- After almost a decade on the air, HBO's Game of Thrones will come to an end tonight.
- Both the show and the book series on which it's based, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, contain several prophecies—many of which are still in play going into the finale.
- Here are the Game of Thrones prophecies you need to keep in mind going into the final episode.
This post contains spoilers for Games of Thrones through Season 8, episode 5.
Tonight marks the end of an era. After eight seasons, HBO's pop culture phenomenon Game of Thrones will come to an end.
The events of the show's penultimate episode, "The Bells," left many fans shocked, disappointed, and motivated to sign online petitions demanding that the show's final season be scrapped and re-written. In "The Bells," fan favorite character Daenerys Targaryen fulfilled a long-running prophecy of sorts and became the Mad Queen, burning King's Landing to ash and killing thousands of innocent civilians even after the Lannister army surrendered.
With just one more episode to go, there are still a handful of prophecies up in the air, including a few that could hint at Mad Queen Dany's fate. Here are the Game of Thrones prophecies you need to know for the finale.
Jon Snow is Azor Ahai
One of the show's longest running and most directly discussed prophecies is that of Azor Ahai/The Prince(ss) That Was Promised. Finding said prince(ss) was pretty much Melisandre's entire purpose in life. Basically, Azor Ahai was a legendary figure in GOT history who defeated evil to end the Long Night thousands of years ago and the followers of the Lord of Light (like Melisandre) have been big believers that Azor Ahai will be reincarnated as the Prince That Was Promised (or, as Missandei pointed out, since the word for "prince" is gender neutral in High Valyrian, possibly the Princess That Was Promised). The idea is that this second coming of Azor Ahai would destroy another great evil and save the world from another Long Night.
Now, we all thought that the great evil and long night in question referred to the White Walkers and the Night King, which is why it was so confusing when Arya Stark defeated the Night King, in spite of not really fitting the Azor Ahai prophecy. It's possible that we were all just reading the prophecy wrong and that the real evil for this generation of Westeros is Daenerys herself. Under this reading, Jon Snow could kill her and fulfill the prophecy. Since another part of the lore of Azor Ahai involves him driving a sword through the heart of his true love, this could get extra on the nose, depending on how Jon does the deed.
Arya Stark is the Grey Girl
This one isn't a prophecy that show watchers know, but it appears in the books and on Reddit and it ties in perfectly to a scene from "The Bells," so here it is, per Redditor roadsiderose:
When Melisandre asks R'hllor for a vision of Azor Ahai, she sees a vision of a girl as grey as ash fleeing on a dying horse.
I don't know if you noticed this in the last episode, but I was shocked to finally see Melisandre's vision in S8E5, when Arya flees King's Landing on that pale horse. Arya is the grey girl.
"The girl. I must find the girl again, the grey girl on the dying horse. Jon Snow would expect that of her, and soon. It would not be enough to say the girl was fleeing. He would want more, he would want the when and where, and she did not have that for him. She had seen the girl only once. A girl as grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away. Melisandre (ADWD)"
This vision in the books, has been misinterpreted as Alys Karstark fleeing, was infact Arya at the end of Episode 5, when she mounts the pale mare covered in ash.
The similarities between the description and the imagery of Arya in episode 5 are striking. It's not clear if this is really a prophecy or if anything will come of it in the finale (it certainly won't be Melisandre getting word to Jon Snow, in any case), but it's interesting to think about.
Daenerys' House of the Undying Vision
In Season 2, Daenerys visits the House of the Undying and has a vision of the Throne Room at King's Landing. In the vision, the Red Keep is destroyed and covered in what appears to. be snow. Given the events of "The Bells," it seems that what we've long assumed to be snow might in fact be ash and the vision could have referred not to a monarchy that Dany needed to reclaim and fix, but one that she herself destroyed.
It's also possible, of course, that the vision really does contain Snow, which could be symbolic of Dany's nephew/lover, Jon Snow, who could still claim the throne from her since he A) has the stronger blood claim to it and B) didn't just snap and murder thousands of people with a dragon.
Either way, this vision seems like a prophecy that will play into the events of the finale, in one way of another. In the vision, Dany also sees herself reunited with Khal Drogo and their son, so maybe she'll have a happily ever after in the after life, because it would be shocking if she survived the final episode at this point.
Arya's Green Eyes
Finally, there's another Arya Stark prophecy still lingering out there. When they first meet, Melisandre prophecizes that Arya will close many eyes—including brown eyes, blue eyes, and green eyes. She's closed a lot of mortal brown eyes (like the Freys, for example) and some pretty prominent blue eyes (the Night King), but we've yet to see her kill a green-eyed person. For a while, it looked like that green-eyed kill would be Cersei, but Arya abandoned her quest to kill the Lannister matriarch. In the series, Daenerys has green eyes, which has led to speculation that Arya could be the one to take her out in the end.
We'll just have to tune in tonight (as if we all weren't already planning to) to find out how these loose ends tie up.
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