Game of Thrones season 7: Did the Night King kill Tormund and Beric in the finale?

It might not be on the same level of whether or not Jon Snow would come back to life, but Game of Thrones is playing coy with the fates of two characters.

“The Dragon and the Wolf” ended with a bang — or, more specifically, a collapse, the likes of which has some wide-reaching ramifications. Namely, there’s now a lot of zombies (okay, wights) and mystical undead beings with resurrection powers about to stomp all over the Seven Kingdoms if the living don’t get their collective act together. But in the short-term, it also may have ended the runs of two long-lived Game of Thrones characters: Berric Dondarrion and Tormund Giantsbane.

Unfortunately, the show’s official Twitter feed is providing no answers to what exactly is happening with the two of them, instead reposting a photo from actor Kristofer Hivju showing both him and Richard Dormer.

It’s captioned “Pray for us!”

Of course, that suggests that the characters might actually live. Entertainment Weekly speculated much the same earlier this week, pointing out that we didn’t actually see them expire.

That would feel like a bit of a copout, though. After all, Game of Thrones literally pulled this same trick this season. Remember how at the end of “The Spoils of War,” Jaime Lannister sunk into the Blackwater Rush, and it kicked off a week of analyzing everything to try and discern whether or not he’d actually drowned? Remember that? That was this season. The “are-they-or-aren’t-they” question can only be played so many times before it gets too obvious.

If I had to guess, I’d say that only one of them would be likely to survive, and of the two, Tormund seems like the better choice. That’s not just because Hivju has also spoken about Brienne and Tormund recently in such a way that suggests we haven’t seen the last of the two of them in the same frame, but the show has also casually alluded to the fact that with Thoros of Myr dead, it’s unlikely that Beric will be able to make another comeback.

Next: 5 early predictions for Game of Thrones season 8

Beric talked about coming back to life because there was something left for him to do. Is that something saving someone “kissed by fire,” or another way to refer to Tormund that also made a resurgence in “Beyond the Wall”?