Game of Thrones season 8: 5 last-minute Sansa Stark predictions

Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark. Photo: Helen Sloane/HBO

Daenerys and Sansa will turn out to be friends

Thanks to the season 8 trailers that feature a somewhat frosty-looking introduction between the Dragon Queen and the Lady of Winterfell, almost everyone’s assuming Sansa and Daenerys Targaryen will be instant enemies.

This is not just a tired trope – all women must immediately compete with one another! Duh! – it’s lazy writing. Given the dire situation in Westeros, and the terrifying threat looming north of the Wall, the idea that two smart, capable women would immediately default to catfight mode is ridiculous. (And, quite frankly, annoying as a viewer.)

Both Dany and Sansa have made hard choices and set long-term plans into motion – they understand that there are bigger things than their mutual feelings about Jon and queenship or whatever it happens to be going on. The idea that both of them won’t immediately rise above that kind of pettiness is absurd.

And just maybe, rather than tolerate one another, Dany and Sansa will even become something like friends. There are so few women of power in this story, after all, and almost no one has gone through anything approaching what these two have. They’ve both been victims of a patriarchal society, and they’ve both worked hard to find and claim their own power.