It seems to me that even if you’re not at all interested in Game of Thrones you’re at least aware of the phenomenon. HBO’s most successful show, also its most expensive, premieres its final season next month and millions of people will spend billions of dollars to find out what happens to the Starks, the Targaryens, and the Lannisters. Speculation is running wild at this point and I’m here to tell you, I know how it all ends.
Editor’s note: No he doesn’t.
I’ve figured it all out and I can tell you what you’re going to see at the end of the last episode.
Everyone dies.
Well almost everyone. All the Starks die. All the free folk die, all the Lannisters, the Tyrells, the Greyjoys, all of them die. Pretty much all the major characters die. That pesky red woman dies, and so does Gendry, who apparently was camping out back behind a whorehouse in Mole’s Town this whole time.
There’s really only one person who doesn’t die and she’s going to sit on the iron throne at the end.
Love her or hate her, meet Gilly of the Free Folk, first of her name, queen of anyone who’s still not dead.
Gilly isn’t stupid. She’s the one who actually figured out that Jon Snow is actually Aegon Targaryen and that he’s not a bastard after all. She’s also managed to hold down a job and raise a kid, while dealing with that hugely inept mess of Sam Tarly. She’s pretty amazing if you think about it. When it’s all done, she’s the one left standing.
How the rest of them die
The end comes when the lord of light, invoked by the red woman, takes on the body of Brandon Stark and wargs his way into the White Walker’s dragon. That dragon explodes, and in exploding sets fire to the entire White Walker army and in fact, most of the north. It will be a lovely spectacle visible from space. Everyone you care about will be incinerated except Gilly because she was down in Dorn, largely because she’s not stupid. Everything north of Harrenhal just turns into one big cinder.
And then…
Gilly actually does something smart and decrees that she will sit on the iron throne but only temporarily until the remaining Westerosi can organize a democratically elected government based on the principle of fair distribution of wealth, education, and equal opportunity. It takes about 10 years to work through it all but it works. Not only that but it’s a model for enlightenment that everyone in Essos takes note of.
It takes about 350 years of technological advancement and growth but eventually the whole planet comes together and forms not only a global but planetary society. They continue to evolve and grow, and eventually become a spacefaring culture which seeds an entire arm of the galaxy…
until some idiot figures out how to summon the long-dead spirit of Lancel Lannister who causes the entire planetary alliance to voluntarily self-incinerate in a tribute to the High Sparrow.
And that, my friends, is how it ends.
