Valar morghulis: All men (and women) must die. But when?
Welcome to Valar Morghulis, a weekly column about death and destruction in the wide world of Westeros. Each week, we’ll try to predict how likely EVERY character on Game of Thrones is to breathe their last in the upcoming episode. We’ll also review what we got right, as well as what we got horribly wrong, last time.
Before we get to the mysterious Episode 804, let’s take a look back at the fallen in “The Long Night.” Here’s what we said about Dolorous Edd:
1. Dolorous Edd: 95%. “Oh, Edd. We enjoyed your boundless sarcasm for seven seasons, but after reuniting with Sam and Jon last week, you’ve made your peace and now your watch has ended.”
Number one on our list, and the first named character to die. That’s double points for us.
2. Beric Dondarrion: 90%. “In the teaser trailer, we see Beric searching for something inside the walls of Winterfell alongside the Hound. Mark our words: things are gonna go from bad to worse for the lighting lord. Really our only question is how many wights does Beric take with him when he goes?”
Beric did indeed take down a ton of wights before he went, but most importantly, he guarded Arya in a moment of danger. Good job guy!
3. Theon Greyjoy: 90%. “We’re calling it: Our boy Theon is going down while defending Bran in the Godswood, completing the circle he started when he took the castle in season 2.”
Poor Theon. We loved him to death, but you can’t tell your sister you’ll be right back and then drop yourself into a survival horror film. Them’s the rules.
5. Jorah Mormont: 85%. “Jorah has made his peace with Daenerys and Lyanna Mormont, and the old bear won’t let anything happen to either so long as he’s alive. Which won’t be for long.”
Okay, so Jorah didn’t exactly protect Lyanna Mormont, but the old bear refused to die as long as there was a threat to his beloved Daenerys, and we salute him for that.
10. Alys Karstark: 55%. “Ditto for Alys, who we saw last week in the war council. She’ll be a death we know but hardly feel.”
So we didn’t actually see Alys die, but she was in the godswood, so we’re confident she didn’t make it out alive.
20. Lyanna Mormont: 35%. “It would take an army or a dragon to break through Lyanna’s steely-eyed glare. As it happens, both are present.”
We didn’t see her death coming, but we were pretty spot on with the manner in which it happened. Dragon, undead giant…tomato, tomatoe.
29. Viserion: 15%. “Killing an undead dragon has to be harder than killing a living one right? Viserion should be safe.”
As it happens, it was pretty hard to kill Viserion, who squared off with both living dragons and walked away.
30. Melisandre: 15%. “Similar to Nymeria, if Melisandre shows up, it’s to help our heroes escape. She probably won’t survive the rescue.”
Melisandre herself basically agreed with us from the moment she showed up on screen, foretelling her death before the dawn.
34. The Night King:13%. “We think the Night King will make it all the way to King’s Landing before things are wrapped up, but honestly, we have nothing to go on but instinct. We could see the big popsicle go down this week.”
See folks, never listen to your instincts. The Night King went down in a big way, and the Seven Kigndoms will never be the same. Nor will our ego.
The overall body count wasn’t quite as high as we expected, but all and all, not bad in terms of predictions. The Night King was a surprise, but a welcome one. Now it’s on to episode 804, with a renewed focus on King’s Landing. We don’t know a whole lot about the episode, but with an extended running time, surely they can fit in a death or two, right?
****Percentages refer to how likely the character is to die, not survive.****
