Dev F

I assume that at least some of the items on this list will be saved for season 5. For instance, I don't imagine we'll see anything in the Wall storyline beyond Stannis arriving to defeat Mance's army. They can save the stuff about Jon becoming Lord Commander and Stannis and company settling in at Castle Black for next season. It does still seem like the whole finale will have to consist of a series of brief climaxes for each storyline, with probably the bulk of the time devoted to events in King's Landing. But I feel like it should mostly fit. My only big question marks have to do with how they'll close out the Arya/Hound and Brienne/Pod storylines, which seem farther from a definitive endpoint than the other plot threads. But, then, I didn't expect those storylines to intersect this year, which seems from the previews to be what's happening, so perhaps they've got a concise resolution in mind that I never really considered. One thought I had is that maybe we don't get Arya on a boat to Braavos at the end of this season, so that the writers can tease the idea that Fake Arya is Real Arya at the beginning of next season.

Here's a Reddit thread that lays out the full fAegon theory in much more detail. I find it pretty dang persuasive. Though, to be fair, I also want it to be true, because setting up one character as the last Targaryen for four books and then decreeing, "Just kidding! There was another Targ out there that we just didn't tell you about, even though we jumped our story all the way across the sea specifically to tell you about the last Targaryen in the first place!" is hardly narratively satisfying.

So . . . in a scene that was all about how Melisandre has potions and little tricks to deceive people in the service of the Lord of Light, it seems like quite an oversight that she was shown sitting in the bathtub in all her naked loveliness without her choker on.

True, but in this case the "thick black blood" is extremely literal (it describes the effect of the Red Viper's poison), so it would not be surprising if the "nothing inside the helm" part were as well. Of course, the Mountain's armor isn't actually made out of stone, so it would also make sense if the darkness was more figurative. Still, if the novels are setting up a minor mystery about the status of Gregor's head, it seems a little weird that a prophetic dream would hint at the red herring rather than the truth.

I dunno, when Bran apparently sees the Mountain in his dream, he's described as "a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood." That sounds like a guy who doesn't have a head underneath his helm, whether literally or figuratively.

It could also be something that Bran himself discovers as he's journeying through time as a tree. They'll have to do something to pad out that storyline, and it might be a good introduction to the "looking through time to uncover hidden truths" concept.

Well, we don't know for a fact that that's what's going on with Jon. But in any event, I think it's more likely that Bran will somehow be involved in the warg elements of his siblings' storylines than that the show will suddenly decree that the thing it always said was unique to Bran is actually shared by his whole family, who will end up employing it more usefully than he does. Maybe Bran will end up, say, awakening his siblings' latent abilities somehow? I can imagine a story point in which he reaches out to his scattered and despairing brothers and sisters and reminds them of their shared Starkdom. Of course, Tywin would also say that if Loras had a younger brother who was a cripple, for the same reason that he refuses to entertain the idea that Tyrion might inherit Casterly Rock. So there's still some wiggle room if they want to introduce Willas at some point.

I think the scene needed to be different, though, considering the earlier changes to Arya's storyline. We already saw her do the impulsive, blinded-by-rage kill at the end of last season, so having her do it again here, to a character who'd done something slightly less egregious than bragging about sewing a wolf's head to her brother's body, would've been repetitive. Better to show the progression from blind rage to something scarier and more deliberate. I suspect that the reason we haven't seen their warging powers is because they're not going to have any. I'd wager that what we're going to see instead is Bran reaching out to his siblings and using his own powers to aid them. That way, the writers avoid diluting the uniqueness of his abilities and give him stuff to do besides hanging around in a tree for several seasons waiting for everyone else's storylines to catch up with his.