world has ever seen” with the limited food and resources that Sansa has managed to gather for the North, or derisively asking “what do dragons eat anyway” or outright defying Daenerys in Jamie’s trial. I do not see this abating in the upcoming episodes. Sansa knows that the Dragon Queen is a threat to her home, her family, and the entire North and she will be using her smarts and political prowess to outplay Daenerys.
Jon, on the other hand, will be the one to go fight Daenerys in a Dance of the Dragons 2.0. Whether Jon kills Daenerys remains to be seen. The show has buried enough clues to allude to this happening. I have written about it here and here and I think there is a strong possibility that Jon kills Daenerys, irrespective of your beliefs in those alleged leaks.
In fact, these lines from ADWD, Jon XII, may have foreshadowed this:
Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze.
"Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders.
Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared. The world dissolved into a red mist. Jon stabbed and slashed and cut. He hacked down Donal Noye and gutted Deaf Dick Follard. Qhorin Halfhand stumbled to his knees, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. "I am the Lord of Winterfell," Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder. He whirled …… and woke with a raven pecking at his chest.
Here we have Jon armored in black ice, which is very reminiscent of Daenerys’ dream from ASOS, Daenerys III:
That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.
Jon kills Ygritte, a love interest, and Robb, his kin/cousin within the same dream. Daenerys is both a love interest and his kin/aunt.
Jon has also been referred to as the “shifting shadow” from Daenerys’s chapters...ASOS, Daenerys II.
“Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.“
Melisandre in her visions sees Jon as a shifting shadow as well:
“The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again.”
-ADWD, Melisandre I.
What’s interesting is that the show actually uses a “shadow” to allude to Jon.
Notice the focus on the shadow of Jon, right before he goes to behead Janos Slynt, someone who betrayed Ned Stark and was an enemy to House Stark. And dare I say, this reminds me of the shadow of Jamie from Bran’s visions right before he shoves the sword in the back of the Mad King Aerys.
Since Jon and Jamie are foils, Jon could end the story as a kinslayer and Queenslayer, just as Jamie started the story as the Kingslayer. We shall see whether it does come to pass or not. Additionally, Jon has refused to kill a woman twice before (Ygritte and Melisandre), maybe he ends up having to kill a woman this third time. Notably, Ygritte was a love interest, Melisandre tried seducing Jon, and now he is in a relationship with Daenerys.
Euron Greyjoy:
I would’ve loved for Theon to be the one to take down Euron but since he is dead, someone else will have to step up to bring this guy down.
Could Jon be the one? Or Arya?Or Yara?
Since both Euron and Daenerys have been associated with “Storm”, here are some clues that I found that I thought were interesting.
This next part is just wild speculation on my part.
Euron is introduced to us in S06E02 Home, where he kills his brother and King Balon Greyjoy and these are some of the things he says...
And this is what Jon says before he gets crowned KITN in S06E10 The Winds of Winter...
Littlefinger needles him in the crypts before Jon leaves for Dragonstone in S07E02 Stormborn and says this...
While Daenerys Stormborn has been associated with storms, Euron has been called the Storm and in this same episode called Stormborn, we see both Daenerys and Euron but not the Night King. Interesting don’t you think?
In fact, LF’s line could be applicable to Jon being the last best hope against either or both of these two “Storms”.
In fact, I think we may get a Daenerys Stormborn and Euron Greyjoy “Storm-Storm” alliance mainly because of this throwaway line from Yara while she is captive in the Silence at KL in S08E01...
to which Euron replies:
Now on the surface, this may seem that Yara, an ally of Daenerys is confident of Daenerys’s win over Cersei and Euron, who are current allies. To which Euron talks about sailing his fleet elsewhere??To Dragonstone maybe??? I believe the show is cluing us to the fact that Euron could possibly switch camps. I mean he is wild, unpredictable and who knows what his next move is?? However, he wants to marry the most beautiful woman in the world and just wants to side with the winning team.
In the promo for Episode 4, we see Euron going down on his knees and looks like he is proposing Cersei. If Cersei rejects his proposal, maybe he will switch sides over to Daenerys, whom he thinks has a better chance of winning and is the most beautiful woman in the world.
However, in the subtext, do we really think Daenerys’s side is the winning side????
If she is the main antagonist, then she has to lose, right? So what could this mean....that Euron switches Cersei’s camp and goes over to Daenerys’s camp thinking he is picking the winning side, only to end up on the losing side, when Daenerys finally loses.
Euron is a wild card and hopefully, next episode provides some solid clues regarding what’s going to happen.
There is also this scene from S07E05 Eastwatch, where the maesters of the Citadel are discussing Bran’s letter about the AOTD and one of the maesters mockingly says...”Don’t forget the prophet Lodos, who said that the drowned god will rise up and destroy Aegon the Conqueror”
Prophecy twist is when Aegon the Protector aka Jon Snow who has risen from the dead, destroys the Drowned God aka Euron Greyjoy.
Or the Drowned God aka Euron Greyjoy allies himself with Aegon the Conqueror come again aka Daenerys Stormborn to attempt to destroy KL???? It remains to be seen.
Why will Jon need to kill Euron??? Maybe just maybe Euron will be involved in kidnapping Sansa to KL. And Jon has already said (to LF) “Touch my sister and I’ll kill you myself”. That Chekhov’s gun is still waiting to go off.
I can’t help but think that the scene in the godswood in S08E01 Winterfell, in front of the heart tree, when Arya and Jon reunite and they talk about Sansa and Jon says that “I am her family too”, Arya says “don’t forget that” is foreshadowing for Jon to remember his first vow after he was brought back from the death that he made to Sansa...”I won’t ever let him touch you again, I will protect you, I promise”. Jon’s vow to protect Sansa will come into play in a moment when Sansa’s safety and her life is compromised. If Euron/GC come for her, then Jon’s vows to protect Sansa are applicable here as well.
This Jon/Arya scene then transitions to a shot of KL, where we think Sansa will get kidnapped to, and then we have shots of Cersei and Qyburn, the Golden Company with Euron and, finally we have scenes where a “sister” is held captive by Euron. And who comes to rescue his “sister” Yara?? Theon, who is a foil to Jon...I think these are interesting scene transitions. Again, since it’s rescuing one’s sister, it could be that Arya is the one who comes to rescue Sansa, together with Jon, and ends up being the one to kill Euron.
Having said all of that, I am really not sure. Mainly because I don’t think the show will let Jon kill both Euron and Daenerys. That’s a bit much for one guy, even if it’s Jon. And this is primarily where I think Arya may play a part and be the one to kill Euron. If Jon kills Daenerys, then Arya will kill Euron, again the objective remains the same, protect Sansa. That shot from the crypts teaser where Sansa is flanked by Arya one on side and Jon on the other side, with their weapons drawn in a protective stance, makes me think that both Jon and Arya will have to protect and save Sansa at some point.
Or the show could give this kill to Yara, Jamie, or even Brienne, who knows. Like I said, this part is pure speculation on my part so I could be totally wrong.
And finally Cersei Lannister:
I am counting on the show giving us a Sansa vs Cersei showdown, I feel like those two characters need to meet to complete the YMBQ story arc.
If the kidnapping plot does not happen, Sansa could come to KL to parlay with Cersei to strike up an alliance to take down Daenerys and defend the 7Ks.
These character posters have the same energy about them. Two Queens.
The show has been teasing us a Stark-Lannister alliance through its promos and teasers.
I could see Sansa and Cersei forming an alliance together to defeat Daenerys’s forces. The Golden Company will fight on behalf of Cersei and Sansa against Daenerys’s (and maybe Euron’s) armies.
In terms of Cersei’s demise, I am not putting too much stock on the Valonqar prophecy being actually true. Yes, Cersei has to die eventually, but D&D are Lena fanboys and I don’t think they will give her a gruesome on-camera death. In fact, I think Cersei will commit suicide or maybe poisoned.
When cornered, Cersei has either always managed to pull out an ace in the hole and outwit all her opponents in one fell-swoop like she did with House Tyrell in S06E10 when she blew up the sept
OR
she turns suicidal and threatens to do something rash.
Case in point:
1. She was willing to poison herself and Tommen with the essence of nightshade poison at the Battle of Blackwater Bay when all looked lost until Tywin came and saved her.
2. When Tywin was forcing her to marry Loras, she threatened to “burn our House to the ground”.
The only thing Cersei loves is her children, Jamie, and her throne. The fact that she is drinking wine again means that she probably is no longer pregnant. Jamie, if he ends up with Brienne, is gone from her. Her throne is under attack from Daenerys’s forces. All of these may just force her to do:
Foreshadowing from S03E10 Mhysa, where she is talking to Tyrion to give Sansa a child so that she may have some happiness.
She does not have any more children left, so she may just throw herself from the highest window in the red keep.
Joffrey and Myrcella were poisoned, Tommen committed suicide by throwing himself from his window. Maybe Cersei will do the same. We shall see.
Thoughts and comments??














