So, this is just a theory I whipped up while riding the subway into work today, but the more I think about it, the more and more sense it makes. Also, I’m only talking only about the show. I haven’t read the books.
I don’t have the specifics of how we’ll get to this point (although I will elucidate a loose series of events below), but I think I know exactly what the final scene of Game of Thrones is going to be.
Jon Snow will take a seat on the Iron Throne, after winning the war against the White Walkers, and next to him will be Jaimie Lannister, who will slit his throat and say “The things I do for love.”
Jon dies (for real this time) as the credits role.
It will basically bring the show full circle back to the first episode, with Jaimie trying to kill a Stark to preserve his family. This time he’ll succeed. It’ll also wrap up Jon’s narrative, of hero fighting and dying for a cause.
In doing so, the battle for the Iron Throne will begin anew. I think the series (obviously) isn’t destined for a happy ending, a la Aragon taking the crown and ushering in the Age of Men and peace and prosperity. That’s just not this show’s style.
I think it will give us a simulacrum of that, with the living winning the war against the dead, and the dead safely behind the wall until the next winter. But then everyone will go right back to the way they were at the beginning of the show, having learned nothing, and fighting again for power.
Now, here’s how we’ll get there (this leaves a lot of subplots, obviously).
I think Daenerys is obviously going to take King’s Landing with ease. In the finale, she mentioned though, how she wasn’t going to have the Second Sons attack Casterly Rock. My guess is, with dragons as well as five bad ass armies (Dothraki, Unsullied, Martell, Tyrell, Greyjoy) breathing down their neck, the Lannisters will flee. Cersei might even blow up all of King’s Landing on the way out. But they’ll go off back home.
(Option B here is that they surrender, and Dany, attempting to be benevolent, forgives Jaimie. She’s been getting fed an awful lot from Tyrion about how bad her father was and how Jaimie saved the city.) (But it would be fitting for those two to blow it up on the way out.)
Dany and Jon will team up to fight the Walkers, with the assumption that after the war, Dany will run the South, and Jon the North, ushering in a new Targaryen Era.
With this pact made, the Lannisters offer whatever remains of their forces, Dany will say no, but Jon will convince her they need all the help they can get, and they can deal with the Lannisters after.
Everybody goes up North to fight the Walkers. The Wall falls, the wights tear everything up, the battle is catastrophic. I’m guessing all three dragons give their lives fighting, but the living win.
During the battle, Cersei decides now is the time to eliminate everyone. She succeeds with Dany, but not Jon. He catches wind of this, and after battle, orders her executed.
With Dany dead, Jon heads to King’s Landing, to take reluctantly take his place on the throne. Jaimie is with him. Almost everyone else is gone. There’s no one left to help
Then, back in what remains of King’s Landing, to save his sister, Jaimie stabs Jon.
It’s not a happy ending, but it is the ending that makes so much sense.
The themes of Thrones are readily apparent. One is that characters can’t change. Jaimie is a Kingslayer, and he’ll do it again. The second is that the battle for the Iron Throne is never, ever over. So Dany isn’t going to swoop in and lord over Westeros with ease. Jon Snow isn’t going to unite all seven houses. No, the show is going to end with the exact same strife as
it began. With one death perpetuating another war.
For this show, that’s the only ending that makes sense.
It would also give it a nicely circular note to it. Jaimie, whose stabbing of the Mad King, and shoving of Bran, ushered in this generation of conflict, killing to end it. But in reality, he’s just perpetuating it.
That’s exactly how Westeros would work.
But what do you think?
WATCH NEXT: A REFRESHER ON SIX SEASONS OF GAME OF THRONES FINALES