Since the very beginning of Game of Thrones, one of the great puppetmasters in Westeros has been Littlefinger. While he doesn’t have a drop of royal blood in his body, Petyr Baelish has been able to climb the political ladder with his cunning instincts and ability to manipulate, even the most powerful in Westeros. So it was so sad to see such a dynamic character that really stirs the pot die last season. However, a Game of Thrones fan theory suggests that Littlefinger is alive and well going into Season 8.
Littlefinger always seemed to be three steps ahead of all of his enemies. The master manipulator would always align with rising powers and betray the ones who were on their way out. So that is why his death in the Season 7 finale of Game of Thrones seemed a bit out of place. How did this crafty and guile career political player get played by the young and novice Sansa and Arya Stark? A fan theory suggests that Baelish did not actually die in Season 7 and he is still alive.
A seemingly unimportant scene in Season 7 went largely unnoticed. In the fifth episode of last season, Arya is tracking Littlefinger around and finds him talking to an unknown young woman. Most of us just assumed this Baelish making a transaction with a new sex worker for his brothel. Littlefinger hands the young woman a single coin and she whispers something to him. When you listen closely you can hear the woman tell Littlefinger, “Your time’s up.”
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Why include this scene unless it has a significant effect on the final season of Game of Thrones? The Game of Thrones theory suggests that the woman was a faceless assassin. The coin that Baelish was giving her was the same coin that Arya was given to her by Jaqen H’ghar and provided safe passage to Braavos.
Arya's Coin Fails Her In New @GameOfThrones Clip, Plus @Maisie_Williams Discusses Season 5 http://t.co/CO1JgkVAOf pic.twitter.com/ha4U9rald5
— The Fandom 🍿 (@FandomNet) March 25, 2015
Littlefinger may know a good deal about the faceless assassins since he said that his great grandfather was from Braavos in Season 4. Did Littlefinger know that Arya was stalking him and Sansa was onto him? If he bolted Winterfell, Sansa could have ordered troops to hunt him down or put a bounty on his head. If he went all Tupac and faked his own death, he could easily travel back to King’s Landing since everyone would think he was dead. Once he was there, the former Master of Coin could strike a deal with Cersei Lannister to tell them what he knows about House Stark and Daenerys Targaryen. Or Littlefinger could have been working as a spy for Cersei the entire time. Classic Littlefinger.
Then there is this interview with Aidan Gillen, the actor who plays Littlefinger. In the L.A. Times interview from August of 2017, Gillen says the words “Your time is up.”
“I don’t think Baelish does crocodile tears. I don’t think Baelish likes to shed tears, certainly not in front of people,” Gillen said. “Throughout the seasons, I’ve tried to show something that we haven’t seen before in successive seasons … warmth or a bit more of a human side or coldness. But one thing we haven’t seen is real vulnerability or weakness. If we saw some emotion, I don’t really think it was sentimental. I think it was involuntary: Your time is up.”
In the scene where Baelish is on trial for murder, Littlefinger becomes unhinged, cries, and begs for his life, in a very un-Littlefinger-like spectacle. Could it be because it was not Petyr Baelish? Could Littlefinger be out here playing 4-D chess while everyone else is playing checkers?
The argument that this Game of Thrones fan theory is false is the question of how did the Petyr Baelish in the trial of his life know so much about Littlefinger’s past? The person in the trial knows about Lady Lysa Tully, his history with Sansa and Catelyn Stark. Does the faceless assassin get access to the person’s body as well as the person’s brain and memory? Another question about this theory is if Baelish plotted to fake his own death, why didn’t Bran Stark see it since he is the all-seeing Three-Eyed Raven who knows everything? We shall see if Littlefinger is alive when Game of Thrones returns to your TV on April 14, 2019.
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