screamin

I agree, but I do think that endings for characters like "Arya decides to go off exploring to lands beyond the map" and/or "Dany renounces the Iron Throne to seek a safe refuge to raise her child in the Summer Islands where she can build her own house with a red door" without an indication of how these moves turn out in the future is good enough for me. Uncertainty is a necessary condition for life.

That's like, canon, isn't it? Didn't he admit last season that he'd dissuaded Dany from attacking KL with dragons more to protect Cersei than to keep Dany from inflicting too much collateral damage? Which great move cost Dany the Queen of Thorns and Dorne.

FWIW, when looking for video of the EW interview I saw that NYCC had announced it on its schedule as an exciting upcoming event, so they were encouraging the public to go see it. I can't imagine it was TOO sparsely attended. Naughtysansa did write she was uncertain of some of what Sophie was saying while she was talking about the statue. Maybe she misheard the 'statue' part itself. Or maybe Sophie was talking about a facial cast that she wasn't allowed to take home. (Wasn't there a publicity still in an earlier season of many characters as busts with their death masks on, sitting in niches in the Faceless Men's HQ?) Or yes, maybe it IS a crypt statue...a scene suddenly occurs to me from a theoretical epilogue: Sansa shows one of her siblings around WF being restored under her supervision after its destruction. They go down to the crypts and Sansa points out which statues had to be repaired or reproduced after damage from falling debris, noting she'd made sure Father's likeness was better THIS time. They pass a sculptor still working on a statue of Sansa herself. The sibling wonders if it isn't a little EARLY for that? Sansa replies that however long she lives, she intends to live and die in WF, and she'll make sure her interment is done right - down, it is implied, to looking good on her statue for generations to come. I think that would be very much in character. :) Or yes, Sansa is just a goner. Certainty will have to wait till 2019.

An intimate Q & A session that was loud and public enough that one fan (but only ONE fan) heard a hot spoiler but no other fan or anyone else present at it was interested enough to record? Gotcha.

The fan who heard her say it only said she was talking very quickly when she was saying it - didn't say whether she started talking fast when saying it wasn't a spoiler or whether she was talking fast through the whole thing about the statue. One could read it as you did, or read it as Sophie realizing she'd forgotten to drop a tiresome fake spoiler which is so much less fun than stories about getting high with her BFF costar in the tub (whether they're true or not) and getting it over with in such a hurry that the one person in the whole audience who heard it wasn't sure if she got some of it right and the news media present didn't catch it at all. We shall see. (Has the video gone public yet?)

A passive-aggressive expression of displeasure that would PLEASE HBO, since it would mislead the fans about her ending? Tattooed permanently on her skin? (Yes, lasering off a tattoo is possible, but prolonged and painful). That would be going WAY above and beyond the call of duty as an employee of HBO to help hide the ending. As an expression of displeasure with TPTB, it doesn't make any sense. You say that Sophie gives things away easily, but "the pack survives" and Sansa's crypt statue can't both be true. Which one of those is a lie? IMO, it seems more likely that she'd lie about the statue than that she'd lie with her skin - a lie that would make her look like the ultimate corporate toady, willing to kiss up to HBO to the extent of giving them painful stretches of her epidermis to permanently engrave their false advertising in to hlep mislead the fans.

The EW one-on-one interview would be a separate event from Turner's open question and answer session with fans, wouldn't it? To me it would seem quite possible that the EW reporter was there for the former but maybe not the latter. And Comiccon sessions with stars are usually taped and become public eventually, don't they? It would seem to me more likely that the news media would probably want to confirm what she actually said on videotape (as we eventually can, too) than to assume that HBO has TOTAL Orwellian control over all possible news media - and that therefore every GOT leak that ever made it to mainstream media was only because Big Brother HBO MEANT it to leak.

So we are supposed to assume that HBO has such a stranglehold over the entire entertainment news media that they can demand that ALL of them suppress a bit of hot news that would earn them many profitable clicks and they ALL submissively obeyed? To me, if the source of the tip is one twitter report, it's more that likely that they're waiting for a bit of corroboration like the video of the Comiccon event with what Sophie said.

Sophie says the show spent lots of money paying them to sit around doing nothing to confuse the paparazzi. Maybe it's just my liking for Sansa talking, but it seems to me it would be a lot cheaper for HBO to just ask Sophie to drop a fake spoiler. That seems to me more likely than to imagine she forgot that only dead characters have statues made of them when she had IIRC two different scenes set in the tombs looking at and talking about the statues of the deceased this past season.

It could be that he will put Cersei out of her misery and soon after he will ride heroically and suicidally into battle, feeling that he's accomplished his life's purpose and going on living as kingslayer AND kinslayer would be a miserable anticlimax (regardless of how justified both killings were).

While I agree that Brienne and Jaime will express love for each other and that part of Jaime's arc is essentially his growing out of his obsession for Cersei, partly through knowing Brienne, I think Jaime won't long outlive Cersei. He's responsible for enabling her and thus setting in motion deeds that led to the worst outcomes on the show and he won't have fully atoned till he helps put a definitive end to her - and regardless of how much he's changed, I don't think a happily-ever-after following staining his hands in her blood will happen. Yes, Brienne will lose Jaime, but she will have the satisfaction of knowing she can be loved for herself. The rest will be up to her. I don't think her losing Jaime is enough by itself to make 'bittersweet' into 'bitter."

IIRC, R'hllor wasn't regularly resurrecting people throughout history. When Thoros of Myr resurrected Beric Dondarrion, his success came as a shock to him and revived his flagging faith. It seems likely that R'hllor's resurgence of power may be connected to the rebirth of the dragons as well.

Yes, there's magic in spells and objects and people. The Wall has stood for centuries because it's been spelled powerfully when an ice wall should have worn away. But the spells people make do seem to be linked to perishable things. Magic was described as being at low ebb and with little power ever since dragons apparently went extinct. They're back now, but with only three examples in the world (now two in the showverse) they're still a critically endangered species. The power of the Three-Eyed-Raven is specifically linked to weirtrees (which have also been endangered) and the Children of the Forest (also endangered and prophesying their own extinction and the extinction of other magical creatures). The Wall was made for an explicit purpose which is about to reach its conclusion. I think with the prophecied extinction of the Children and the magical creatures, there really won't be much left for magic to work with.

If Tyrion deliberately, for reasons either military ('we NEEDED Jon to do that kamikaze dragon attack to win the war!') mystical ('we NEEDED Jon to sacrifice himself to fulfill the prophecy and save the world!') or a combination of both decided to manipulate or conceal information from Dany to get Jon killed and is then found out, I'd thoroughly expect him to present his case convincingly as being absolutely necessary for the good of the many, even though he will ALSO have the far less noble ulterior motive of being attracted to Dany and ambitious for power himself. It would be like the way he convinced Dany not to burn King's Landing - giving perfectly sound humanitarian reasons for his advice, however later admitting to Cersei that he ALSO convinced Dany not to attack to spare Cersei herself (hence prolonging the war unnecessarily and inadvertently helping get important allies killed). I'd expect him to say that he made the hard, rational choice that if one magical Targaryen dragonrider HAD to be sacrificed to save the world, it were best that it WASN'T the one who was pregnant with the precious next generation of the dynasty. He'd make a convincing argument - so that when Dany decides to put him to death anyway, that choice will have that much more of an impact. And yes, it's true that the survivings Starks will likely be all enthusiastically in favor of the execution, and it will be unfair that Dany will likely get the brunt of the blame for it. But she IS the queen and she's the one who will be ultimately making the final 'Dracarys' decision. The buck stops with her. No wonder Emilia's bracing herself for the reaction.

Depends on just how much they feel they can do for Westeros what no one else can do. When the war ends, it's been heavily hinted at that dragons will become extinct. And Dany will almost certainly suffer heavy casualties of her Dothraki as well, as they don't seem well suited to survive a bad winter. Without those, what advantages would she have over any other pretender? Westeros is likely to be heavily depopulated after war and winter, thus even less suited to a continent-spanning kingdom than it was already. All of the seven kingdoms will only be up to licking their wounds over the next several decades, and not be wanting to give precious resources to a central government. Jon and/or Dany might realize after the war that they face being a weak central government trying to impose a rule with a weakened army over other weak territories who won't be inclined to see the benefit of allotting any resources to a central government for the next few decades. It would seem quite plausible to me that they'd give up and let the kingdom fall apart into its old components like the Roman empire did.

I think most viewers are aware that 'everyone will love the ending' would be ridiculous, given the entire story thus far. No one would buy that if they tried to sell it.

Depends what you call the epilogue. I'd guess what 'epilogue' means is a jump forward in time to see what's become of our surviving protagonists in the spring. It would be reasonable to hold the trial before that jump forward of months (or possibly years).

If a trial happens, it's not likely to be a prolonged affair. If I understand it correctly, the surviving Starks (whoever they turn out to be) will have already lost Winterfell; the other surviving characters would likely have sustained similar losses. No one will be in the mood for long testimonial grandstanding and lawyering. It will be a drumhead court near a battlefield and all those angry bereaved people will want to make things short and to the point. If Tyrion finds out that one of the Targaryens would have to sacrifice themself to kill the NK, and deliberately conceals this info from Dany, telling Jon only to induce Jon to be the one to sacrifice himself to enable Dany to survive and triumph, that would be a betrayal of Dany. If Dany finds out about it, Tyrion can sincerely say in his defense that he was only doing what was best for his queen and the survival of her dynasty (as Dany will no doubt be pregnant). Dany, however, will be in no mood to cut him slack. She can point out that he had no right to interfere in a decision that belonged to her and Jon only to decide between them, and that Tyrion's own ambitions probably influenced his deceptions, and order him executed. The Starks, still smarting at the loss of Jon, would go along with it. It would still look somewhat unfair to Tyrion, so that may be why Emilia felt that Dany's actions in the finale might be considered dark.

I don't see why one of the characters at the trial couldn't be there as a dead body - the corpus delicti.

I think that if Tyrion were in fact in love with Dany, it makes sense that if he found out that one of the two Targaryens must take on the role of Nissa Nissa and be sacrificed by the other to defeat the NK and the Long Night, he'd keep the knowledge from Dany and tell Jon instead, so that noble Jon would sacrifice himself to save his love and their unborn child. Dany would perceive this as a betrayal by Tyrion, especially if he attempted to conceal what he'd tolld Jon and she found out anyway.

Tl;dr, basically I think that while Sansa and Dany might initially bump heads based on their mutual suspicions about the risk the other poses toward each other's hard won safety, they will probably eventually agree to some truce based on their mutual interest in keeping their collective people as safe as possible (which in Westeros isn't very.)

I think Sansa and Dany are both similar in that while they are both with some ambition, neither are ambitious for power for its own sake. Sansa wants power to ensure the safety of herself and her own, and IMO, she would happily acquiesce to someone else holding the power as long as they do it in what she perceives as a generally respectful and wise manner that would most likely maintain safety. Dany ALSO is interested in using power to maintain the safety of herself and hers. But her ambition is more complex in that she sees all Westeros as 'hers' and besides wanting to protect it, her claim makes her feel that getting Westeros back is a duty that she owes them as their rightful kinder ruler as well as something she owes herself and her ancestors. It's kind of a grim and hollow pursuit for her, since she's convinced she can't have kids and therefore can't reestablish the dynasty whose reputation she's trying to rehabilitate. So instead she's embraced the role of messianic mother to the oppressed, and wedded herself to the idea of 'breaking the wheel', and she's half fallen in love with her own hype that she will build a new world where there will be no more oppression and in that way keep her people safe in a world that will protect them and live on afterwards when she can't. Trouble is, even though she IS a messianic supernatural figure of prophecy, building a true utopia in GRRM's world is impossible even for a messiah. So she's set herself for a failure there, and being GRRM's world, it's likely to be an especially painful one, that will involve her losing nost of her devoted followers. My guess is that that will put her off ambition for good, and when she has the child she thought she couldn't have (probably losing Jon and the dragons in saving the world) she'll decide that leaving Westeros in a tolerable state of survival is as good as the world is going to get, and she'll turn away from ambition and go off with what remains of her followers to find a place to raise her child like the house with the red door she always nostalgically yearns for where her child can grow up more happily than s/he ever could as a dragonless monarch in a constant state of peril in a treacherous backstabbing court. To me that would be a good (if somewhat downer) ending, but I sympathize with those who would think it sucks.

What you're presenting is something you're saying about what somebody ELSE said about what yet ANOTHER person said on their social media who is supposedly a crew member, who thought the ending sucked, absolutely no reason or context given. You're saying that this does NOT count as a leak and that (presumably) therefore the crewperson does NOT risk his job and livelihood by publically trashing his own company's product. If that's the case, why the total anonymity? I happen to disagree that emitting opinions about a future product that is still unfinished IS a leak by the employees, since it's the giveaway of information that only employees are privy to that is damaging to the company. But even if it isn't - do you think that an employee who trashes their company's product on public media risks NOTHING by doing so? IMO, s/he absolutely risks present employment and future employability by doing so (and if you disagree, please provide proof of current HBO employees comfortably emitting negative opinions about HBO's product under their own names in public with no repercussions). Regardless of nitpicks about whether it counts as a leak, it's fireable behavior and my point stands - if an employee is willing to risk firing to get their negative opinion about a TV show ending heard, that suggests a greater emotional investment in the show than the uninvested objective Not-fans you say they are. The other problem I have with your assumption that if this supposed crewmember said the ending sucked then it MUST have is that no one's judgement is infallible, not even a crew member's. And we know nothing about the reasons this person thinks it sucks or any history about why this particular person's judgement is to be trusted besides that he's an employee. Yes, the ending COULD suck. OR maybe it's a downer ending and this employee doesn't like downer endings even if it's Chinatown or Casablanca. Or maybe there's not enough tits. Or disembowelments. Or TOO MANY tits/disembowelments. Or yes, maybe that crewmember likes Tyrion or Pod or Sansa or Jaime especially and feels the character was hard done by. For that matter, the crewmember could like Peter or Lena or Sophie or whoever and feel that HBO did them wrong...or that HBO did the crewmember themself wrong. Or the crewmember may simply want attention and "the ending SUCKS!" gets more of that than echoing what HBO's saying. Yes, the crewmember could be absolutely right. But I don't think the fact that they are a crewmember logically excludes any of the other possibilities.

Again, that's something you're assuming as a fact, not necessarily a fact. Saying 'people who work on something for a living are NEVER fans of that work' isn't, IMO, the self-evident truth you're presenting it as. And you aren't actually presenting any proof of your idea that crew members cannot possibly be fans. In fact, it seems to me that crew members who are risking their own jobs and livelihoods just to leak the news far and wide that they thought the ending sucked, dammit! because they cared THAT much about it are showing that they are decidedly not the uninvested calmly objective judges you're picturing them as. Such people who make the effort to spread their opinions have already self-selected themselves as critics, not just objective bystanders. So you can't automatically judge their critiques as superior to any other critic out there.

I don't think fans are otherworldly beings that review shows on entirely different standards than Joe Schmoes do. We may be more interested and invested, but anyone who has had enough interest to form an opinion about a show that's favorable enough to say that the ending they've seen is a falling off from quality they have previously come to expect IS a fan. The difference is in degree, not of kind. Not to mention - how do you know that some of the crew members interviewed are NOT passionately invested fans? Do you know of an employment questionnaire that disqualifies such fans to work as crew members?