ElizaD

GRRM wrote that the big five would "make it through all three volumes" but I don't think that's a spoiler that guarantees they would have and will all survive the final book, only that they will be part of the endgame. They could well grow to adulthood, as he said, only to die saving Westeros in the end. My own guess is that Jon was to end up dead or single (either because Arya dies or because something else keeps the marriage from happening after the big reveal): I don't see any support for Jon/Arya in the books as they are now, with an emphasis on their normal brother/sister love and no clear path to Arya joining Jon's plot and getting the buildup to be viable either as a political bride or a love match. The original triangle has already been revised, since there's been no sign of Tyrion/Arya and he seems to have gotten a version of that unrequited love plot with Sansa instead. GRRM has changed, cut and rewritten stuff to such a degree that we're in a situation where we'll be watching the ending on TV before we read it. And what is the important thing about the ending to GRRM? I still believe what I've posted before, that ASOIAF doesn't really do romance. For example, if GRRM saw the big questions as "is there an Iron Throne, who sits on the throne, who has Winterfell?" character marriages or deaths could be secondary concerns; Jon/Arya/Tyrion could become Jon/Sansa/Tyrion, "Tyrion dies in the final battle" could become "Tyrion is Lord of the Rock" and so on.

Sound like Gisla is pregnant and Odo either gets himself killed or kills the wrong person.

I'm not ready to predict Jon/Sansa, but I could see it happening without a major revision of the original ending being required if proto-Jon didn't have proto-Dany or proto-Arya as his wife in the last chapter: that might be too big to change if GRRM still plans to have the same ending. With no Jon/Dany or Jon/Arya marriage, the original five could still have much of their endgame and final fate intact even if GRRM had added Jon/Sansa the way he added Jaime/Cersei. Sansa could have a role in the Riverlands/Vale or as Jon's wife and be a character who supports the stories of others (most likely Jon, marriage or no marriage, since he's heading south and she's likely going north in the books too) without being key to winning the war, as I suppose the five were intended to be. If Jon becoming king or Lord of Winterfell was more important than whether he's married or not, Jon/Sansa, as a protagonist/supporting character match, could be an addition that doesn't break the ending; if he was to be king with Dany as his queen or Lord of Winterfell with Arya as his wife, Jon/Sansa would be a bigger departure from the original plan.

The popularity of Jon/Sansa feels like a new thing to me; I agree that a lot of it must be the Willas-style hope that Sansa gets a happy ending with a man who doesn't have a boatload of serious issues, but I'm really surprised to see the ship that high since it's unusual enough that it has to be actively shipped, not just casually included in the background like a more canon ship such as Ned/Cat or Jaime/Brienne. Pre-show, I don't think I really saw Jon/Sansa in discussions and fics. The absence of Jon/Dany surprised me too. I think Littlefinger survives. GOT is finally introducing Euron, possibly to serve as a major villain since the Boltons have to die this season, and while the show must eventually focus on fighting the Night's King, it hasn't quite gotten there yet so Littlefinger can create tension in the Northern plot: IMO season 7 feels like the right time to get rid of Littlefinger and the Freys and position Euron/the NK as the final villains. As mentioned, the interviews have claimed Littlefinger didn't know about Ramsay, which feels like a way to use the rape storyline and still have a reason to keep him around so that he and Sansa can return to their book plot like nothing happened. There's been some discussion in the past about what a shame it was that Tywin died before he got to know that there's an enemy out there that can't be backstabbed or bargained with. Maybe Littlefinger gets to have a breakdown when he realizes that the White Walkers are real and about to mess up his grand plans?

ASOIAF/GOT is one of the least shippy series I can think of. GRRM doesn't really do romance. There was Jon/Ygritte, but she's dead. Ned/Cat, but they're dead (and even then the romance was mostly built through memories rather than interactions). Most of the other stuff is manipulative or creepy or obviously doomed, like Tyrion/Shae or Dany/Daario. Jaime is pretty much the only character who has an actual, significant romance where he shares pagetime with a woman he knows he's in love with (but it's still twisted and with his sister) as well as an unconsummated alternative ship that's popular. Though the wedding could be a foiler or, if true, yet another crushingly depressing win for a creep like Sansa/Littlefinger, IMO it's different from a lot of the other spoilers/foilers in that it has at least some potential to be a positive event. Even if the internet initially explodes over something like Jon/Stark girl or Jon/Dany, if it's two likable characters getting together that offers at least some hope that they'll be happy for a while.

Alfie's interview: "We’re running through and we come to a river and Sansa is just too scared basically to get into the river. So I get in. Don’t believe the press shots! It looks like she’s trying to get me out of the river, when I’m actually trying to be the strong one and get her in the river. Makes me look weak." So Sansa is still an idiot who exists to make male characters look better. She'll jump off a wall to escape Ramsay after Theon saves her, but moments later she's back to being a weakling so Theon can be the hero again. All the season 5 controversy, and the showrunners still choose to present Sansa as too stupid to live, someone who won't even brave a river to escape further rapes. Even that is asking for too much. A season of sexual slavery, and they can't even throw us this little bone of Sansa trying to escape and showing a tiny bit of courage instead of, once again, inviting the viewers to mock her for deserving nothing but pity at best and contempt most of the time? Sansa is a lost cause. The wedding claim seems less credible than most of the Snowbowl claims, but Jon/Stark girl or Dany/Tyrion or even Jon/Dany in the R+L=J sense of "guessed it, but now it's real" would be the only things big enough to make the internet explode. Cersei/Euron, Dany/Euron and other ships I can think of would lead to talk, the way everything does, but "explode" would be an exaggeration.

Even though this season has been shaky (slowed down by the extra episodes), it's also made me OK with Ragnar's likely death. He just seems so fundamentally unhappy now that death, hopefully with a happier vision of those he has loved and lost, would be a relief. I think Vikings does cultural "mood" scenes (like the blood eagle and the departure of the ships in season 2) better than any other show and Ragnar's visions of Valhalla denied and now of his simpler life have been the strongest moments of season 4.

One further comment about the Rickon rumor: this is the first time that I've felt that Sansa being the younger queen of the prophecy has seemed possible, if Littlefinger kills Rickon to make her his puppet queen and Jon says no to kingship despite wearing Stark clothes in the set photos. I still find Rickon dying more likely than Sansa becoming queen, though. She's been treated like such a joke and as second best to the male characters in her storylines than I can't believe she'll ever get to be genuinely useful: if the story was leading to her becoming an important figure, she wouldn't have been written as so utterly stupid and passive that when Sophie hypes her season 6 storyline the idea of Sansa not being a mess is deemed so out of character that it can only be the result of the showrunners caving to pressure from her fans. But Sansa as Littlefinger's puppet queen, at the head of an army that attacks Casterly Rock where a lot of theories guess Cersei will run after torching KL? I'm not ready to predict that yet, but now it no longer seems crackpot. And after Cersei and Littlefinger are dead, maybe Sansa abdicates so Bran gets Winterfell, Tyrion gets the Rock, and Jon/Dany get the throne?

No sign of the Tarlys yet, but I'm sticking with my prediction of Euron heading to the Reach. I'd predicted that Victarion would somehow get himself killed in Meereen and that he existed to give Dany her ships, so a Yara/Victarion merge seems odd to me even though it's now been reported that she heads east: does he have an actual post-battle plot in TWOW, then? Though the logic is weak, I guess Dany could just give her command of those ships from season 4 after Tyrion confirms Theon's identity, but Dany/Tyrion/Yara/Theon seems like such a weird cast. There's been so much speculation about Rickon dying that I now think it will happen, and it'll be depressing as hell. There's just no light at the end of the tunnel. Tommen, Myrcella, Shireen, Rickon - is Sweetrobin going to be the only little kid who doesn't die horribly? There's going to be absolutely nothing to celebrate about the Starks returning to their ruined home if Ned, Cat, Robb and Rickon have all been brutally killed, and as a show bonus Winterfell is also the place where Sansa was raped. Even though Sophie has done her usual hype and IIRC Liam Cunningham also mentioned she has a good season, either Ramsay or Littlefinger killing Rickon because of Sansa (for revenge or to make her a more valuable pawn) would make her likely efforts to rally the Northern lords look laughably worthless by comparison, especially if the Umbers turn out to be traitors so that the Starks and Boltons have equal support in the North and Jon/Sansa would lose the battle without Littlefinger's Vale cavalry.

I think Mel will live, she just has a crisis of faith before she figures out that Jon and not Stannis will win the victory she saw (she was also given that line about meeting Arya again). There is something less confident about her in that shot though. I don't think there's been any real rumors, just general speculation about the timing. GOT not sending any screeners could be because of the piracy last year, but I'd guess that by episode 2 Mel is at least considering resurrecting Jon (she either sends Davos to get the body or he decides to give Jon a decent burial and takes him away from the traitors) and they don't want anyone even hinting at that in reviews, even though everyone knows it's coming because of that Jon set photo.

WOTW has a breakdown with screencaps.

So Show Jaime really isn't snapping out of his Cersei addiction until he kills her. No idea what will happen to Yara and Theon if they go to Essos. What other characters can they interact with? Yara decides to go to Meereen and Dany/Tyrion accept an ironborn with no ships as the captain of the ships she got back in season 4? Davos looks amazing, but it's hard to enjoy that since he's such a good candidate to be yet enother Ramsay victim. The wintery shot of Littlefinger seems like it's from later in the season. Looks like Margaery takes the hand of the High Sparrow. That must be before the confrontation on the stairs where she reveals she's a believer now. The shot of a man twirling two swords in the TOJ fight looks ridiculous, not badass (so much for this being "realistic" fantasy). I still hope Show Lyanna is good, though.

The showrunners said that Tywin is neither sadistic nor evil, so that's definitely a different interpretation from the books where Tywin's atrocities (either those he ordered himself, like Tysha's horrifying rape, or those he encouraged as a deliberate policy, like the Mountain's abuses in the Riverlands) aren't kept out of sight. The show doesn't really address the amount of hate that Tywin has inspired or acknowledge that his deeds are considered distasteful even by faux-medieval Westerosi standards, so that Show Tywin is indeed less brutal and petty. In the books there's the idea that Tywin is trying to compensate for his father's weakness by his extreme brutality and has a fear of being laughed at the way his father was that ultimately ended up being just as destructive to his house: if he'd been content to send Tysha away instead of having Tyrion participate in her rape to teach him a lesson, he might still be alive and Cersei wouldn't be wrecking their hold on the throne - which shows that being brutal is not the same thing as being pragmatic. But that's one point that was completely lost on the show, where Tywin can order a girl raped without it making him either evil or a leader who makes poor decisions (Tywin's cruelty to his son's wife wasn't smarter than Ned's mercy to Cersei's children just because it was more ruthless - even the kinslaying taboo can only protect you so far). Despite my absolute loathing of Sansa's season 5 storyline, the corruption storyline proposed above could actually have been interesting since it would have involved Sansa learning to manipulate people while having to make decisions about how far she can go, morally. But then Ramsay wouldn't have been the all-powerful badass/rapist and Sansa would have taken his place as the protagonist at Winterfell, so no chance of that happening.

Maisie Williams: Sounds like she's talking about her blindness in the first couple of episodes. The storyline with the Essosi actors playing the familiar Westerosi characters seemed like it was designed for comedy and I expect it to be much more entertaining than yet another plot about a Stark getting broken down and not being able to do anything about the misery of the world. I hope Arya gets back up in episode 2 and gets her new acting job in 3.

I don't think the show will kill him off after all it's done to make him the historical Rollo. I hope this means the Paris court won't get as much screentime next year as it seems to be getting this season; even Ecbert (the best non-viking character IMO) can't make his court as interesting as the viking-focused plots where the show really shines.

Even though I want the series to continue after Ragnar's death, he's probably the best-cast character on Vikings. I can imagine the others being played by different actors, but Ragnar gives this show a feel of its own. He's always thinking and ahead of the rest, and at the same time somehow alien, like an outsider even to his own people and not just the modern audience. It's a shame Gisla isn't played by a different actress, though. There have been some rather dull characters in the past, but she's probably the first who makes me feel she really brings the story down with amateurish acting that makes a joke of what's a serious, unhappy situation for a woman forced into marriage. Rollo is going to have a big role, so it's a pity Gisla wasn't recast like the first Judith. Loved the crossbows. The show sold how dangerous the weapon was.

That photo could be from the vision that has the youngest flashback Ned they've cast: maybe Bran watches him train with Robert and Hodor the way his parents watched him in the first episode.

It took me this long to realize there was no sign of Dorne in the photos. I don't think Trystane has been confirmed, but they had to have something in mind when they changed the plot and sent him to KL. I'd guess that Jaime returns home with Myrcella's corpse and Trystane in 6x01 even though the timing won't make sense with plots like Sansa/Theon and Jon taking place moments or hours after 5x10. If she can't learn plotting from Littlefinger, at least she'll learn teleporting.

Lots of photos. Wow, Bran looks even more grown up than Arya now. For the first time since season 2, I'm looking forward to his storyline since he'll have something to do. Was the Myrcella funeral confirmed before this photo or just something that seemed likely? Balon lives! For at least one episode. Apart from Cersei's short hair, that photo reminds me of 4x01 - Jaime has been missing her, she doesn't really care. I hope she at least gets a reaction scene where she hears the news that Jaime has arrived with Myrcella's corpse. Sansa baby bump speculation is going to be hell. Thankfully she looks normal in another photo linked in the comments, but that speculation is still going to be around until the end of the season.

Personally, I saw that as the final insult that made me give up on the storyline which had done one thing after another to make Sansa look as incompetent and passive as possible. Sansa could have tried to reach out to Theon or attacked Myranda in an attempt to get herself killed and deny the Boltons their chance to force her to have children. Instead she made a speech implying Ramsay's unbeatability, showing she'd learned she was wrong to be proud of being a Stark and back at home in her earlier scene with Myranda, and leaves the decision to Myranda, which was just appalling. Once the showrunners' decision was made to have her marry Ramsay, the story could have been written differently. Instead it was maximized to make Sansa look useless: her absolute passivity was contrasted with Littlefinger using the talk about avenging her family to sell the plot to her. Consequently, Sansa's total disinterest in trying to find out something about the Boltons and get to know them before she was married and locked up made her look incapable of any kind of useful activity. Once she was locked up, a senseless decision that tried to be faithful to the book for maximum shock without bothering to think about whether it was good for the character or made sense in the changed circumstances, Sansa wanted to escape a situation she never needed to be in, which was the showrunners' choice but nonetheless added to the ways in which the character was trashed. While Sansa could not have stopped Ramsay once she was in the room, using talk about victim-shaming to end the conversation obscures the fact that this storyline, sold to us as a hardened woman making a choice, instead presented a Sansa who agreed to avenge her family and then didn't even try: the show gave her a goal she accepted and consequently drew attention to her utter failure in a way it hadn't been required to do. Offscreen, I've heard and seen too many Sansa rape jokes to think there's anything left to salvage. That's what she is known for now, thanks to the miserable decision to place the emphasis on Ramsay's infallibility and Sansa's status as a perpetual moron bashed by the general audience, and unlike Dany or even Cersei (post-funeral or post-walk) Sansa has been given nothing to offer beyond 'victim we should feel sorry for even though the show numbs us to her misery by making it happen again and again, in different ways with different men and women'. It really doesn't matter what Sansa does because she'll always be the GOT rape controversy character. Since season 6 was largely planned before the season 5 finale aired, I can believe that the showrunners had already planned a "triumph" for Sansa in the form of some speech to the Northern lords (I'm assuming that happens because cutting Manderly and bringing her North solely for the rape and rescue by Theon/Jon would be too stupid for even me to believe). But throughout this show, her stupidity and naivete have been so consistently used for onscreen jokes, without even minor victories or bright ideas to balance them, that I see no reason to believe Sansa will ever become a character the show and viewers are meant to respect to such a degree that it could even begin to lessen the damage done by the controversy. I expect season 6 will end with the Starks back in Winterfell, but why should that make me happy? It won't be a victory now that the show turned it into the place where Sansa was raped. It'll still be that even after Ramsay kills Roose and gets killed by someone in the Stark camp. Even if they're dead, they were given a brand new and permanent triumph that will stay with Sansa as long as she lives. Jon killing Ramsay, or capturing him and letting Sansa order him killed, or even Sansa grabbing a dagger and making him her first kill, won't change the fact that the story as written presented us with a Sansa utterly incapable of doing anything to avenge her family and willing to give up once her attempt to abandon Winterfell had failed. The only change in response to the controversy that I personally believe will be made is the addition of some kind of scene where Sansa talks about her feelings, which won't take up much screentime or change the plot. But I don't think that scene, if it does end up onscreen, was planned before the season 5 criticism finally seemed to get to the showrunners. This is the show that had zero interest in how Jaime raping Cersei might affect the relationship and kept on going for even more rape and torture of women despite the criticism it had already attracted during earlier seasons, and so I see zero reason to believe GOT will include more than a token scene about how the rape made Sansa feel or, once that is out of the way, do anything in season 7 to tell us how Sansa feels about returning to the home where she was raped. Consequently, the Boltons will never be going away: they'll always be there as triumphant ghosts. Neither will the Sansa rape jokes end. After all the time I tried to spend defending the character for having stereotypically feminine interests and not wanting to have sex with Tyrion, it is incredibly disappointing that the show went for a complete validation of the worst of the claims about her general uselessness and her "irrational" ingratitude to husband #1.

She'll never reach the heights Tyrion and Ramsay have achieved in the superhuman perfection of their heroism/villainy (in Ramsay's case with no mentorship or appropriate training). Sophie's comments probably mean that Sansa gets to make a speech to the Northern lords about how they should support the Starks, a speech about how she felt during the marriage (since IIRC the showrunners implied they'll address the topic in season 6, after not giving a damn about the emotional consequences of rape for their first five years) and a speech to Ramsay about how she's above him when he taunts her. Then she goes back to her main role of being a prop for a male character (Tyrion/Littlefinger/Ramsay/Jon). But Sansa is already beyond salvaging: no matter what she does, she'll always have spent season 5 as a pathetic failure who degraded her family by agreeing to marry a Bolton, doing nothing to avenge the Starks, trying to flee Winterfell (thus invalidating the Stark claim to it, which makes a mockery of her boast before the marriage) and meekly surrendering to capture and mutilation by Ramsay's henchwoman. Even if nothing bad ever happens to Sansa again (and I doubt that), being turned into a trash character whose offscreen fame consists solely of her stupidity and rape jokes should be enough suffering. Sophie is trying to spin things, as she's always done, but even if Sansa gets a fancy speech her utterly idiotic behavior in season 5 made it clear that she's disposable compared to main characters the showrunners actually want to look awesome and successful (Tyrion/Ramsay - the first gets turned from a rapist into a man Sansa has to praise as a beacon of chivalry, the second gets to rape a Stark and defeat Stannis without ever running into the setbacks even Joffrey had to face, while Sansa is reduced to the interchangeable, ineffective victim in what the showrunners described as the Ramsay storyline they loved). Nothing in the history of this show's treatment of the character suggests there's need to fear that Sansa will develop a brain or value of her own - she'll just be less actively contemptible than before, but she'll always be a living reminder of Bolton supremacy even after Ramsay and Roose are dead, the moron who chose to turn Winterfell into the place where a Bolton kept a Stark as a sex slave when she could have just told Littlefinger no (the showrunners say he would have listened, so she has no excuse). How could Sansa starting to show above minimal signs of brain activity and initiative be pandering to fandom and less interesting than her previous status as a despised joke and passive puppet of one abusive man after another?

That's one of the reasons I hated the Aegon twist. Five books of Dany (and later Arya and Tyrion) stuck in places where the lack of local POVs (or even well-developed local characters) shouts that this is only the starter kingdom that's going to be left behind once the Westerosi have screwed up and presumably learned a few lessons at the cost of disposable Essosi lives/political systems without having to deal with the long-term consequences of their decisions. And then this dude gets to Westeros in one book! Dany could have been interacting with or plotting against characters like Tywin or Doran, but no, let's have her show up when everybody interesting has been deposed/killed off and Westeros needs a savior with dragons. After Drogo (who was a decent enough badass type, though not a developed character), I think the only Essosi fans have actually talked about is Daario and that's because he's so ridiculous. There's no scene stealers like Oberyn over there. Dany's entire court could be slaughtered and the majority of fans would only miss Tyrion/Jorah/Barristan. I read the books as a tween and have no idea what an adult reader would think of them in a post-ASOIAF world, but I imagine they could still be decent adventure stories if you don't expect grittiness or deconstruction of fantasy tropes. Elfstones, which the TV show is based on, is the one with a plot and characters I can still remember so I'd guess it was the best, and then there's The Druid (he goes to a forgotten city?)/The Elf Queen (the heroine has to find lost elves?) of Shannara, but I've completely forgotten the others.

If Rowling had wanted to include the impact on the Muggle world, it could have been a little like Arya in the Riverlands/Tyrion and Quentyn in Essos, but focusing on the trio was the best choice for the story; the world still feels well-developed and interesting enough that I can speculate about stuff like Beauxbatons and the Muggle reaction even after getting the official ending. Over the decade+ of waiting for AFFC/ADWD/TWOW, I've ended up appreciating the professionalism of writers like Rowling and Robert Jordan of The Wheel of Time a lot more. Now that ASOIAF has made me more of a pessimist I can't believe the wait for Rowling's fifth ever felt long, and though Jordan got lost in details he kept on publishing and advancing the key plots (however slowly) until he got back on track with his last book and then, after finding out he was dying, tried to make sure that fans would get as much of his ending as possible. I get that feeling too, which is a shame since I find the Targaryens one of the least interesting major houses (only the historical Tullys sound more boring, but at least they don't annoy me). In the worldbook, the others have that nice mix of low-magic grittiness and over-the-top heroics/legends, but the Targs are more standard fantasy than anything else in ASOIAF - super special, super pale magical incestuous aristocrats with dragons. While I like cliches more than many ASOIAF fans (I want happy endings rather than a wasteland ruled by the Others), stories about Targs often give me the feeling that GRRM has forgotten the stuff about deconstructing tropes and is actually serious about the Targs' speshulness, and having cool awesomeness as the birthright of a specific bloodline is one trope I do dislike. I'd much rather watch a Robert's Rebellion prequel than the Dance of the Dragons.

A couple of years ago I was a pessimist on TWOP predicting 2016/2017, but the set spoilers and fan chatter had actually gotten me to hope that GRRM was working hard and TWOW would be like ADWD but released before rather than after a season of GOT. Now that TWOW will end up taking at least five years, never getting to read the true ending of the story feels sadly likely.

A lot of people have praised Poldark. I only know the show from screencaps of Aidan Turner's shirtless scything, but I guess I should check it out. I've never seen an enjoyable adaptation of War & Peace, so I hope the new miniseries will manage to be good in its own right and not just the greatest hits of the book. My favorite classics are the 1970s Upstairs Downstairs (far more gritty and realistic than Downton while still being well-acted and entertaining) and The Onedin Line (about a shipping family, which I didn't think I would find interesting but I ended up loving the business scheming/women's stories back home and even the weekly ship plots abroad).