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What a major, major disappointment. I guess killing Charlotte was the easiest way to deal with Jessica wanting to leave, but it feels like the show just lost its heart. I love the other characters too, but no one else offers what Charlotte did. I loved the episode until the hugely disappointing soap death. The reunions with Margaret were touching, yet at the same time it felt honest that almost immediately everyone pivoted to feeling conflicted: they had built new lives for themselves and now Margaret's return will force them to make big choices. And her recklessness and need for vengeance immediately have unintended but devastating conquences. The actor who plays Jonas Young has been so sympathetic in everything I've seen him in, I hope he gets to remain a decent man. My current guess is that Margaret, Will and Jacob leave (for Ireland or Scotland? How were they for black men at the time?) and Lucy will be the Greek Street bawd after the molly house is taken down by the law. The show might want to show a new, stronger Lucy, but realistically she ought to be devastated. Only Nancy is left as her true confidante now and she's a mentor rather than a peer. Unlike Charlotte, Lucy doesn't really form emotional connections quickly: even Fredo and Elizabeth are fun pals rather than people she would consider letting close to her. Currently Lydia is able to get away with treating Kate nicely, but when the stakes get higher she might have to choose between respecting Kate's wishes and beating her down to make more money from awful men.

The few hype quotes that have been released about Pike have emphasized her understanding of Moiraine's mission, so I think that will indeed be a big focus. Moiraine/Thom works perfectly well as mutual respect by two people who recognize each other as brilliant political players (it's another romance that exists solely because Min's bloody viewings said so). Books 1-5 will be difficult to adapt because they have far more relevant content than the later ones and every major plot also builds to a climax at the end. In book 6, Rand/Perrin still have a huge final moment but for everyone else their plots are basically in buildup mode for the last quarter of the book. Book 7+, if we get that far, everyone's plots should start moving at their natural paces towards reasonable seasonal climaxes instead of staying faithful to their book structure (so Faile's infamous subplot of doom ought to be one season and done, max two, while in the books it started in her last book 8 chapter and ended in book 11). The Forsaken need some revising. Ishamael and Lanfear are the only truly essential ones. Semirhage and Mesaana park themselves as shadow rulers of major forces that are vital to the plot, so I think it's logical to keep them. I love Graendal, but I fear that her role as the plotter might make her too similar to Lanfear and Mesaana. Moghedien has the advantage of her vendetta with Nynaeve, but considering later events, it might make sense to have her killed off in their first book 4 confrontation. Demandred has always felt like one of the big Forsaken, but actually he does very little before the Last Battle and the show can't have him as offscreen as the books: I feel like the logical thing is to either cut him or just go with the Taimandred secret identity theory that Jordan's notes revealed to have been his initial plan before he changed his mind about it. Despite all the real world countries that Jordan drew on when creating the cultures and fashions of his nations, none have a Northern or Eastern European vibe (there's only some Thor imagery for Perrin and Odin for Mat). Still, I'll keep on hoping that somebody who's familiar to me from Nordic television gets to play an Aiel. Andor has such a strong Arthurian/Elizabethan theme that their accents should be English. I've seen American accents suggested for our Two Rivers folk because it would mean getting US actors as the young main heroes and be sorta-canon since they're from a remote backwater that no longer recognizes Andoran authority. To help WOT stand out as its own thing and not a GOT/LOTR clone, I hope they emphasize that the setting is actually closer to the Renaissance than standard faux-medieval fantasy.

I think the showrunner said something like "pillow friends everywhere" so they will be more direct about the lesbian relationships that Jordan hinted at in the Tower. I wonder how they'll handle Moiraine/Siuan: in the books it's all backstory and both are now focused on their causes, but the show might want to make it clear that they were (still are?) more than platonic besties. The official description of the series says that Moiraine finds five young men and women in her quest for the prophesied savior, so I think the show won't even reveal the sex in which the Dragon has been reborn. Even if the show is making some updates, there's no way for an adaptation of a pre-2010s work to be totally free of every single thing that's tagged as problematic today. I can already see the angry thinkpieces about the way the One Power functions. I just hope the changes will keep that stuff from being overwhelming. Leaked episode titles show that we're getting at least to the beginning of book 2. I don't know the number of episodes in the season: they might get as far as the departure on the Great Hunt, or the arrival in the White Tower, but I feel that it would be too much to shove the Cairhien chapters in season 1. The early books are so much more full of content that I wouldn't go two full books per season until book 7. A few years ago I read a great breakdown of the book arcs for a seven season show, but that blog is deleted now. Siuan and Verin are major book 2 characters that will definitely be getting cast for the later season 1 episodes, and Liandrin or maybe Alviarin if they feel it's more important to establish her early by giving her Liandrin's early plot. Personally I would still include Liandrin and just conclude her plot with the win for the girls in book 4. Even though they don't know whether the series will be a hit, I feel that they absolutely need to have a proper outline of how they want to do the entire story. That's necessary for deciding when and how to cut/include major plotlines even in the first season. For example, I'm interested to see how handle Tuon, the most important canon black character. Will they follow the books by having the Seanchan army offscreen for a couple of seasons and then cast Tuon only when they reach her book appearance, or do they want Tuon to be with the army the first time it shows up (either late season 1 or early season 2, based on what the titles imply about season 1, but more logically as the big new plot in season 2)? Also, I hope they keep in mind how many readers would love to see the Seanchan with their canon southern accent - the showrunner just said that the accents for a region will be based on the first big characters they cast, so Pike has made the Cairhienin posh Brits.

At the moment I feel that Galad and Gawyn are both big enough to be cast if the show is trying to include all major characters, but at the same time they do offer one of the biggest potential merges, even easier than fan favorite Min. When characters are merged, I hope the show will manage to do that by making the chosen character feel the same even if they're picking up pieces of someone else's plot: for example, if Galad got Gawyn's White Tower plot, he could end up doing the same things but for reasons that feel true to Galad - with a great emphasis on him choosing to believe in the Tower as the legitimate authority. The Whitecloaks are in the background during the middle section so Galad might be the easier cut, but even Gawyn might be in a little danger: Gawyn/Egwene is the flimsiest and most offscreen of the supporting love stories (and she's the far more important character with her own huge plot) and cutting it wouldn't lead to any of the reader backlash that no Rand/Min would. I confess that Min is my least favorite of the love interests, which was practically heresy at one point, for exactly that loving but a little too close to passively enabling vibe that she had. I loved Nynaeve's sisterly concern for Rand in the later books, so my big axe version would also emphasize that as Rand's major non-political relationship during his breakdown (they really need to look for a good comedic actress who can tackle Nynaeve's mix of massive temper, reckless courage and endless loyalty without becoming aggravating). IMO, Rand/Aviendha and Elayne/Aviendha were the best quadrangle interactions because we saw those relationships develop naturally over time. Since the show is making Moiraine the main character of the first season, it should be easy to minimize the childhood crush angle and just have Rand, Perrin, Mat and Egwene as the young friends, with Nynaeve as the slightly older one, rather than the three boys + one tagalong girl grouping that positions Egwene as the love interest. Her defining character traits are ambition, political cunning and a wish to learn, and the show could lean into that right from the start even more emphatically than book 1 did: then her hook would be the country girl who wants to be a career woman instead of her starting out as the first love interest right before two others are introduced.

The show will obviously need huge combinations of plots and minor characters, but for everything major that is included, I want it to be as close to the books as is reasonably possible. I want my favorite characters to look and feel as if they stepped out of the pages, and even characters I hate (oh wow, Gawyn, another bright idea?!) are someone else's favorites, so I hope that they too are portrayed faithfully if they make the cut. I have no source, but I remember a discussion about a possible Gawyn/Galad combination where someone posted something that seemed to imply the showrunner would not be doing cuts of characters on that B-level. That said, if I was taking an axe to the story, I agree that Min would clearly be the easiest major character (B+) to cut totally. She's always a supporting character in a bigger plot. Perrin and Egwene already have prophecies from the same source so it only needs to be explained once to viewers without raising unanswered questions like Min's unique ability. Egwene, then Perrin, then Nynaeve are also available as main characters who join Rand's plot and, like Min, love him but are not afraid to question him and keep him down to earth. Also, apart from the bloat in the middle books, I would say that the love quadrangle is the biggest weakness of the books. Instead of character interaction and development, it relies on Min's prophecy making her and Elayne just accept polygamous love for Rand as their destiny. I still completely expect Min to be cast, but that showrunner quote about polyamory rather than polygamy also makes me expect Elayne/Aviendha. Min only has minimal interactions with the other two girls, but the long subplot about Elayne and Aviendha learning to love each other as future sister-wives would be very easy to transform into romantic love. If I could go back in time and change the books, my big axe version of the love quadrangle would be a polyamorous triangle. No Min and no prophecy. Aviendha comes from a culture that accepts polygamy and homosexuality, so her inner conflict is still about feeling that she has betrayed her honor by loving Rand after she promised her new friend Elayne that she would watch over him. Elayne is a princess from a more traditional culture, so her first conflict is balancing her new but intense feelings for Rand and her political obligations, then wondering whether she can share him and discovering that she can love Aviendha too. Rand's conflicts with both girls can remain the same: the development of his relationship with Aviendha stays as it was since all of it happened onscreen, but Elayne being the sole focus of the early books makes that relationship (which got by far the least pagetime and development) more natural than before. But of course this is just a dream, and I'm placing my bets on Show Rand/Min/Elayne/Aviendha + Elayne/Aviendha.

I've hated GRRM's whining about Tolkien, so this made me lol too. Aragorn's backstory involved decades of gaining experience, but GRRM is so much more realistic and superior as a writer that he... solves the problem of government by putting a tweenaged god-king on the throne? All this time spent posting and reading about how Jon and Dany have arcs about screwing up in order to learn how to rule as GRRM's answer to the Aragorn's tax policy question, only for Dany to get killed by a Jon who peaces out with the Free Folk and kingship to be given to Bran who's spent the post-ACOK books isolated from human society and all those pesky realistic concerns that Aragorn supposedly sucked at. The Vale looks even more like Sansa's Meereen now: the training stage where she learns politics, except since it's in Westeros she can gain longterm allies and reputation there. I hated the torture porn element of the Jeyne plot in the books too, but in theory making the North both the training stage and the final one for Sansa now looks like a decent adaptational choice. The execution was just flawed. People go on and on about how smart characters like Tyrion, Varys and Littlefinger suffered once the show passed the books, but Sansa did too since she never got a coherent plot that would have shown that she had joined the top tier of plotters. We just told about it, which worked well enough for me when it came to showing her as interested in and respected for the day to day management of Winterfell. I guess in that sense the buildup was there for her becoming QITN over Jon when the need for inspiring heroics was over: he didn't want it and he was never responsible for the daily grind of dealing with the lords that Sansa took charge of. I like the idea of this as a political marriage version of the Wars of the Roses. For me this series was about the Starks and the Lannisters, so despite predicting a Targaryen restoration for years I'm becoming more and more OK with the key points of the ending, even if my ideal world would probably have been Sansa as queen of a free North and Jon on the Iron Throne. I'm seeing a lot of people posting that season 8 should have been the war against the NK and season 9 the war against Cersei/Dany's breakdown. While nothing might have fixed the "smart characters" problem, I do feel that conversation-heavy seasons building up to the climaxes we got in 8x03 and 8x05-06 would have made this ending feel, if not like seasons 1-4, then at least as emotionally earned and epic as 6x09-10.

I've already seen people post that maybe GRRM told D&D that Bran becomes KITN and not King of the Six Kingdoms, as if they would be stupid enough to not ask what happens to the Iron Throne or would choose to change the ending GRRM had in mind in order to put their unfavorite Bran on the throne. This will be the new Stannis burns Shireen and R+L=J denial. I imagine that GRRM told D&D more than they told actors, but no wonder we're never getting the ending in book form. He can't write towards it in a way that would make more sense than the show, so he picks up sideplots to feel that some kind of progress is being made even when it doesn't bring the end of the job any closer. I know there's that GRRM quote about a child saving the world if need be and he's talked about how he ended up writing too many flashbacks for some characters, but even so Book King Bran (still young enough to need a regent for years) makes the scrapping of the five-year-gap seem even more disastrous.

An Oral History of Game of Thrones, As Told By the Soldiers, Wights, and Wildlings: Lots of lovely little stories. My favorites:

Clapton: The dress looks even better with proper lighting, on TV it was so dark it looked like yet another black dress but these shots show more of the gorgeous, character-appropriate details and what a nice blueish-gray color it is.

Doesn't Jaime have a dream where the light of his sword goes out before Brienne's? I remember that being used in theories that she'd outlive him. Another fairly popular theory used to be that we'd see the Rock when Cersei escaped there with Tommen after Faegon took KL. No idea how the timing works out and what Cersei might actually do in the west, but Dany's death has to be the last big moment before the council crowns Bran. I agree with SeanC that the showrunners so clearly loved Sansa/Tyrion (and propped it at every available opportunity from season 2 to season 8) that they would never ever have changed GRRM's endgame to remove it. While there's still some argument whether Sansa is LOW, QITN or Rickon's guardian, she clearly ends up in the North and Tyrion is the Hand in the south.

Thanks to the mess of GRRM splitting up AFFC and ADWD into two books by location when his planned five-year gap didn't work, most POVs have skipped a book so it's not as noticeable as on TV (was Sandor the only other major-ish character to skip a season?). GRRM infamously promised that we'd see Jon, Dany and Tyrion next year (hah!) when he released AFFC with no big three POVs. Since 2005 the only new Sansa chapter has been on his website, but the show gave her Jeyne Poole's storyline so that she'd have something to do and we also got to see Theon's torture instead of rejoining him when he'd become Reek; the show didn't try to do anything like that for Bran, the future king, which is why the lack of buildup for him now stands out so much.

When Sansa's endgame was discussed earlier, it was pointed out that GRRM's insistence that there had never been a ruling Lady of Winterfell could be because the story would end with the first ever LOW. Whatever he intended for Rickon (dead or a source of heirs for Sansa), I believe that the show does confirm Sansa as the first LOW and quite possibly also as the first ever QITN. The show made Bran king despite leaving him offscreen for a season and doing the bare minimum with him ever since, which to me surely means that they were faithful to GRRM's ending even though it meant crowning one of their unfavorites. If Rickon was the Lord of Winterfell in the books, he would also be on the show; he was also an even later addition to GRRM's original plan than Sansa, so I can believe her as uber-Northern LOW as an evolution of the early drafts in which she was doomed forever by choosing Joffrey, in the same way that early Jaime's deeds were eventually split between Jaime/Cersei and Jon/Arya/Tyrion became Jon/Daenerys/Tyrion (with Sansa as the Stark girl he was involved with).

I hadn't really paid attention to explorer Arya theories in book fandom (at one point death seemed like the most widely predicted ending), but the speculations here made it my preferred ending for her. I like that Nymeria's name wasn't foreshadowing queenship but the much better fit of exploration, and this makes Arya the ideal character for the sequel spinoffs I think GRRM mentioned in some context. I also saw someone point out that one of the Brandons burned his ships because his father was lost while out exploring, which makes me like this ending even more since it has a connection to Stark history. QITN Sansa might be even more shocking to me than Bran or Dany. Since season 6 I've been sure that the show was building her up for a Lady of Winterfell endgame, but even after the lords praising her in season 7 and the talks with/about Dany in season 8, independence stunned me because I felt that the books had dropped that particular narrative after Robb's death and the Starks' restoration, even after Jon's show KITNing, would only be in the context of lordship. I think this is too major to be a show-only thing: King Bran confirms that Sansa gets Winterfell, and if GRRM intends to make a character as isolated as Bran the king in the south then he can also revive Northern independence. Despite its flaws, I'm so grateful that we had the show. Without it I would never have learned how wrong I was to predict a Targaryen restoration. Both ice and fire were the enemy, it seems.

We talked about whether Sansa and Arya were wearing sacks for their KL interviews for spoiler reasons, turns out their dragonpit costumes were generic but Sansa did get a massive spoiler costume (reminds me of Clapton talking about the crown she'd made for season 6 and no one guessing it would be for Cersei's coronation). No wonder this scene was Sophie's storyboard gift, it was a fabulous ending to Sansa's fashion journey from copycat pawn to iconic Northern queen regnant. But I too am a bit sad that Arya never got a really stand-out look: of course she's far more practical than Sansa, Cersei and Dany, but it would have been nice to see an outfit that shouted Legendary Explorer. I loved Sansa's scale dress when we first saw the poster, can't believe that it wasn't even the peak of her power-dressing in season 8.

Now the show is over and we know what the endings of the main characters are; GRRM said they'd be taking different roads to the same place, so major events like King Bran and Jon killing Dany will surely happen if ADOS is ever published. I'm prepared to speculate that Jaime might kill Cersei in the books instead of simply dying with her, but the deaths of the twins/Dany and the fates of Tyrion/the Starks are absolutely canon to me. My first reaction after the finale is still to think that GOT was right to cut a ton of sideplots from AFFC/ADWD; I'll even continue to defend the likely combination of Cersei and Aegon as the enemy Dany destroys in King's Landing. But even if the plot content of the seasons is roughly fine by me, I now feel that seasons 7 and 8 turned out to be far too short, something that didn't worry me before season 8 aired. Knowing that Dany ends up being killed, the buildup absolutely should have begun earlier. Now it's too much of a 180 from season 7 to season 8. After 8x05 it was already obvious to viewers that she would be killed in the finale so it wasn't even a Red Wedding shocker where the foreshadowing was subtler and spread across seasons 2 and 3. If the show needed to hit GRRM's biggest plot points of dead Dany and King Bran, I think it stumbled with both. King Bran relies solely on Tyrion's speech; his qualifications for kingship didn't even get the superspeed buildup that Dany's fall did.

It's now my fanon that after a reasonable amount of time has passed, maybe 10 years, she'll have reached a point where she feels secure enough to choose a suitable (hunky, dim, less powerful) man for an affair and then legitimize her bastard as is now her right as queen. She might take some of Cersei's season 2 advice to only love her children, but despite Sansa's plotting I think her scenes this season with her siblings and outsiders like Brienne show that she'll nonetheless be capable of feeling greater trust and affection than Cersei was. After being all about Northern independence and actually winning it, I think Sansa will eventually decide to continue the Stark royal line since Bran cannot and Arya/Jon are gone so their children aren't an option as her heirs.

Well, I didn't get my wish of seeing the characters return to the brighter colors of the earlier seasons as a sign of spring, but I did get one last fabulous Sansa dress. With fur, embroidery, weirwood imagery and a steel crown, she went full Northern for her coronation.

For five years this has been my favorite place for spoilers and speculation. The community here made the wait for episodes such fun!

One comparison I've seen people make lately is between Harry Potter and GOT: Alan Rickman was told about Snape's backstory before it was published, but Emilia pretty clearly seems to have found out about "Mad Dany" only when she got the season 8 scripts and wandered around London for hours. She played Dany as written for seven seasons, as a heroine with ambition and a belief in her birthright but with a conscience that ruthless and adored male leaders like Tywin never demonstrated (he got to sack KL and explicitly send the Mountain to rape the Riverlands while only being called lawful neutral by the showrunners). There was no planning ahead for the endgame: Dany was required to do a 180 with no buildup except ridiculous things like not crying when her abusive brother was killed as a result of threatening her and her unborn child. Again and again we were shown her listening to her advisors and choosing options to delay bloodshed, something we never ever saw from the Lannister regime at any point in the series. Like the show turning future King Bran into useless meme robo-Bran and only building up to his kingship though one seen and one unseen conversation with Tyrion, it's bullshit. It's like getting the Red Wedding in 2x05 after one scene of Tywin's letter-writing and one of Robb flirting with Talisa while a Frey glares at him.

I'm loving Lucy's costumes. Charlotte's look strikes me as more late 18th century than before. So Charlotte's main plot is her rivalry with Alfie Allen and Isabella is her love interest. Thrilled about both. Alfie was amazing on GOT and we haven't seen a pimp yet. Isabella coming back and apparently making up with Charlotte instantly makes her season 2 arc seem more meaningful since she wasn't just the big star guest. I'd be fine with Charlotte/Isabella as endgame if they can keep Liv: both characters have reasons to value their freedom so they could be happy together without always needing to be together. Lucy's plot is apparently with the new mother/son duo. I thought they would be rich foreigners, but the way they're showing her off on the horse almost makes it seem like the mother is yet another bawd that Lucy has made a deal with. One of Harriet's new girls is a regular cast member, but I have no idea what Harriet's plot might be beyond showing us that her house is now big enough that she can wear a wig. A description says that Quigley plots from Bedlam, but with all the new stuff her house must have a somewhat reduced role. I saw Cherry in a great wig, glad she's still around. I'm not glad that Mrs. May is returning because she was just vile, but of course she'll want revenge for Lydia. Alfie's brother is Emily's love interest so we'll see their inn from her perspective. No sign of the Scanwell plot characters yet. William arranging fancy fights is a good development, and I'm happy that Fanny is still in the house.

I thought Lady Fitz would be a one-season guest role but I've seen Liv in two new dresses, so maybe she has an actual plot this season, smaller than last time but still more than a single appearance.

I always preferred Theon's redemption arc to Jaime's because he felt actual remorse for the suffering he had caused and wanted to atone by helping those he had hurt, but wow, I didn't expect Jaime to relapse to this degree. Now that we're almost finished, I feel pretty safe in saying that Theon was the only character who was around from season 1 to season 8 and never disappointed me: even when he was being a screwup, Alfie played him excellently and his arc was heading in a logical direction towards a satisfying conclusion. So that's something that I can remember even more positively when I contrast it with the dumpster fires the remaining characters are turning into. Dany's campaign was destroyed by Tyrion's advice. He went along with Tywin and Joffrey's atrocities because they were family, he wanted to help Cersei escape the consequences of hers even after he began aiding her rival, so it's grotesque to watch the whining about innocent lives by someone who didn't give a damn when it was his family wrecking them for power. Dany tried to be good and reasonable and listen to the more experienced men who then wanted to replace her with a Targaryen dick, and now she's the Mad Queen. Team Olenna Was Right.

Alfie Allen is joining Hulu's amazing Harlots in this summer's season 3.

It will be amazing if even Cleganebowl, the ending's one act of widely predicted fanservice, ends up disappointing people. This season will probably have no iconic fight scenes, it's been all dragons and blurry wight hordes. I read a comment I liked about how 6x10 is one of the most-liked episodes because basically every major character got to end it in on a high for their own storyline (good guy Jon as KITN, main villain Cersei blowing up the sept and so on). While that's no longer possible now that the biggest plots are clashing, a poorly executed version of "everyone's dead or bitterbitter" is probably going to be received even worse than the strawman of the "Disney ending."

I think he was a sweet little lord in ACOK and having both the first and the last chapter is a long-predicted symmetry, but this ending will absolutely mean scrutiny of the way Bran (before and after robo-Bran) was handled in past seasons. They've known the ending for years yet the first buildup came with Tyrion/Varys in 8x04. This could be Dexter/Lost level infamy, for a much bigger show. It has to be the third holy shit moment, and it blows Hodor and Shireen out of the water. If Jon's ending has him return to the wildlings, I imagine viewers would find it much more acceptable if it involved some CGI money spent on proper petting of good boy Ghost. It would even make sense as him embracing the wildest North, and now I'm going to be disappointed when it doesn't happen.