Season 8: Sophie Turner, Gwendoline Christie, Daniel Portman.
photo: Helen Sloane/HBO
The final season of Game of Thrones is almost upon us and the future of our favorite female characters hangs in the balance. Who will live? Who will die?
When it comes to Game of Thrones, balance is probably the wrong word; it’s less of a teeter-totter, really, and more of a slingshot ride. Anything could happen to anyone. The only thing we truly know is that it’s going to be absolute chaos.
But it doesn’t stop us theorizing, does it?
We’d be lying to ourselves if we said we didn’t have a wishlist for season 8, and what it holds in store, particularly for the women of the series. The women, who have so often been victims of violence and trauma, who have held their own against a turbulent sea of troubles — yes, we certainly have some demands for them, and they’re mostly therapy-related, to be honest.
Just this once, Game of Thrones, everybody lives! (Except Cersei, maybe. What can you do?)
Arya Stark
Arya, like most of her family, has fought through hell and high water to be here, alive in the eighth season, and she has had markedly more success than the majority of her Stark kin. Frankly, we want to keep it that way.
We’ve all become familiar with her lengthy kill list (“Joffrey, Cersei, The Hound…“), but Arya has actually been responsible for very few of the deaths her enemies have met, so it might be nice to let her experience a little more catharsis in this season. Perhaps Melisandre might meet her end at the point of Needle.
Failing that, however, we’d also settle for her being reunited with Gendry. Strong, burly, gentle Gendry is the only man worthy of Ned Stark’s fiercest child. May they live happily together and go on many adventures. Whatever happens to her, a staid life will not be Arya’s fate. Showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff can at least give her a little muscle for the journey.
Oh, and some therapy wouldn’t go amiss either.
Sansa Stark
Queen of the North or bust. This girl, so often misunderstood and woefully maligned, deserves the absolute world, and she deserves to be the Queen she was intended to be when she left Winterfell in the light-hearted family comedy that was the first episode of season 1.
She has proven herself to be made of steel and a shrewd politician to boot. Give her a life of public service, but make it peaceful and full of kindness. For goodness sake, give the girl all the lemon cakes you have.
Oh, and some therapy wouldn’t go amiss either.
Lyanna Mormont
Ah, Queen Sansa’s most trusted ally and friend. She lives. We accept no other fate for our pre-teen icon. She leads her people to victory, covers herself in glory, and continues to serve scalding hot tea to the people who’d belittle her. Come through, Lady Lyanna!
Cersei Lannister
There is perhaps one thing we can be fairly sure of: Cersei Lannister is not long for this world. The last time we saw her, she announced to her brother her pregnancy but Maggy the Frog’s prophecy foresaw that she’d have only three children. One thing we absolutely do not want is for Cersei to die in childbirth. Whilst it would be vaguely poetic to have Cersei quietly slip away, instead of raging as she so usually does, she should really have an iconic death, not such a gendered one.
Personally, we’d like to see her go the way of the Mad King. We’ve seen her penchant for wildfire, and it’d be both iconic and deserved, if her brother-lover Jaime were the one to dispatch her in the end, forced in the same way he was when he killed Aerys Targaryen: by his conscience.
Poetic cinema at its finest, right?
Missandei
Missandei has a really important looking kiss with Grey Worm in the season 8 trailer, and if we had our way, both would survive, and they’d marry and have a lovely quiet life of being free of all this Westerosi nonsense.
We’d like to see a Missandei that is beholden to nobody. It’s what she deserves.
Oh, and still more therapy wouldn’t go amiss, either.
Brienne of Tarth
Okay, call us heteronormative, but what we’d really, really like for Brienne is for her to marry Jaime Lannister and, like Arya, live an adventurous, love-filled life.
But because we live for drama (why else would we watch this show otherwise), what we’d also really like is for Jaime to die in her arms, confessing his love for her in some noble, yet offhand way that makes her cry-chuckle until she shakes him around the shoulders only to find that he’s gone. And the battle around them resumes!
Brienne deserves an iconic love scene; she deserves to be Kate Winslet in her own story. Including Jaime here is about giving her the sort of arc-defining angst usually reserved for male heroes, by fridging her beloved and letting her ascend, fueled by anger, love, and righteousness.
She should be the one to defeat the Night King once and for all, and she rules the North alongside Sansa, fulfilling her duty to Catelyn Stark and becoming the most revered knight in all of Westeros.
(Also: please see Tormund, standing sheepishly next to Brienne at Sansa’s coronation, like Faramir and Eowyn in Return of the King…Love wins.)