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If a High Septon married Rhaegar/Lyanna, that makes their marriage more legitimate than even those who believed in it used to argue (the most common argument was that they had a Northern marriage Bran could witness via tree vision and Rhaegar restored Targ polygamy without really telling anyone important about it). While it's possible that the show is just doing the least time-consuming thing to establish why Jon is going to be accepted as the future king or father of Dany's heir, I do think this makes it less easy to dismiss marriage theories in the books too. Jaime/Cersei sex scenes will keep on being creepy, huh (and he's really not going to reject her until the very end)? Well, I hope they'll at least try to make Jon/Dany epic and worth the long long wait.

I would love to watch an eighties/nineties episode every day. A couple of years ago the first months of B&B were uploaded to YouTube: before they were deleted I watched all of those episodes and it was such fun to be reminded of how entertaining soaps used to be.

My first memories are of the Queen Mary storyline, but it was Caroline's death that made me really start watching B&B. I stopped being a regular viewer when Phoebe was still the only next generation character who'd been sorased (though I watched quite a bit of Bill's first storylines and interesting Brooke/Bill news is still the thing most likely to make me do some casual viewing) so I never really got to experience Hope or Steffy. It's crazy to think that almost ten years have passed since B&B stopped being part of my day, but every few months I still check out what's been happening because it was my favorite soap in my tween and teen years; that's why I haven't totally lost interest, as happened with other soaps.

That's more than I expected. Sam is supposed to leave Oldtown in episode 5. Are he and the maester really not going to skip any of the first five episodes? The only other option I can think of is that they're in four Oldtown episodes and Broadbent returns in the episode 7 flashback as the maester who marries Rhaegar/Lyanna. If I had to guess what his scenes are - 1. Sam meets the maester, 2. they discuss what is known about the White Walkers, 3. the maester has some information about greyscale, 4. they say goodbye, and 5. the wedding flashback since even Robb's wedding had a maester.

Weren't there claims that they had a tough time in seasons 2 and 3 because of the weather? That they had to film fast instead of being able to do several takes? I remember there was supposedly trouble with dialogue too. That's why I was surprised when it was reported they would return to Iceland instead of finding another location for winter scenes. They can rerecord the dialogue but the lack of time must be a bigger problem - at least some of that infamous Dorne fight scene was blamed on only having a limited amount of time to shoot at that location.

Costume journeys: Cersei, Daenerys, Jorah, Sansa, Tyrion. There really are so many details in the costumes that are never going to be noticed if you just watch the show on TV. For example, after all this time and despite my interest in the show's costumes I had no idea that there were skulls in one of Cersei's season 4 mourning dresses; they were just too small to be visible in the photos I'd seen before.

Benioff: I believe the showrunners when they say the big things will be the same as in the ending GRRM has planned for the books he quite possibly won't ever finish writing. Some of the stuff the show does can be very frustrating, but even if on the way to the ending Show Cersei has a miscarriage and Sansa is raped, which I don't think (but of course can't be sure) is going to happen in the books, I am sure that the show will spoil whether the character lives or dies, whether she's the endgame queen/lady or not. Someone like Sandor might be a minor enough character that GRRM hasn't yet decided what to do with him, but he has to know what is the fate of the realm: if there's still an Iron Throne when the show ends and Character X is accepted as the monarch, that's absolutely what would happen in ADOS if GRRM ever published it.

Honestly, at this point I feel the endings are heading in a predictable direction (which I don't think has to be a bad thing). The six main POVs are alive and will all be on the same side in season 7. With Sansa/Arya about to team up against Littlefinger and Tyrion's darker side cut, I doubt they'd betray each other; it feels like at most there could be Jon/Sansa-style disagreements about what is the best way to handle a specific situation. That leaves death in battle, maybe death by Cersei for Sansa or Tyrion, yet none of the main characters feels definitely doomed to me. I loved the Night's King/Viserion leak because it blew up years of speculation about the three heads of the dragon in a way I hadn't expected but which felt very appropriate and satisfying when I thought about it. If there's a twist for Tyrion in season 8, it'll be something unpredictable like that.

Infamously, he also types with only two fingers, one on each hand; I like the theory that that's why we have Ser instead of Sir, because it's easier to type. And I agree completely that GRRM would rather write about the world and its history than deal with wrapping up a story with an ending he already knows and which he has to plot/describe in detail instead of only needing a rough outline like when he writes summaries of Targaryen reigns.

Oh, I really like the idea of Tywin's line ending with single lord Tyrion. It's a nice compromise since I'll be very surprised if Tyrion dies: the Lannisters keep the Rock but it's Tywin's killer who rules and he won't give him grandchildren. So much of Tyrion's identity is tied up in being a Lannister that I have a hard time seeing him choose to leave it all behind; at best, he'll be free of the need to think of Tywin all the time and just do what makes sense and is good for his land without feeling the burden of his family's past. Another point in favor of Jon, Dany or their baby getting the throne: GRRM recently announced the publication of yet another Targaryen short story, as posted in the TWOW thread. The planned big history is named Fire and Blood after their words and GRRM seems to love writing about the Targs so damn much that I can't see him ending their legacy by making a Lannister the next king or having the kingdoms gain independence.

After all the Sookie/Bill/Eric drama True Blood ended with Sookie pregnant by some nameless dude played by a crew member. That would be a pretty happy ending for Sansa. Tyrion could actually choose not to marry because there are so many Lannister cousins that he's got plenty of potential heirs left. I don't remember if anything has been said about Greyjoy cousins, but I don't think their situation is as bad as that of the current generation of Starks - we know Catelyn wasn't able to offer any Northern relatives as reasonable alternatives when Robb wanted to make Jon his heir.

If Jon/Arya was going to happen in the books the show would be setting it up, but since there's no sign of it I believe that's almost a confirmation that their romance was cut after GRRM started revising his early version of ASOIAF. Jon/Arya won't even have their first reunion until Season 8. There's no time to develop any non-Jon/Dany romance, especially one with the little girl who used to be his favorite sister. I'm not betting on Season 8 Sansa/Sandor either, though that's at least more likely than Jon/Arya since Ramsay/Littlefinger will be out of the way, they've shared plenty of scenes and they know they're not related. If Sansa ends the series as a single lady I can imagine her continuing the Stark line with an unknown husband: she's still a young woman, she's always wanted a husband and children more than anything else, and her speech about Ramsay being forgotten would be sadly untrue if she can never in her life have another relationship because her rapes have made her incapable of accepting love and intimacy. Because there's no POV the Jon/Arya relationship hasn't had the opportunity to be as strong as in the books where they're in each other's thoughts and memories. On the show I actually feel Arya's strongest relationship is with Sandor (and Gendry after that). I like the idea of them continuing their Lone Hound and Cub journeys. Perhaps Arya's bittersweet ending will be that she's reunited with her surviving siblings but can't stay in Westeros because the Faceless Men are out to kill her for leaving them: if that's the case, the show could take that plot point and give it a more uplifting spin by having Sandor go with her and making her decision not just about the need to escape the Faceless Men but a wish to explore the world. GRRM (he of the endless death fakeouts and three confirmed resurrections of ordinary humans rather than angel-like wizards) has complained about Gandalf coming back and not knowing Aragorn's tax policy, but whoever the endgame monarch is, I don't think we'll be getting any policy information. Jon/Dany/Tyrion defeats the White Walkers and takes the throne, epilogue, the end. We've seen all of them screw up due to inexperience and character flaws while trying to rule and that's the realism we'll get; there will be no book 9 with Jon putting together a small council and fretting over projects to find the money to rebuild everything wrecked by war and Others. Show Tyrion has no desire for revenge and is a little less fond of politics than Book Tyrion. I can imagine him being happy to be Lord of Casterly Rock, trying to rule well, drinking good wine and inviting his monarch to make friendly visits. The Rock would be more difficult to nuke than KL (where Cersei already has wildfire), so I tend to think Tyrion is safe for the same reason Show Robin Arryn is safe: there's no else who could be lord and the Rock is a bigger deal than the Vale so there must be a Lannister in charge when the series ends. I guess Jaime could stun me by not killing Cersei, not getting killed by the White Walkers, and getting pardoned by Dany, but I'd still bet on Tyrion living. His lack of ambition and transition into more of a supporting character in Dany's storyline rather than someone who drives his own plot (like in the KL seasons) contribute to my belief that he might end up a corpse, lord or Hand but not a king. I agree that the Greyjoys seem like a "minor" major house with a good chance of getting a show ending that's unambiguous (unlike the Martells) and lets them keep their castle (unlike the Tyrells). Yara isn't confirmed dead, and though Theon can't father children he has a chance to do something in Season 8 that regains the respect of the Ironborn so that they'll accept him as lord (and then we can imagine that he names a relative as his heir after the series ends). I always thought it was unrealistic that a nobody like Gendry would be accepted as the Lord of Storm's End, but since the show merged him with Edric Storm and is apparently having him bond with Jon over their dads being besties, maybe there is a chance after all. I'd actually be fine with the Starks, Dany and Tyrion surviving. I feel that there has to be a big death, but at the same time all of these characters seem like they have potentially good and useful endings ahead of them. Killing one just for the sake of a big shock death would be cheap: I hope GRRM will be content with having made them go through incredible suffering and reversals of fortune.

Here's a really detailed Reddit summary of the spoilers posted by the leaker Awayforthelads. At first it seemed crazy that someone would have a season 7 outline that included almost every big plot detail and was willing to risk sharing it. Then every piece of news and set information ended up confirming or supporting the stuff he's posted, even the things that sounded the craziest and would not have been predicted by a fan who knows the books; that's why I think he's also right about the scenes that involved indoors filming and dragon CG stuff. Awayforthelads posted that Viserion is killed when Dany follows Team Jon as they go on a wight hunt in the North, then in the finale the Night's King attacks the Wall with a reanimated Viserion who breathes blue flame. He posted that Jon pets Drogon, but he also seemed a bit confused about the names (IIRC, spelling mistakes and not knowing what the Riverlands are but then describing Edmure/Frey stuff that, like the rest, is looking very likely based on filming and casting information). There are set photos of Jon on a beach with a dragon head so the scene is probably happening, though whether it's Drogon or Rhaegal is still not 100% confirmed IMO since it's possible the names got mixed up. Rhaegal wasn't mentioned specifically, just the usual stuff about the dragons being with Dany, Viserion getting killed and Drogon being petted.

The Iron Throne was made from the swords of those who surrendered to Aegon, there's no need to melt it when it's the same as regular steel. The few families (like the Starks) who did have Valyrian steel swords were allowed to keep them. I don't see any sign that the kingdoms will become independent. There's just not enough viable leaders around. Dorne and the Iron Islands, the most culturally different realms, are now Dany's allies. Tyrion is her ally too and there's nothing to suggest that he would want to be King of the Westerlands rather than Lord of Casterly Rock. Jon is king in the North, but the revelation of his true Stark + Targaryen parentage gives him a potential claim to all Westeros and suggests that the end of chaos won't come from the kingdoms splitting apart again but from being united under a monarch who's accepted by all and whose competition has been demolished. Dany wants to be queen and though she'll listen to advice it'll be of the old-fashioned sort given to the restored Targaryen monarch, Jon wants to defeat the White Walkers and became king almost by accident, Tyrion wants to see Dany become a worthy queen and is supporting her as Hand rather than making himself her equal partner: no character is actually thinking of independence or democracy, and there's no buildup in the portrayal of education, trade or politics in the setting for anything other than a monarchy supported by powerful lords. I think Jon, Dany or Jon/Dany will be on the Iron Throne when the series ends. Tyrion hasn't gotten development that would make him believable as someone who can lead in his own right: he'll either be the Hand, doing the brain-powered but less glamorous stuff in which his dwarfism and lack of martial ability won't be seen as fatal hindrances, or return home to Casterly Rock. Liam Cunningham seems to be so positive about his role lately that I actually feel better about Davos' chances of surviving: if Tyrion won't be the Hand, Davos will be. I've expected Bran to be the Lord of Winterfell, but if he becomes extremely focused on magic and prioritizes his role as the new super-seer it's actually possible that Sansa's current title of Lady of Winterfell will still be hers when the series ends because Bran refuses the job. The Dreadfort and the Twins are two castles that should, IMO, be given to Sansa and Arya by right of conquest (Sansa married and killed the only Bolton left; Arya killed Walder Frey and letting his treacherous family keep such a prime strategic location would be senseless). So if Bran wants Winterfell, Sansa could be killed or end up somewhere else entirely; if he doesn't, she gets it and lives. Arya could die fighting the White Walkers, but that "west of Westeros" thing also seems weird to me: either it's a totally throwaway moment or the only real buildup we're getting for Arya's unexpected final fate of leaving Westeros for a life of adventure. For a long time I've wanted to see Sam as the Lord of Highgarden after the Tyrells are crushed. I'm really interested in who gets the major castles (with the Baratheons and Boltons dead, the Freys hated by the Starks, and the Tyrells/Martells/Tullys/Greyjoys in trouble), but I wonder if the show is just going to ignore that as irrelevant background information and be content to say that Tyrion is the Lord of the Rock and a Stark gets Winterfell.

I also thought of Rhaegar when I read the AMA. I can't think of any other role in the leaked outline that could be a spoiler (and yeah, that other answer seems to support the leak too). At this point only randoms like the new Lord Frey and guest stars like Maester Broadbent are getting added to the cast; even without the leak, a Rhaegar flashback would be one of the few believable and spoilery options available.

It's a "GRRM wouldn't do that!" thing (now with a bit of extra outrage over Jon kneeling), as though grit and twists mean he's completely abandoned fantasy tropes and storytelling logic. We aren't going to see Tyrion die before he meets Dany or Arya die before she returns to Westeros, and however cliche it is to have the hidden prince and beautiful heroine hook up, Jon/Dany was always a very likely ending. It would be wildly unrealistic if Westeros became a democracy, as some theories claim, and Jon/Dany has the potential to be the Henry VII/Elizabeth of York match that unites potentially conflicting claims so that the heir born of the marriage has an undisputed right to the throne. Of course Dany would consider the political advantages of Jon after learning about R+L=J and could very well fall for a brave, well-meaning leader who sees that the Others are the biggest threat to the realm; same for Jon, who'd be even more willing than Dany to recognize someone else as the supreme authority as long as the Others are defeated. I'm just hoping that Kit and Emilia have good chemistry. The script pages are fascinating because they have the potential to be such solid spoilers: not just set reports or photos, but actual dialogue. At first it seemed most likely that the leaker was just making things up, so doubting him made sense. Then the location filming demonstrated that he must have had information about the plot that no fan could have simply guessed based on the books. His knowledge about the location filming already gave him a lot of credibility and made it likely that his claims about indoor scenes were true too, but Walder's return is further proof that he didn't only know about the Dragonstone and King's Landing crews. I remember there was some talk about whether the casting of a new Lord Frey meant he'd been lying, but so many of his spoilers had been confirmed that I expected we'd get some kind of logical explanation for why they'd cast a new lord if Walder was indeed returning like the leaker claimed (I'd guess the lord will get a couple of lines and serve as son #1, cast as the lord rather than the heir to avoid confirming the spoiler). The script pages, though, are even more undeniable if they turn out to be true, which we'll find out in 7x01: if the Frey scene has the dialogue from this newest leak, I'll confidently expect to see every plot point onscreen that the leaker described in 2016.

I'd be happy to see Claflin play Rhaegar: he's been the heartthrob in multiple big franchise movies so he'd have a Rhaegar-appropriate air of being a bigger thing than anyone else in the scene. If he's a GOT fan his movie with Emilia could have given him a chance to mention that he'd like to do a cameo, and if she'd already made the showrunners aware of his interest it might explain why no Rhaegar casting call was needed.

I think there will probably be a Cersei/Euron scene in the first episode : the sea battle is in the second and surely they'll want to establish that alliance onscreen instead of just telling us about it.

Yikes. "Before season 8" sounds perfectly doable - of course we'll get TWOW before the final season, GRRM can't miss a deadline that ridiculous! But seeing that it's actually "one year and five months" when GRRM is talking about his appearance schedule next year in a way that sounds just like his talk about it last year. . . The publisher can't make GRRM write faster and the editor can't make him listen to suggestions, but if it's at all possible they'll certainly try to do what they did with ADWD and convince him to release a book that's kinda unfinished by moving the natural climaxes to the next book so they have something to sell when the TV show premieres, or in this case when it concludes. But that depends on the state of TWOW in early 2018 if there's no release date announcement in 2017 - is the manuscript going to be coherent enough that it can be released as a book minus some big endings, or is it going to be too disorganized? For example, if Dany chapters tell a story, but Tyrion chapters are still being rewritten and even the middle is such a mess that just pushing his planned but unwritten ending to book 7 isn't an option, and almost all Arya chapters have been scrapped because GRRM didn't like the way they turned out when he wrote them.

I've thought of myself as a TWOW pessimist since 2011, but this is the first time I've really considered the possibility that we won't get TWOW before the series finale airs. IIRC, my original prediction was 2015-2016. Even if GRRM misses season 7 in 2017, I hope he has enough pride that he won't want the entire series to have aired between the ADWD and TWOW release date announcements. The TWOW wait is scheduled to beat the ADWD wait sometime next spring, and GRRM's latest comments make it sound like it's definitely going to happen.

I'm now treating Wall sex as 99% confirmed and hoping it lives up to the months of anticipation! Getting such a detailed leak has been great, IMO; it just adds to the fun in the months before the show airs, like the speculation during the book-based seasons about what plot points the show would include. I hope we get at least season 6 level leaks when season 8 films, though HBO will probably work extra hard to do what they can to protect the indoors filming from being spoiled.

This has to be the earliest we've seen official shots of the next season. There was a December preview with season 4 shots but now it's still November, and season 7 is going to premiere later than usual too. Sansa's hair looks a little weird, but maybe it's just because I know she has a wig.

If GRRM wants a small twist, he can have Jaime fail at death as redemption: he dies but he isn't redeemed in the eyes of the Westerosi and not 100% in the eyes of the fandom either. His reputation in Westeros is not going to recover if his last act is to kill the sister whose bastards he fathered and though this would mean that we know he rejected Cersei and felt at least some regret over what he had turned into, it's not something that could be called heroic. If Jaime does go north as leaked, that might point to a standard heroic death or even joining the Night's Watch. Personally, I'm hoping for the valonqar ending: it's the only way he'll take some responsibility for what he and Cersei have done to countless innocents and admit that he can't simply decide he's Goldenhand the Just now that he feels like it. Book Tyrion loves politics and power far more than Show Tyrion, who might be quite happy being "only" the Lord of Casterly Rock. On the show this kind of retirement from the biggest political stage, with occasional trips to advise Jon/Dany and enough rebuilding/lording to give him things to do back home, would be a happy ending for Tyrion. There's some moments in the books that have been used in King Tyrion theories, but I don't think those theories have been strengthened by the show where he seems to be pretty firmly the advisor who needs to make Dany adopt his suggestions instead of the guy who's showing that he really should have her job. He's a good Hand, not a leader who can make others follow him.

Grey Worm's absence makes me agree with the speculation that he dies, but it's curious that there haven't been any spoilers about it. If Grey Worm died in the ambush, surely it would be mentioned in the detailed description above. Perhaps he dies in the 7x02 sea battle with two of the Sand Snakes: if he was still around for Jon's arrival there should have been a mention of him in the leaks and IIRC he hasn't been spotted during Dragonstone or dragonpit filming. It looks like the Tarlys are the only Team Cersei characters that Dany gets to kill, after she's already lost Yara, the Sands, Olenna and Grey Worm.

They won't go for it because, despite all the fandom theories, it now looks it'll turn out to be another case of prophecy screwing with you, misleading not just Rhaegar who thought the riders would be Rhaenys/Aegon/kid #3 but the readers who thought they would be Dany/Jon/main character #3. I'd imagine that "who gets to ride a dragon" was one of the first questions the showrunners asked after "who gets the throne" (and they got GRRM's approval by offering the correct answer to "who is Jon's mother"). If they heard that the dragonrider is not going to be Bran Stark or Tyrion Lannister (son of Tywin and Joanna, since there's no mystery and nothing left unexplained by his parents being who we've always been told they are), but the Night's King or someone else with weird dragon-stealing magic, it wouldn't be necessary to devote TV time to a prophecy twist the vast majority of viewers won't remember. IMO the changes to Dany's season 2 vision, which they filmed five years ago, now look like a sign that the showrunners already knew the rough outline of what's going to happen in season 7: she looks at the snowy throne but then turns away because winter must be dealt with, and now the leak says she goes north with secret Targaryen heir Jon even though Cersei still has King's Landing.