Just How Much of the ‘Game of Thrones’ Ending Was George R.R. Martin’s?
Some of the characters’ arcs seem to have been foreshadowed in ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ while others could solely be show inventions
After eight long years and a six-episode season, we have our ending to Game of Thrones. But is this the same ending that author George R.R. Martin had in mind when he began crafting A Song of Ice and Fire more than two decades ago? Bran on the throne? Jon beyond the Wall? Daenerys turned a villain?
Martin reportedly told showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss the ending for his saga in 2013, and for what it’s worth, Martin indicated that they stuck to those plot points before Season 8—
—but there’s still some evidence that this ending isn’t exactly Martin’s ending. What could have changed? And what will be the same once (if?) the books are finished? Let’s look at the major characters and read the tea leaves to see how likely it is that their ending in the show is the ending Martin has in mind for his novels.
Bran Stark becomes King of the Seven (Six?) Kingdoms
First off, a brief tangent: The Seven Kingdoms has long been a misnomer, as the kingdom Aegon the Conqueror built is now made up of nine provinces. So even if the North is independent, we can still call it the Seven Kingdoms (technically, it’s eight now).
But that’s besides the point. Will Bran become king in the books?
This is so wildly out of left field that it’s hard to believe that the showrunners made it up themselves. But if it does come from Martin’s head, it’ll happen differently: While the show cut Bran out for an entire season and sidelined him for much of the final couple, Martin has always kept a focus on Bran’s story. Bran has the first point-of-view chapter after the prologue in A Game of Thrones, a chapter that Martin says “came ‘out of nowhere’” for him in 1991.
Could A Song of Ice and Fire be—at least partially—the story of a paralyzed boy who grows up to become not only the Three-Eyed Raven but also king? It’s totally in line thematically with the story. Bran has always been more central to the books than the show, which is why this ending feels so out of place for the television adaptation but may fit perfectly in the written works.
Jon heads back to the Night’s Watch (and beyond?)
One of the central themes of Thrones is how characters can choose who they want to be. Their last names, their titles, and their backstories are important, but characters can break out of their roles. Few embody this better than Jon; he grows up a bastard but rises to become lord commander of the Night’s Watch.
In Season 8, the role for Jon is flipped. Jon may have the Targaryen name, he may be the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, and he may be the most obvious choice to be king, but that doesn’t mean he has to take the job.
Jon cited a line from Maester Aemon in this episode, saying that love is the death of duty. That conversation happened in Season 1 of the show and is nearly cut-and-pasted from A Game of Thrones:
“Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father no children?” Maester Aemon asked.
Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.
“So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”
That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years old, and a high officer of the Night’s Watch; it was not his place to contradict him.
The old man seemed to sense his doubts. “Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other, what would he do?”
Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. “He would do whatever was right,” he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. “No matter what.”
Jon may not have Ned’s name, but he’ll always be Ned’s son in spirit. In this episode, he did what was right in killing Daenerys. He forsook love and did his duty to be the shield that guards the realms of men, as he vowed to do so many seasons ago. This ending checks so many of Thrones’ themes, and it’s hard to see it happening much differently in the books. Jon just has to come back to life first—he’s still dead in the novels—but once he does, this feels like his path.
Daenerys dies by Jon’s hand
Much of the same foreshadowing of Daenerys’s tyrannical turn that was present in the show is also in the books. Dany’s Mad Queen destiny has been speculated about for years. It definitely feels like a classic Martin move to take the big hero and break her bad. Martin hinted at Daenerys’s destiny in 2018:
I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.
He got even more explicit as this interview, which he gave in the run-up to Fire & Blood, went on:
She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule—it just enables you to destroy.
That sure makes it sound like King’s Landing will burn in the books as it did in the show. Daenerys has a long way to go before she gets there, as she has just been taken captive by the Dothraki at the end of A Dance With Dragons, but her book arc is leading her toward a path of destruction, one that will likely include her death.
Arya sails west of Westeros
Arya’s decision to sail away from her home in this episode shouts back to a Season 6 scene when she tells Lady Crane—the actress whom she was told to kill but ends up trying to save—that she wants to see what is west of Westeros:
Lady Crane has barely been introduced in the books (where she’s known as Lady Stork) and has yet to form any relationship with Arya. Meanwhile, Arya hasn’t ever expressed an interest in exploring in the books. She’s still blind at the end of Dance, to give a sense of how far her character still has to come to match up with the show’s timeline.
There also is no Night King character in the books, so Arya’s heroic moment that ended the Long Night may also be a show creation. There’s just very little textual evidence for where Arya’s path will take her in Martin’s novels.
Sansa becomes Queen of the North
Sansa’s arc from naive girl to political player has long been hinted at in the books. At Joffrey’s wedding in A Storm of Swords, Tyrion notes his wife’s talents for the game:
She is good at this, he thought, as he watched her tell Lord Gyles that his cough was sounding better, compliment Elinor Tyrell on her gown, and question Jalabhar Xho about wedding customs in the Summer Isles. His cousin Ser Lancel had been brought down by Ser Kevan, the first time he’d left his sickbed since the battle. He looks ghastly. Lancel’s hair had turned white and brittle, and he was thin as a stick. Without his father beside him holding him up, he would surely have collapsed. Yet when Sansa praised his valor and said how good it was to see him getting strong again, both Lancel and Ser Kevan beamed. She would have made Joffrey a good queen and a better wife if he’d had the sense to love her. He wondered if his nephew was capable of loving anyone.
Sansa is still in the Vale in a sample chapter Martin released for The Winds of Winter, posing as Petyr Baelish’s bastard daughter Alayne. There’s a lot of work to be done to get Sansa—still just 13 in the novels—to become the strong-headed woman she is in the show, but the seeds are there.
Tyrion proposes a new way to pick monarchs and becomes hand
Tyrion’s arc in the show has diverged heavily from the books. As Thrones podcaster and essayist BryndenBFish noted during the weekend, Tyrion hated Jaime and Cersei when he left King’s Landing after killing Tywin. Here are some of Tyrion’s final words to Jaime before he falsely confesses—out of nothing but malice—to killing Joffrey:
Oh, you’ve earned more than that, Jaime. You and my sweet sister and our loving father, yes, I can’t begin to tell you what you’ve earned. But you’ll have it, that I swear to you. A Lannister always pays his debts.
He’s in a dark place for virtually all of A Dance With Dragons, stuck in what is essentially a deep depression. He’s angry and wants revenge. You could even say he wants … fire and blood.
Daenerys and Tyrion will meet in the books, though they haven’t yet. But Tyrion may be on more of a Walter White–type of arc than Daenerys at this point. If he’s to become the paragon of morality that he is in Seasons 7 and 8, then the books have done little to hint at that.
Jaime dies in Cersei’s arms
Jaime running back to Cersei seemed to come out of nowhere, so the same thing could happen in the books, but he’s squarely at odds with his twin sister in the books. Here is the ending of the second-to-latest chapter we have for Jaime, from A Feast for Crows:
This is well before Cersei has even blown up the Sept of Baelor, if that event is to take place in the books. She’s just been imprisoned by the High Sparrow and is begging Jaime to come save her, but he’s already prepared to separate himself from her. This contrasts starkly with the show; at this point in the story—when Jaime is sieging Riverrun—he tells Edmure that he’ll kill every person in the castle to get back to Cersei. Jaime’s famous “trebuchet” speech happens in the books as well, but he doesn’t cite Cersei as his motivation.
If Jaime is to land back with Cersei in the books, Martin will have to do a lot of work to get him there. But perhaps Jaime is on a different path in the novels because his sister’s story seems to deviate from the show. Speaking of which …
Cersei is killed by Daenerys
The show’s cutting of the valonqar prophecy feels essential to Cersei’s ending. In the books, we expect her to have the life choked out of her by a “little brother” of some sort that most believe to be Jaime. In the show, she was killed by some falling rocks. That’s a clear change.
But there’s reason to believe that everything about Cersei’s arc will change in the books. The show completely cut out the story of Aegon Targaryen, who claims to be the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia Martell. By Winds, he has arrived in Storm’s End and is beginning his invasion of the continent years before Daenerys could ever hope to sail west. As readers and show-watchers are increasingly realizing in the face of Season 8, his exclusion from the show has caused a host of ripple effects.
Aegon—sometimes called Young Griff—could be the one to take out Cersei. The Lannister sister is hated by much of the realm, and at this point is well known to have committed incest with Jaime. Meanwhile, the books have painted Griff as young and charismatic—and he has a better claim to the throne than Daenerys. That would provide a more compelling backdrop for Daenerys’s villainous turn: She’d be going up against a beloved Targaryen king who can credibly say he just saved the city from a tyrant that the smallfolk hated. Cersei may not be the Big Bad in the books at all.
Even if Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor in the books, Martin will likely explore the aftermath of that move in a way the show never did. Cersei will likely face riots from an unhappy populace as a result, and that could create a domino effect that would completely alter Cersei’s arc and conclusion. At any rate, Martin won’t have Cersei just stare out of balconies and sip wine for an entire book. It seems like Cersei will have a different end.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
