Game Of Theories: Crouching Night King, Hidden Targaryen!

Hey all, it’s time for another weekly roundup of some of the most popular Game of Thrones theories doing the rounds. Last week we controversially tackled the prediction of a characters death and which character would do the deed and…. a certain dragon theory, which may have got some traction for some reason?

RELATED: Game Of Theories – [SPOILERS]’s Inevitable Death, The Ice Dragon, & The Magnificent Seven

It’s probably worth stating off the bat, that not a single theory I have talked about here (or last week) is something I came up with myself. This is designed as a way to highlight some of the big popular theories to those who possibly may have not come across them yet.

As always it’s worth mentioning now…

SPOILERS up to an including Season 6 Episode 6 are inevitable…

SPOILERS for the final episode and Season 8 are POSSIBLE if any of these end up being correct.

SO BE AWARE BEFORE READING ON…

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This week I am banking on the fact that there will be very little spoilers, because I am going to talk about two massively popular fan theories that I DONT think are going to happen, and a couple of small ones I like as well. I will present the theories themselves and the reasons for it being popular, and then I will give my own reasons why I disagree. Hopefully you readers can chime in with your own thoughts below as well. I’d love to debate them with you all in more detail than I can include here.

Lets gets started with a theory that seems to have gained huge support over the last few weeks.

Bran is the Night King?

Okay, so the theory goes that we are heading towards a realization in Season 8, that Bran is in fact the Night King. The idea is that Bran will travel into the past to try and find a way of defeating the Night King and the White Walkers, but in doing so will actually initiate several events in the past, and he will be the cause of the Mad King going crazy by telling him to burn the White Walkers. Also, he will at some point in the past, become Bran the Builder, the Stark who apparently built the Wall. However none of his efforts will have any effect because as the old three eyed Raven told him already about the past “The ink is dry” and cannot be changed. However people have pointed out that Bran MAY be different, he WAS able to make his Father turn around at the Tower of Joy, and he WAS also able to damage Hodor by warging into him whilst also being connected to him in the past. Both of these events happened in Season 6 Episode 5 if you want to back and watch them again. But causality is funny like that, and the ink was indeed dry.

So Bran continually failing to stop the Walkers ends up going right back to the scene he has already witnessed, the Children of the Forest turning the first man into a White Walker. He wargs into the man in question to try and talk to the Children and stop them, but he gets trapped. The dragon glass is inserted, and Bran becomes the Night King. He is stuck in this time, and over thousands of years loses all semblance of humanity and wants to march South to kill himself and all the others that should have been his allies. The end result being that Jon will have to kill his own cousin, whom he thinks of as a brother, to end the White Walkers.

The only real “evidence” being used for this theory is the scene of the Children making the first White Walker.

The key point there is that as the Dragonglass is inserted into the man’s chest, Bran visibly strains like he is in pain, and the shot of Bran doing so has him positioned in a similar way to the man being turned. Folks think this imagery is a foreshadowing of Bran later being in this very position and feeling the Dragonglass going in.

Now, while this is initially an interesting theory, and a hell of a twist if it happened, I just don’t buy it for several reasons.

Firstly, from a pure story point of view it makes no sense. Every shock or twist that has happened so far has appeared obvious and logical after the fact. The Red Wedding made sense and was led up to, and Hodor made sense and was led up to. This…Doesn’t make any sense and has not been properly foreshadowed so far. Wouldn’t it feel a little cheap to suddenly find out later in Season 8 that Bran is in fact the big bad guy? Why would Bran suddenly change his entire reason for being and become the main villain? I don’t think it would be earned in the way other reveals have been. In short, I just think it would be a cheap ending to such an unconventional story.

Secondly, the ink is dry, remember? The Hodor/Bran time loop already happened, Bran just closed the causal loop when he warged into young Hodor. When his father turned at the Tower of Joy, it didn’t change anything, the events that followed remained as they were. In short, nothing Bran does can change the past, if he takes action, then it already happened like that anyway due to causality. Now for this to play out like the theory suggests would mean that Season 8 is going to be like a season of Doctor Who, with Bran basically playing the Doctor. Time travel is such a tricky thing to get right in stories, and very few have done so successfully, in my humble opinion. I think you’d lose the audience with this twist.

Also…. Why? Why would everyone have helped Bran get to that point? Why would Bloodraven want Bran to become the Night King? Surely to break the loop, all you’d have to do is kill Bran in Season 1, rather than have Jon kill him in Season 8, after eight seasons of death and turmoil? Would that be a good ending, that if someone killed Bran in Season 1 Episode 1 after Jaime pushed him, then the whole show wouldn’t have happened? I don’t think so.

Another valid reason is that so far in the books there is no Night King character. Okay, sure, the books are further behind now than the show, but the only reference that’s similar in the books is the character of the “Night’s King” — a subtle difference in name perhaps only, but the backstory is much different. The Night’s King was the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch (and a Stark), who was said to have fallen in love with a female White Walker. He married her, killing the men of the Watch as a result. It’s a mythical story, with not much hard fact to it in the books. One thing is for certain though, this Night’s King was not even born when the first White Walker was made thousands of years earlier, he was a member of the Night’s Watch, which means he was well after the “Long Night” and well after the wall was first built. So…. would they introduce a character not in the books and then have Bran become him? Hopefully you can see that it’s a bit of a stretch, and if you are anything like me, you’ll also realize it would be a bad move for the show.

I am all for Bran becoming Bran the Builder, or doing a lot more sightseeing in the past, especially to find out more about the Night King and the Walkers, but I’ll be annoyed if this turns out to be true.

Status – Debunked…for now…

Last Episode’s Timeline Not so Farfetched?

However, I will present another small theory here that would, if correct, prove there is some connection between Bran and the Night King if only that he is also a greenseer (someone who can see future).

Many fans have had some issues with this week’s episode. Why did the army of the dead only show up once they had captured the wight? Where did they get those chains from suddenly? Why didn’t they use those ice spears on Jon and the rest of the seven? Why not just build a bridge with dead bodies or use his ice powers to help freeze the water faster.

Why?

Because it was all an elaborate trap by the Night King for the sole purpose of dealing with the dragons and getting his dragon steed.

The Night King planned all this in order to get the dragons to where he wanted them. They trapped the seven and left them there long enough to make sure Dany was on her way with the dragons. Do you think they just ignored the unarmed Gendry running away? They had the ice spears all ready, they had the chains close by for pulling the dragon. Notice where Bran sees the army of the dead marching in the previous episode “Eastwatch” is the same place the seven find only one small unit when they arrive. Why did the Walkers retreat just out of view? Because it all went according to plan other than the final ice spear missing Drogon. Watch it again with this in mind, and it all starts to make much more sense and is also far more sinister and terrifying.

Status – Undead and loving it!

Next up is one of the most enduring and popular theories amongst book fans that has been doing the rounds since before the show was ever made.

Tyrion the Targaryen?

The theory goes that because Rhaegar Targaryen claimed that the dragon must have three heads. This has led people to believe there must be three Targaryens left. The idea was that this would be one Taragaryen for each of Dany’s three dragons. Now, in the books they have the character of Aegon Targaryen, the child that the Mountain was supposed to have killed in Robert’s rebellion. Varys claimed that he swapped the babies to save the legitimate heir to the throne.

The fact that this character has been excluded in the show has led fans to believe that this was a lie of some kind, or that the character will meet an untimely death in the books. If not, why exclude such an important character? Many fans have fallen in love instead with the theory that Tyrion Lannister is in fact the secret third Targaryen child. It is said that Aerys Targaryen (The Mad King) either forced himself upon or otherwise slept with Tywin Lannister’s wife while he was Hand of the King, and this was one of the reasons that Tywin resigned as Hand to King Aerys. Ergo, Mrs. Lannister got pregnant, and the resulting child was Tyrion Lannister, and a major reason for Tywins hatred of his own son (he did almost drown the baby in the sea after birth).

So Tyrion will discover he is Dany’s half brother, and actually a bastard. Jon and Dany will perish in Season 8, and Tyrion will sit on the Iron Throne and be the third dragon rider. That’s the gist of it

Fans use Tywins death scene as evidence of this theory, shown in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZjlagFfNC4

Tywin clearly says ,’You are no son of mine’ but was he being literal or referencing the fact that no son of his would ever disrespect their father like this? It’s also worth noting that before Tyrion shot him, Tywin said that he was his son, so it seems to make sense that he was just upset that Tyrion had just shot him.

Now recent events have given this theory a good knocking, but it’s still popular, personally I have never liked it and here’s why.

Jon’s true parentage has been teased and foreshadowed since Season 1, Tyrion’s has not. Wouldn’t it again feel cheap to suddenly in Season 8 say, “oh by the way Tyrion, you are Dan’s half brother and that’s why your father hated you!” Who else is a secret Targaryen? It’s like Meera being the secret twin sister of Jon Snow theory. Why would it be needed and why would it make any sense? All it does is lessen the impact of Jon.

For me, this would cheapen the relationship between Tyrion and Tywin, and also the character development of Tyrion to be the man we see today. It would give Tywin an excuse for “hating” Tyrion, and personally I think it’s far better for them to be father and son, and for Tywin’s prejudice and hate to be purely driven by Tyrion’s dwarfism.

It’s also clear after the events of this week, that we really do not need to have a third dragon rider. Now, before you scream “The dragon has three heads though?” Yes that’s what Rhaegar said. He had two children at the time with his wife, and was unable to have any more. I only think it meant that Rhaegar knew he had to have a third child, and thus his eloping with Lyanna Stark, which initiated the rebellion against the Targaryens. Rhaegar believed this third child would be “The Prince that was promised” aka Mr. Jon ‘Targaryen’ Snow himself. In fact, it would be far more powerful and dramatic to finds out that Cersei and Jaime were the children of Aerys Targaryen, and that Tyrion was Tywin’s only biological child. But that’s also an unnecessary stretch that would be a twist for twist’s sake for me.

So unless they pull off a weird and unnecessary twist in Season 8…

Status – Debunked – for good in my humble opinion. Let’s put this one to bed

Other Theories

So I leave you with a couple of small tidbits like last week.

I have nothing major to predict from this week’s show, other than the character death I predicted last week, (Which readers have informed me appears in leaked script notes that I have steered well clear of), so I won’t mention that again, but if you can’t remember and really want to know, just CLICK HERE and scroll to the bottom.

However, I have always believed that Clegane bowl would happen at some point. If you don’t know what that means, it’s the theory that The Hound and The Mountain will fight to the death eventually. The Clegane brothers despise one another, and I have always thought that the perfect end to the character arc of The Hound is to have him kill the Brother who tormented and scarred him as a child. When discussing this with other fans, my issue has always been how the two of them would ever end up in the same place. Well, where is The Hound headed this week? That’s Right, King’s Landing. And who is at Kings Landing? Yep. I’m not saying it will happen this week, I just hope it does, I really, really hope it does.

Lastly, I don’t think we are going to see that ice dragon in action attacking the wall until early Season 8, unless it happens right at the end of next week’s episode? But I think it would be unusual for too much action in a final episode of a season.

Thanks again to the BumderCats for being my eyes, my ears and my harshest critics. And a shout out again to fellow LRM writer Seth McDonald for the late night (for me) chats.

So that’s it for this week folks, as always please let me know what you think, agree and disagree with my reasoning in the comments below, BUT… Please stay away from any confirmed spoilers, if you have any, I do not want to know!

I wish you good fortune in the comments wars to come.

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