Warning! Spoilers below for the finale of ‘Game of Thrones’ season seven, which aired in the US on Sunday night.
Like the saying goes, what goes up, must come down in a hail of ice dragon fire.
In the closing moments of the ‘Game of Thrones’ season seven finale, we saw Tormund (Kristofer Hivju) and Beric (Richard Dormer) keeping watch on the Wall as the army of the dead showed up with the Night King on the back of ice dragon Viserion. (Damn. The Night King just showed off his new whip.)
The dragon exhaled blue flames, destroying part of the Wall, and now the army of the dead is marching through Westeros. Things just got real.
The theories that the Wall would fall were right. But this situation raises a ton of questions.
Was Dany’s decision to bring her dragons north the stupidest thing she could’ve done?
We first questioned this after the Night King turned Viserion. Now that the dragon seems to be the reason the Wall came down, we need to look into it again.
Regardless of how dumb Dany’s (Emilia Clarke) decision was (it was really, really dumb), the writing was already on the Wall. It was coming down.
The show has been dropping hints for years, such as this little throw-away line from season six:
Whether it was the dragon, or even the theory that since Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) was marked by the Night King the magical protections on the Wall were removed, the thing was definitely going to fall. Dany may have just expedited the process.
Tormund, you OK bro?
We didn’t see Tormund after all the chaos at the Wall, but you can probably assume he’s going to be OK for season eight.
Tormund’s got no time for an off-screen death. That dude still has monster-sized, world-conquering kids to make with Brienne (Gwendoline Christie).
Will Drogon kill Viserion?
Now that the Wall is down, we know a dragon face-off is coming.
We speculated that possibly the only way to kill ice Viserion is by killing the Night King. Now that we know if you kill a White Walker all the wights it turned also die, this seems like the most efficient method. And George R.R. Martin had a kids book in the ’80s called ‘The Ice Dragon’, in which an ice dragon totally demolished some fire-breathing ones. So, the task may be impossible without this Night King option.
However, time and time again we’ve seen that everything on ‘Game of Thrones’ is cyclical. Because of this, perhaps Drogon will be the one to kill Viserion, since his namesake, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), killed Viserion’s namesake, Viserys (Harry Lloyd).
What happens now?
Winter is here. Get ready for the show to be a lot like Old Nan’s (Margaret John) story from Season 1 about the Long Night. She told Bran:
Fear is for the Long Night, when the sun hides for years and children are born and live and die, all in darkness. That is the time for fear, my little lord, when the White Walkers move through the woods. Thousands of years ago there came a night that lasted a generation. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts. And women smothered their babies rather than see them starve, and wept and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks.
Old Nan also dropped some info that the White Walkers hunted with packs of spiders “big as hounds.”
The Wall was said to be created after the end of the Long Night and may have stood for 8,000 years. But now it’s gone, so yeah, sucks to be a citizen in Westeros. Get your bug spray.
This article originally appeared on our US site, but has been adapted for our UK audience.