I apologize if any of the following spec is either obvious or stupid!! I don’t follow GoT meta/spec and I have basically been a very casual watcher until super recently.
With only two episodes still to go, I have realized that the final arc of the show is a redux of Robert’s Rebellion and the assassination of the Mad King - with two figures in the narrative spot of the Mad King, Daenerys and Cersei.
In 8x04 we are reminded of Robert multiple times - Daenerys mentions how he took the throne away from her family to Gendry, and then Tyrion and Varys, who now know the truth about Lyanna and Rhaegar, comment on the futility of Robert’s Rebellion, whom Robert started because of Lyanna being “kidnapped” when in fact that didn’t happen.
And, of course, the story brings Daenerys to a point where she has a choice to make: whether to burn King’s Landing.
Daenerys has a difficult legacy that she needs to dispel if she wants people to accept her as queen of Westeros. The memory of her father, the Mad King, is still alive and she needs to prove that she is not like her father.
But, of course, the ultimate “madness” that drove Jaime Lannister to kill him was that he ordered to have the entirety of King’s Landing burned. In fact, the Mad King was to ignite Wildfire placed all over King’s Landing to burn the city down when it became clear he had lost.
Basically, Daenerys is going to face the ultimate test to prove that she is not just another mad Targaryen, by choosing not to burn hundreds of thousands of innocents.
I expect that she is going to spiral into her own “madness”, hatred and revenge and desire for power, for a bit more, but eventually she’ll see the light and prove - to herself and to everyone else - that she is indeed different.
But, on the other side, there is Cersei, that at this point has also spiraled into madness. She already has burned a bunch of people in King’s Landing by using Wildfire, and she could potentially blow the city up with it, just like the Mad King wanted to do before Jaime stopped him.
So here’s my speculation. Warning, I never get these things right.
- it seems obvious that Jaime will find himself in a situation with similarities of sorts from the one he went through with the Mad King. While it makes more sense for him to be involved with the Cersei-as-the-Mad-King-2.0 side of the story, I wonder whether it’d possible that he’ll be involved in the Dany-as-the-Mad-King-2.0 side of the story. Jaime once tried to kill Dany to stop the war, but was prevented in doing that by Drogon. Now, Jaime basically killed the “last dragon” when he killed the last Targaryen king on the Iron Throne, and I wonder if that scene was foreshadowing for him to kill the literal “last dragon”, to prevent Drogon to burn the city. Of course, it could be someone else. But I’m intrigued by the scene where he attempts to kill Dany and Drogon gets in front of him as foreshadowing for him killing the dragon to protect the city. I’m counting this as a wild idea, not really speculation, but why not write it down...
- on the other hand, it is possible that the truth about why Jaime killed the Mad King will come up (only Brienne knows about it, correct?), possibly as a warning to Daenerys that burning King’s Landing is a very Mad King kind of thing to do, which is not the brand of sovereign she wants to be. And now another piece of speculation: this might be where Bran fits in this arc. We know that Bran experienced a flashback to the Mad King yelling “burn them all”, and the scene seemed to suggest that his madness could be in fact related to Bran’s interference as the three-eyed-raven and be a projection of the need to burn the dead, not the living. People have wondered what would Bran’s role in the story be now that the Night King is dead, and I’m wondering whether that scene where he sees the Mad King might come up as relevant now, possibly with some reveal about the guy and/or Jaime, possibly revealing something about his cryptic dialogue with him.
- Now, the “Rebellion” part of the parallel. If Cersei and Dany are both, in different ways (and, likely, final results), the Mad King, who are Robert and Ned? Now, my speculation here goes to the Stark sisters (one’s already been aligned with the Baratheon house, the other is the current Stark-in-charge-of-Winterfell). Now hear my idea out: Sansa goes to King’s Landing to make negotiations with Cersei (don’t get me wrong, I know Sansa wants Cersei dead too, but she looks at the big picture and what she can get out of the situation first: if Dany and Cersei fight, the winner wins all - Sansa cannot let that happen). At this point, we might get a situation where Dany wants to attack the city, and Jon needs to choose whether to obey to her, or not - because his sister(s) is/are in the city (Arya’s going there too but it might be a secret). Jon at some point will need to make a major choice (what to do with Jaime, what to do with the secret of his parentage etc, imo, foreshadowing for a big life-or-death choice he needs to make) and I like the idea of him having to pick between Dany and Sansa in the most dramatic way possible.
Of course, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a precise correspondence between key players during Robert’s Rebellion and key players now, especially considering that there are two Mad King 2.0s, one another Targaryen like him but equipped with a dragon, the other not a Targaryen but equipped with his Wildfire. Which leads us to the next point--
- Cersei. Remember how when Stannis attacked King’s Landing she was ready to kill Tommen and herself rather than be captured and worse? It would make sense for her to kill herself and her baby once she has no hope to win. But now she has the Wildfire at her own disposal just the Mad King, and it would make sense for her to want to bring literally everyone else with her, not so unlike the Night King who wanted all life to die. Now, there’s two episodes to go and it seems like very little time so I’m tempted to list “Cersei, realizing she’s losing, blows the entire place up so she dies bringing all his enemies with her. Gendry becomes king of the seven kingdoms because there’s literally no one else left to be king of anything. ser Davos somehow survives again to his great annoyance” as a possibility. In fact, it is a possibility. But it’s probably more likely that she’ll be stopped before she is able to enact the plan, just like the Mad King. Now, it’s possible that she’s killed by Jaime or someone else and her plan dies with her. But I’m also intrigued by Tyrion’s speech to Qyburn in 8x04, where Tyrion attempts to appeal to Qyburn’s common sense and he tells him that he doesn’t want the city to burn and hear people burning alive, and asks Qyburn to help him save the city and avoid carnage. Of course in 8x04 that falls flat and Tyrion goes to address Cersei personally, but maybe it’s foreshadowing for Qyburn eventually intervening to avoid the whole city to burn.
- On the other hand I really, really want a confrontation between Sansa and Cersei to happen (curiously, Sansa was there with her during the battle of the Blackwater so there might be a parallel there - c’mon the Wildfire will come up, it’s a song of ice and fire and the battle is at King’s Landing...). In the latest episode, Sansa reminded the Hound that she is not a “Little Bird” anymore. Back then, Cersei called her Little Dove. Time for her to prove to Cersei she’s not like that anymore. And that she learned from Cersei.
- I mentioned Bran before - if I’m not mistaken he had a vision of the future with dragons and Wildfire back in that intense episode when the previous Three-Eyed-Raven, Hodor, Summer etc died, right? It’s almost like there’s going to be a battle now with a dragon and a city packed with Wildfire right now... Oh, look. Some Wildfire is going to go off. And again, Bran and his powers are going to have some kind of significance, because the foreshadowing exists.
Okay, I think that if I kept musing about this stuff I could go on forever and this post is already long enough, so I’ll just add a couple short points:
- If indeed the circumstances of the Mad King’s assassination become relevant, I’m expecting Brienne and/or him to have some kind of dramatic moment when the conversation they had about it is recalled, and how back then his motivation wasn’t for Cersei, but the people.
- I swear if Jon also dies in the South and never reunites with Tormund, Sam, Ghost & co, I’m gonna personally murder the person responsible for it. *very awkward moment where everyone really digests the realization that the chances for Jon to come back to the North are... thin*
- I’m going to enjoy Euron’s death no matter who kills him.
Let me know your thoughts!!
@bluestar86 @tinkdw @idontdo-marigolds @daughter-of-the-rain-and-snow
