I made the misguided decision to go camping this past weekend rather than watch the notoriously devastating pre-season finale episode of Game of Thrones and by the time I had returned to civilization/Wi-Fi, Viserion had died a horrible, icy death which basically means I’m never stepping foot outside the city again. Sorry for letting you down, my dude.
I barely had time to recover from that crippling loss before a misleading headline from Cosmopolitan gave me a near stroke: “A Game of Thrones Director Just Low-Key Confirmed That Either Sansa or Arya Will Die.” EXCUSE ME.
Should we be shocked by any more deaths in this miserable show? Absolutely not, they’re inevitable. But not for our poor Starks, who have already suffered so much. This is their season! They’re reuniting like wildfire, falling in love with their aunts and generally running shit like the badasses they all are, and now this? It was enough of a shock that I actually forced myself to click the link and further my research on a topic that I should probably be well-versed in at this point, which was when I realized I’d been duped by none other than Cosmo. Clickbait strikes again.
In an interview with HuffPost, Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor had this to say about the growing tensions in Arya and Sansa’s relationship: “I love the fact that these two come back, they’re both lethal, and I just wanted to give the impression, as much as possible, that one of them is going to die, but you’re not sure which one…. Something is coming very soon between them, and it will be violent but surprising.”
Alright everyone, now is the time to calm the fuck down. First of all, Game of Thrones plot twists are more safely guarded than matters of national security, which is not a big bragging right at this point but let’s all just pretend. If the director of the most popular show in the world (completely unsubstantiated statement, it’s fine) decided to sit down and casually confirm a character death in the week leading up to the finale, he would have lost not only his job but most likely also his life.
Second, there is a huge difference between “give the impression that one of them is going to die” and then actually killing them. In fact, that almost seems like something someone would say who is purposely trying to mislead an audience and incite terror in the days leading up to a season finale. But what do I know, I’ve just written about this show religiously for ten weeks out of the last three years.
Besides, Arya murdering Sansa or vice-versa after last week’s episode would be far too obvious a move for this show. My guess is that their rivalry is all a ploy that will lead to the ultimate “violent but surprising” moment of the finale: both of them murdering Littlefinger. Catelyn Stark’s daughters are too fucking smart to be taken down by the rat man that spent his entire life fantasizing about her, and he’s going to learn that lesson the hard way.
2017 is a fiery wasteland and the only thing that makes us all feel slightly better about it is that we’re not quite as bad as Westeros. They can’t take that from us, not yet.
Caveat: if the show runners are bold enough to kill off a Stark this Sunday, we better be rewarded with a 15-minute-long sex scene between Jon and Dany. Yeah, they’re related. I don’t give shit.
