Sign up to get our season-by-season rewatch guides straight to your inbox. It’s an obsessive run-up to the final season of “Game of Thrones,” including deep dives into past twists, scenes to skip if you’re watching with kids and tributes to characters we loved (and lost). Season 8 is coming.
It will be big! Monumentalism has always been a key component of a show that began with a giant sword beheading a deserter and most recently saw a zombie dragon destroying a leviathan Wall. But this season will be even bigger, with several nearly feature length episodes and some of the largest, most complex sequences ever filmed for television.
There will be new alliances. As one might expect, battles between the living and the dead inspire new partnerships.
It will be satisfying. Or not. Fan theories abound about, well, everything involved in this show. And a fringe-y but persistent one holds that the show’s ur-bad guy, the undead Night King, will be the one who ultimately sits on the Iron Throne.
That seems less “bittersweet” — as the “Thrones” mastermind George R.R. Martin prefers his endings — than “nutty and unlikely.” But so did plenty of other things that eventually transpired on “Game of Thrones.” So who knows?
Who Will Win ‘Game of Thrones’? Here Are the Favorites.
Sure there’s a big zombie battle coming soon to settle, you know, the fate of humankind. But there’s also the little matter of the actual game of thrones.
As with most games, there are plenty of places ready and willing to make it a little more interesting, as they say. These are the top 12 contenders to rule the realm at the end of “Game of Thrones,” ranked in order of probability, according to the gambling site OddsShark.
1. Bran Stark
Odds: 3:1
How is Bran the favorite? He can’t fight or even carry on a functional conversation — how could he possibly beat out everyone else for the throne? But couldn’t that also be an argument in his favor on a show that has consistently striven for surprise? Bran’s egoless omniscience could be just what the realm needs after years of toxically self-interested and vindictive leadership. All hail King Three-Eye, the first of his name.
2. Jon Snow
Odds: 3.5:1
Jon is the New England Patriots of this contest: The obvious favorite and most boring choice. But the Patriots have lost as many Super Bowls as they’ve won.
3. Daenerys Targaryen
Odds: 5:1
She has dragons and the strongest will to power, aside from perhaps the irredeemably doomed Cersei. But she’s also shown enough of her father’s crazy streak to make you wonder if she’ll self-destruct before she wins the big prize.
4. Sansa Stark
Odds: 6:1
Once one of the most feckless people in this story, Sansa might actually be the best equipped to rule the Seven Kingdoms at this point. But given how things went for her the last time she was in King’s Landing, would she want to go back? The case in favor: She’s shown a desire to lead, in her interactions with Jon at Winterfell, and she can be ice-cold when it’s called for, as with the executions of Ramsay and Littlefinger.
5. Gendry
Odds: 7:1
He rowed for like four years and has the guns to prove it. His Baratheon blood also gives him a decent claim on the throne. But are they really going to give it to a guy who’s had maybe 11 minutes of screen time?
6. The Night King
Odds: 10:1
The popular choice among nihilists and environmentalists who have gone all-in on the White-Walkers-as-climate-change metaphor. But George R.R. Martin has said the ending will be “bittersweet,” not “weird and deflating.”
7. Tyrion Lannister
Odds: 10:1
He’s come a long way from his drinking and knowing things days. But doesn’t the final act of his moral awakening seem destined to be a noble, gut-wrenching sacrifice?
8. Jonerys offspring to be named later
Odds: 14:1
The Season 7 finale suggested that Dany might get pregnant with her nephew Jon’s child, and with that bloodline, the tyke would be one of the most powerful people in this story. But based on the reigns of Joffrey and Tommen, the show seems to take a dim view of incest baby rulers.
9. Littlefinger
Odds: 14:1
Wait, didn’t we just say he’d been executed? A theory making the rounds online maintains that the man we saw Arya kill in the Season 7 finale was not actually Littlefinger, but a Faceless Man he hired to take his place. (Exhibit A is a brief scene in Season 7 in which he gives a woman a coin, just like Arya did when she fled for Braavos.) Stranger things have happened on this show, I guess. At any rate, the interest in this has apparently been strong enough to get him on the board.
10. Arya Stark
Odds: 14:1
She’s a fighter not a ruler.
11. Samwell Tarly
Odds: 14:1
He’s a writer not a ruler.
12. Cersei Lannister
Odds: 25:1
In her black heart of hearts, not even Cersei expects Cersei to survive the season.
Sure, there are only six episodes left of “Game of Thrones,” but they will be really, really long. The first two episodes of the season, which begins on April 14, will last just under an hour. But starting with Episode 3, the remaining installments each will last around 80 minutes. Check back for weekly recaps each Sunday night.
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