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I wasn't a big fan of Arya's new look when we first saw it, but it looks better here. I still need to see the cape in motion, though. Love Jon's direwolves. Now that there's a trailer and the leaks have been confirmed, I thought I'd make a list of seven things that have me hyped for season 7. 1. Boatsex. Readers have been debating Jon/Dany for twenty years and now the inevitable is finally going to be canon. ASOIAF has been seriously lacking in romances that would 1. take place in real time (so Ned/Cat thinking of each other is out) and 2. not be abusive or founded on big age/power differences (so practically everything else is out). That's why I don't think Jon/Dany falling in love rather than hating each other or making a cold political match has to be a horrifyingly unrealistic surrender to cliches: rather, it's a part of the human experience that GRRM has been neglecting. Even during war people do get lucky enough to find a partner they can love and respect. Misery and miserable marriages aren't the only forms of realism and happiness isn't a betrayal of GRRM's readers. 2. Wight Viserion. The show is better than the books at making the White Walkers feel like a genuine threat and a big part of the story: Hardhome and Hodor are up there with the best book adaptation moments, IMO. This is a twist that makes the Night's King even more threatening, removes some of Dany's overpoweredness, and makes sense but also comes as a genuine shock because book fandom has had theory after theory about the three heads of the dragon. 3. Rhaegar/Lyanna get married. Another huge moment for fandom theories and endgame speculation. I really can't wait to see how the unspoiled react to the first hints we get from Gilly and I hope they cast a Rhaegar who's either a big star cameo or someone so ridiculously gorgeous that we'll be spared the complaints he didn't live up to the book version. And I'm not going to blame D&D for Jon's legitimacy and talk about how GRRM wouldn't do that when there are plenty of annulment shenanigans in the English history that ASOIAF was inspired by: Rhaegar going Henry VIII and deciding he can annul a marriage that resulted in legitimate children is something I'm fine with since all his actions suggest he gets fixated on a big idea and ignores political realities in pursuit of prophecy. 4. The wight hunt. When we first got the news I only wondered about whether the leak was true and how they could make the reasoning behind this adventure seem logical. But now that I've gotten used to the idea, I've started looking forward to it. I expected nothing when Hardhome was announced but it turned out to be amazing. I hope this is the Hardhome/BOTB action episode of the season. 5. Littlefinger goes down. The plotting sounds very dodgy and will apparently repeat season 6 in presenting Sansa as a player when she's not actually demonstrating any smarts but simply relying on outside influence (Littlefinger/Bran ex machina), but I really hope that Sophie and Maisie's friendship will help them nail the emotional beats and make those leaked script pages memorable onscreen. 6. Olenna's death. I hope she gets an amazing goodbye and roasts Jaime so thoroughly that I'll be able to imagine it left him shaken and contributed to his decision to finally abandon Cersei. 7. The dragonpit. Just for the thrill of seeing almost every surviving character in one place. What a way to make it clear that we've reached the endgame.

Wow! I'm glad Lads2 is real since all of those spoilers sounded credible to me based on what Lads1 had already revealed and it makes this season's spoiler drama even more memorable. I was especially glad to see that Jon/Littlefinger bit since it was speculated earlier it was the kind of thing they might include in the trailer. No Jon/Dany yet, unless 0.46 is his arrival. Still, boatsex is 99% confirmed. I can't wait! Hoping for great Kit/Emilia chemistry and fandom meltdowns. Thinking about it again, it's incredible that we got the season spoiled like this. It's great for me, since I feel that spoilers just make shows more enjoyable because they lead to more excitement and discussion.

Wasn't it in 2013 that D&D had their big meeting with GRRM and went through everything he'd planned for the characters? I can't remember what they've said about how much they knew before that meeting, but if the Redgrave casting did turn out to be true and not just trolling, it would actually fit nicely with season 2 Tyrion saying Sansa might survive and season 6 Jaime getting corrected by Brienne when he talks about how girls like Sansa don't live long.

I'm glad they're not doing Dunk & Egg. The characters, the plot and the era were so dull that I only read the first story; it felt like I was getting dreary low fantasy faux-medieval worldbuilding that was missing all the conflicts and factions that actually made the ASOIAF books entertaining when I first got into the series. HBO will probably find it hard to say no to Targaryens and dragons, but I can't see how they could do the Dance without all those fighting dragons being hideously expensive/time-consuming while also being more important to the plot than Dany's trio (aka Drogon and those two we can only afford to show maybe twice per season), plus all the Targs sound like assholes. Aegon's conquest has no tension if they follow canon since he gets everything he wants until he tries Dorne. The idea I like best right now is a series set before the conquest. A lot of the houses would be familiar and they'd get to play the game but if the show treated the worldbook as unreliable history we wouldn't know anything about how it turns out (beyond "I guess the Stark/Lannister houses survive even though King Bob Lannister just poisoned King Jim Stark who then cut off his frenemy's head").

GRRM: I guess that should end the speculation he's starting new projects because he's secretly finished TWOW. And I admit it annoys me that he's talking about the "GRRMarillion" when he's famously complained about Gandalf coming back from the dead (hello Catelyn! hello Jon!) and not knowing what Aragorn's tax policies are: Tolkien's worldbuilding is far more complex than GRRM's and his audience got to read how Aragorn became king long before the Silmarillion was made public. But even now, GRRM prefers historical Targs to actually finishing the series that his fans love. This is not a man who hates what HBO has done to the books and prioritizes working on his own magnum opus. He doesn't want to make it as as good as possible, he just doesn't want to work on it when there's so much stuff out there that's more fun and doesn't require complex plotting. Talking about non-show theories feels utterly pointless since we're not going to get the answers.

Hunnam is actually a bigger name than I thought they'd go for since he's been the lead of multiple blockbusters (ones that underperformed, but still). When I hoped for a name Rhaegar, I had in mind the Sam Claflin/Rufus Sewell-types who get their start in historical TV series: lots of movie appearances but mostly as the second lead, no "next big leading man" hype. I guess Aidan Turner and James Norton are the current TV heartthrobs, but if Rhaegar is the cameo they had in mind for Hunnam. . . well, Aussie Travis Fimmel has the same kind of look, but no one else in the sorta-movie star category comes to mind right now.

TWOW has a post about Charlie Hunnam being offered a cameo that he couldn't do because of his shooting schedule. The timing isn't clear so Hunnam's "a little while ago" might have been season 6, but I'm hoping the role was season 7 Rhaegar, since it would indicate they were trying to get a name to do that cameo and they might have found another relatively well-known British movie star after Hunnam had to say no. Redgrave as old Sansa would be amazing.

Since it sounds like the only version of R+L we'll get on the show is the quick one (married + had Jon) without the complications (he's an older married man? what about Elia? even if Lyanna agreed to run away did she agree to never get in touch with her brother and stay in the tower under guard?), I think Rhaegar is going to be a hot twentysomething and not someone who's clearly a bit older than Lyanna, for maximum romance that drives home that these are Jon's parents and avoids any extra questions like we got after 6x10 when some non-readers wondered if Ned was supposed to be the father.

A more pessimistic interpretation: writing is going so badly that GRRM feels he can no longer put the rest of his life on hold in order to finish TWOW since the attempt doesn't appear to have helped him. IIRC, he announced that Kong was dead as soon he sent ADWD to receive the final edits, not after they were done, and while my memory is hazy after six years, I believe he'd been sounding more optimistic that spring about the book itself: we didn't need to analyze his other activities for clues that he might be feeling good about his progress. I can see why GRRM loves D&E (Targs, travelogues, worldbuilding, no pesky plot), but if HBO ever decides to do it, Egg is getting aged up. I doubt they'd want a kid actor whose talent isn't guaranteed (not everybody grows up to be award-nominated Maisie) and who can't add a bit of sexiness to a story that's very different from GOT: as a title Dunk & Egg is already deliberately unglamorous. Egg is getting the Jon/Dany treatment if he's cast, young but over 18.

I bet GRRM's going to be working on the show ideas that involve historical Targs. I don't think they can do the Dance, though. It would either be hideously expensive (without the guaranteed popularity of season 7/8 GOT) due to all the time-consuming dragon CGI or it would be the dragon war where they keep on coming up with excuses for why we hardly ever see any dragons, which would make it pointless. Dunk & Egg lacks the sex, shocks and plotting that made GOT famous, so I personally feel that it wouldn't be a good idea either. And yeah, we're never getting book 7. GRRM's found yet another thing that's going to be more fun and less demanding than actually finding the self-discipline required to wrap up the ASOIAF plots.

I noticed that the first footage we saw of Jon in late 2016 looks like it's from the same set as the new photo of Sansa and Littlefinger. 7x02, maybe? Littlefinger is trying to cause trouble but Jon makes Sansa happy when he tells her she's going to be in charge, and then Littlefinger follows him when he goes to the crypt (as leaked/guessed based on the Jon photo)?

Perhaps that's also a prophecy with a tricky wording. Most readers tend to assume the valonqar misleads Cersei to think that Tyrion is the little brother who'll kill her when it'll turn out to be someone else, and maybe there's an interpretation that allows Sansa to be "another" without being the QITN. Even if a conflict with Cersei leads her south, I don't think that will be her ending. With Edmure and Robin alive, the theories that she ends up ruling the Riverlands or the Vale don't seem likely. To me Sansa's book storyline seems to be about learning to appreciate her Northern roots and going home with the Vale's army, and despite Bran's return she'll be acting as the Lady of Winterfell in season 7. If she has to deal with Cersei and survives, I believe she'd choose to return home. What would she do in the south? She could be Robin's protector, but she hasn't grown up in the Vale and she's a young woman who is related to him through his Tully mother and not his Arryn father. She could be Dany's #1 lady-in-waiting, but GRRM hasn't portrayed women's courtly networks as worthwhile endeavors (we have Margaery's flock of ornamental ladies and the dodgy Taena, and that's pretty much it). Rebuilding Winterfell and the North seems like a much more likely fate if she lives.

It's fascinating that the season might hurt one big prophecy (the three heads) by revealing that only the third guess was right (Rhaegar was wrong about his kids, the fans were wrong about Tyrion, the riders will apparently be Jon/Dany/NK), and maybe a second as well if Sansa is being set up to focus on Cersei (she was wrong about the queen being Margaery, the fans were wrong about Dany, it's actually Sansa who's only a lady but young and beautiful). If that's their plot in season 8, Sansa is either Cersei's last big victim or the one who beats her so badly that the valonqar is just the executioner. I'd still guess that Dany (when the fighting is done) and especially Tyrion are more likely to confront Cersei... but both she and Sansa are going to lose their biggest scene partners this season, with Jaime leaving and LF dead.

I hope that photo of Gilly is from the scene where she casually reads about Rhaegar's new marriage. Is Sansa already wearing her needle necklace in the Littlefinger photo?

One theory that I've sometimes seen is that KL will be destroyed in the second Dance when Dany attacks Aegon and her dragonfire causes a massive explosion of hidden wildfire. Since the leaks indicate that Tyrion talks Dany out of attacking KL by pointing out that most victims would be innocents, I think that means she won't be responsible if anything disastrous does happen there. While it's still possible that season 8 Cersei decides that if she can't have the throne no one will (and I can't guess what her plot will be with Jaime gone and only Qyburn/Gregor left as her own supporting cast), I really feel that the show is not hinting at the Seven Kingdoms splitting apart without an Iron Throne; if anything, there's buildup in the opposite direction, with the Reach/Dorne/Greyjoy heirs all siding with Dany and Jon getting revealed as a legitimate Targaryen who has the support of the North/the Vale/presumably the Frey-free Riverlands too. Marriages: if a character like Tyrion ends the series as a single man, I can imagine him letting one of the many Lannister cousins inherit Casterly Rock; even on the show we know they exist since we got to see some of the younger boys. But for Starks like Sansa if she's the endgame Lady of Winterfell, or King Jon if he lives but Dany dies, I think it's safe to imagine that they'll eventually marry somebody suitable since they're all that's left of their house: the line might die without them and a succession crisis would endanger the safety of their land and their people.

I can't even hate bad pussy like I used to after doing a bit of rereading and finding GRRM's prose much more purple and gratingly faux-medieval than I remembered - it feels kinda true to his spirit of cringeworthiness now. And since Doran's grand plan looks set to achieve little except further Martell deaths, his ineffectiveness is true to the character too: IMO, the show version actually had the potential to be more tragic by taking Ellaria's role as the pacifist who wants to end the bloodshed, while the book Doran wants vengeance but has pitiful schemes that don't make him look good as a person, player or father. The execution was just a total mess. But book Dorne isn't much better, so I don't feel that much of value was lost and though it would have been nicer if the showrunners hadn't messed it up in the first place, at least they recognized that Dorne had to go instead of committing even more screentime to a failure.

Whatever the showrunners say there's nothing in season 6 that shows Sansa being any good at anything except crawling back to Littlefinger, and that's the problem: the showrunners' Word of God is difficult to accept when it appears to be flat-out contradicted by what actually made it to the screen. Try to pick something in season 6 that shows Sansa being a benefit to her cause and you'll be reduced to the single scene of her writing an apology letter to a man who still wants to screw her even though he sent her to be raped in her family home. She doesn't convince a single Northern lord to join their cause and all the debate about her motivations (did she plan to get Jon and Rickon killed?) shows what a mess the writing was. You most certainly don't need to be a book purist to find plots like season 6 Sansa or Dorne to be poorly handled or to wish that basic character traits were respected instead of being flipped. For instance, some might be fine with the idea of sending Jaime to Dorne but not care for the decision to keep him as Cersei's obedient lapdog until season 7: they'd rather have his redemption arc than fidelity to its every plot point in the books but what they got was neither. The basic idea was good (Jon and Sansa struggle to find support and win the battle, ultimately triumphing because of his battle skill and her diplomacy), but it was presented in a way that drove a ton of viewers to argue that he's irredeemably stupid and she's evil. If Robb's will makes Jon king in the books, the show failed to make him earn his kingship by making the loss of the battle his and Sansa's fault, due to his failures at generalship and hers at diplomacy, and they only won because of Littlefinger (which, again, required no skill, only groveling a couple of episodes after Sansa tried to look strong in front of him only for events to prove her wrong). As pointed out earlier, the showrunners even abandoned their own buildup by having no consequences to Ramsay's cruelties even though they themselves had chosen to devote screentime to warnings about that. And all the scenes about how the Boltons need a Stark bride to support their claim? Thrown in the trash after the Sansa rape storyline was over, because it existed only for the rape and first abusing and then losing her led to zero consequences for the Boltons: turns out their claim was always perfectly fine since the vast majority of the North chose them over Jon and Sansa. So the showrunners say one thing, but what actually ended up on screen is that the North chooses the Boltons over the Starks, Jon has no kingly qualities apart from his swordsmanship in close combat, and Sansa is incapable of influencing any people apart from the one man who once wanted to screw her mother. Is this really a good adaptation and a better story than at least that one single lord choosing the Starks over the Boltons because of Ramsay's endless cruelties, Jon being outnumbered but doing his best to counter that with a good battle plan that keeps him fighting long enough for the Vale forces to arrive, and Sansa getting the Davos speech so that she's responsible for at least a single sassy little lady being persuaded to support the Starks? I sure as hell don't think so, and I've partied hard when the show has cut bloated new plots like Aegon and POV characters like Quentyn: they were fixing GRRM's bad tendencies in those cases, but here they made Jon and Sansa look as useless as they could be without actually losing the battle, which was won only due to Littlefinger.

I wasn't a fan of the necklace either, but I bet it's coming back for the payoff of Sansa wearing it when she orders Littlefinger's execution. Her wig looks iffy. And everyone looks so covered up! Another thing that makes the ending feel like it's finally here, even Dany has escaped the heat and filler plots of the east.

The lack of motivation might be the #1 culprit. Of course we've yet to see how things play out when season 7 airs and there might be lots of little moments that change the tone of the story, but it feels like Tyrion is undoubtedly the most important member of Dany's crew. . . yet still just one of the crew. Even last year, when he spent most of the time in Meereen without Dany and surrounded by her clearly more B-list supporting cast, there was no sense of urgency. Tyrion was present, but the plot was just waiting for her return: it wasn't a case of Dany dealing with the Dothraki and Tyrion dealing with Meereen, but of Dany fire and blooding first the Dothraki and then the enemies in Meereen. People were joking that Dany was like the mom glaring at the nervous Tyrion/Missandei/Grey Worm because the kids messed up the house while she was gone, and that struck me as kinda accurate. By contrast, the Stark storyline felt like it was Jon-and-Sansa, not Jon plus Sansa plus random friends: he was clearly the bigger character, but she was distinct from Jon's supporting crew, she had her own big supporting characters in Littlefinger/Brienne, and as frustrating as it was to see Sansa keep secrets just so that the battle could have a big epic save, it meant that she had her own motivations, her own ideas, and conflicts with Jon that affected how they pursued their shared goal. In the end, the victory required both of them. Jon became the KITN, but Sansa got to give the deathblow to the Ramsay storyline and her longterm Littlefinger storyline got adjustments that kept it going until its season 7 resolution could be all about her relationships with Littlefinger/Arya. So I don't think it would be impossible to have Dany-and-Tyrion in a way where she's clearly the higher-ranking character in their shared storyline but he's still a major mover. It just doesn't sound like that's going to happen in season 7, and I haven't seen any convincing season 8 speculation yet about what he could be doing that would be more about him than Dany's Hand. About Jon/Dany in the trailer, the teaser footage (though not from the actual episodes) is just the kind of thing I thought they might include if they wanted hype without major spoilers: Jon walking, Dany on her throne, then cut before we actually see them react to each other. If they show Jon/Dany stuff, it's most likely to be from the early episodes, Tyrion talking about the need for allies, or Sansa about the danger of going to Dany, then Jon's arrival, so that there's a bit of tension about what's going to happen.

I really liked how the focus on the rulers made it feel like the endgame is finally here. While Cersei probably gets some of Book Aegon's stuff in being the first enemy Dany faces in Westeros, it's interesting to wonder if the outline is still present in the books in the form of Cersei naming herself queen after the deaths of her children and maybe fleeing to the Rock after Aegon takes KL. That's something I've found fascinating ever since the leaks revealed that the NK would be riding Viserion. While Tyrion could still ride one of the other two dragons after Jon or Dany gets killed, all the "three heads of the dragon" speculation feels shakier than it used to; even Jon doesn't become a dragonrider in season 7 and with only six episodes left is it going to be 8x02 you're a Targ, 8x03 here's your dragon, 8x06 oh you're dead Tyrion get in the saddle? It sounds like Tyrion has zero dragon interaction in season 7 while Jon is shown getting along with them right from the start, without the sense of danger that was present when Tyrion freed the dragons. Without a dragon, magic or an army of his own, what could Tyrion do that would be as momentous as what Jon, Dany and Bran will presumably be able to accomplish against the White Walkers? As an experienced Hand, right now he basically feels like a more capable version of what Sansa can offer to the story, a political noncombatant who takes charge of logistics and support. A couple of years ago I wouldn't have guessed that Jon/Dany/Cersei would be the ones getting the "big three" promotion and that Cersei would be the Lannister over Tyrion and Jaime.

Honestly, since GRRM has already failed to release TWOW before the show finishes airing all its adaptation of TWOW content (will the book even get as far as Jon's kinging and Dany's departure?), I'm kinda hoping it's published in late 2018, just for the sad comedy of the entire show having aired in the time between the ADWD and TWOW release date announcements. In less than two weeks we should get to celebrate the milestone of the TWOW wait beating the ADWD wait. I managed to dig up some old TWOP stuff and found a post from the 2011 ADWD spoiler thread where I was wondering if we would have TWOW in 2015. I'm amused that my pessimistic prediction still turned out to be way too optimistic.

I just saw the announcement of a new film starring Aisling Franciosi and Sam Claflin, that must be why she followed him on Twitter a while ago. Shame, I liked the earlier speculation that it was because Claflin had been cast as flashback Rhaegar (he auditioned for Jon and did a film with Emilia last year, so he had other GOT connections too).

I also agree that show annulment = book polygamy. It looks like this will turn out a bit like the Jeyne Poole swap. Something is probably going to happen that will lead to Sansa and Littlefinger going North, but it hasn't been written yet and the showrunners didn't want to spend time and money on a separate Vale storyline so they merged the Stark brides. Unfortunately the reasons why Sansa and Littlefinger would ever consider the Ramsay marriage were so poorly presented that the story made them look like complete morons; it served the plot at the cost of the characters. Similarly, the annulment is a quick way to make Show Jon legitimate but it makes Rhaegar and Lyanna look like assholes to readers who remember Elia's sad story. It's a shame we might never find out if Aegon is Jon's name in the books too: if Rhaegar was as prophecy-obsessed as some speculate and told Lyanna about the three heads of the dragon, maybe she gave Jon the name Rhaegar had chosen for the savior after she heard that Aegon had been killed in KL as a way to still make it possible for that prophecy to come true. 73 hours, that's more like seven seasons with a few extra long episodes than the eight seasons HBO wanted. Sounds like the showrunners basically got their wish by splitting the season, that's probably better than filler episodes and them struggling to come up with plots when they don't have any books left to adapt.

IMO, this makes it even more likely that Jon ends up as the king or, if he dies again, as the father of Dany's heir. If he was resurrected just to get killed fighting the White Walkers, R+L=J would only be about his character development (GRRM has said he'll learn who his mother was, so at some point Book Jon will have to cope with the knowledge that Ned wasn't his biological father). But the show, which tends to choose the plot and ways to keep it moving over logical or complex character development, is taking the time to include flashbacks and apparently even makes Jon legitimate through annulment and not just a questionable polygamous marriage: I think that implies R+L=J is very relevant to the present-day plot and the ending of the story. Why come up with show-only excuses for how Ned's bastard ends up riding a dragon or taking the Iron Throne when you can just be faithful to the canon and use Jon's real parentage to explain that?