I'm so mad that they didn't take that incredible opportunity of like, "Yeah, we have this character
who can change faces."
Mm-hmm.
And also then it gives Jaime a better ending than he had, and Cersei just got crushed by
rocks, and Arya just sailed away to Kokomo or wherever, and I'm unhappy.
Kokomo.
Now, Tom, I know you're not into geek stuff, so-
Thank you for saying that.
... I know you're at a bit of a disadvantage here.
I mean in your research, when I asked you about this, what did you find about Game of
Thrones that you kind of thought might be interesting to talk about with this topic?
You know, I got to tell you, man, I tried to read into this, and I know we have fun,
right?
We like a good laugh.
We try.
Whatever this show is called, but I genuinely know nothing about Game of Thrones.
I am like-
That's fine.
Everybody's...
It's like the famous quote from the show, "I know nothing," just like that character
Jack Frost.
You got it.
Nailed it.
With all of the confusingly spelled names and stuff, I can imagine, even just trying
to read a bunch of theories if you're not familiar, it feels like reading a foreign
language.
Right.
You know, there's a lot going on and I'm really not familiar.
Yeah.
But anytime that we talk about this show, I'm always fascinated to hear you guys, especially
Nina knows so much about it.
Right.
I really don't.
So I would love a better introduction into this world via that conduit.
And if I could just ask clarifying questions as we go, I feel like that would really be
helpful.
That's fair.
I would love to, but I am curious, Brian, you have watched the show, yes?
I watched the whole series.
Yeah.
I read all the books.
Yes.
But when it comes...
One thing I never did was go on Reddit.
Never.
I had friends who would text, and they're like, "Oh my God, on Reddit, they said this."
And I'm like, "I literally do not care.
I couldn't care less about what Reddit says."
Yeah.
There are all these theories that are like J plus V equals P90X or whatever.
I don't know what it is.
You're giving me a migraine.
Yeah.
See, you already know what I'm talking about.
It's nonsense to me.
I have no idea what any of it means.
Well, that was a theory that was true.
Well, but what is the theory?
What even is it?
They were doing numerology stuff?
What was going on?
Yeah.
It was the Kabbalah.
It's R plus L equals J. And it was basically that Jon Snow is not Ned Stark's bastard,
but he was the-
Right.
... he was the son of a prince and a noble woman, which meant he was the heir to the
Iron Throne the whole time.
Right.
So that one panned out.
So it's R for Rhaegar, L for Lyanna, J for Jon Snow.
Wonderful.
That's what that meant.
Yeah.
Got it.
That's the TLDR version of it, but yeah.
Well, that theory had been floating around since the first book came out a billion years
ago.
Right.
And then the show did eventually confirm it.
Right.
And then it presented-
TL plus DR.
At that point, the show is still pretty okay.
Tyrion Lannister plus-
This show...
Yeah, that was the end of season six or seven, and it was fine.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
To prepare for this conversation, I asked you to hook us up with some theories, and
I took a look at some of the theories that were out there that I thought were interesting
that I could kind of wrap my head around like, "Okay, this is a theory that makes sense to
me, that I have some kind of idea for."
Yeah.
But also is really stupid.
I don't know.
Okay.
So one of the ones that I saw was the theory that the White Walkers would come back before
the end of the last episode.
Yeah.
That was a theory that some people floated, because they were like, "Well, it can't be
over this fast in this season."
They just-
The storytelling can't be this bad.
And then-
Right?
And you build up this ultimate threat over the course of these 10 years, and then it's
dispatched-
Yeah.
... by a preteen with a knife, stabbing a monster in this ending.
Right.
And there was this whole like-
Right.
I'm going to bring up Benioff and Weiss again.
They were like, "Oh, Arya's the person you least expect to kill the Night King," and
it's like, "Yeah, because it doesn't make any narrative sense."
Right.
It's stupid.
I loved that moment as much as anyone else because it's a triumphant cool moment.
Right.
But also, she has no connection to this character, she's had nothing to do with their storyline.
It's dumb.
Narratively, it's dumb.
Unsatisfying.
Yes.
So the idea was that by the end of the last episode, it would be like, "Oh, you thought
that you were done with this?
You thought there was an easy solution to this?
You think that this throne thing matters?
It doesn't."
Yeah.
"The White Walkers are still coming for you.
You still have to unify."
And actually, it would have been a pretty baller ending to the show if the last shot
circled all the way back to the pilot.
And it was like, there's a White Walker in the woods again, and they're just back now.
That would have been pretty awesome.
That would have been a really cool final button on that series of like, "Oh yeah, they're
just still out there.
You guys didn't do anything."
Because the theme of the show is that all of these people are trying to screw each other
over to get this throne.
Yeah.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter because these White Walkers-
This huge threat, right.
There's a big problem.
Thematically, that's what matters the most.
Yes.
Yeah.
So the way that it ended was just kind of like, "Oh no, but actually the throne does
really matter."
And just whoever-
Right.
Well, and then they also destroyed the throne in the finale because dragons understand symbolism,
apparently.
It's one of their superpowers.
Yes.
It's a very literate dragon.
So Tom, just to let you know, in the finale, when Daenerys dies, her dragon comes down,
it looks like-
She's murdered, yeah.
... he's about to chomp Jon Snow who killed her.
He's like, "How about I torched this throne instead and then fly away?"
"That's what my mother crazy."
Yeah.
The dragon totally got the symbolism.
Okay.
It's so stupid.
It was pretty hilarious.
It was really, really dumb.
So who should have...
And I'm, again, very new to this.
Mm-hmm.
But who should have killed the Night King?
That's the Snow - right?
Jon.
Jon Snow.
That's who the-
Jon Snow should have done it.
It's a boring choice, but it's the correct choice.
He's one of the only characters who ever killed a White Walker before, besides Sam, and Sam
kind of did it by accident because that's Sam's whole deal.
Okay.
Jon did it in an actual battle multiple times.
And he had the most connection to the Night King.
Like of every character-
It's the thing that makes the most sense.
Yes.
He's the character who is faced off against the Night King over and over and over again.
It's like, if in Harry Potter, Harry didn't kill Voldemort, but Ginny did.
And you'd be like, "Why?"
She has no...
Sure.
Well, she'd even have more of a -
It's all about-
she has a lot going on.
What if Luna Lovegood killed Voldemort?
You'd be like, "That doesn't make any sense.
Why would Luna do it?"
It's set up and pay off, right?
Yeah.
In the movie Willow, Willow is a movie I enjoy a lot, and it has one of my favorite setups
and payoffs in all of storytelling, which is that in the beginning, Willow is this little
guy who is trying to do magic and he wants to be a powerful wizard, and he does this
disappearing trick and it doesn't go right.
Mm-hmm Yeah.
Disappearing pig trick doesn't go right, but he's going to set off on this adventure to
bring the baby back, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And at the end, he faces off against the Bavmorda, I think is the Sorceress's name.
Okay.
He's got the baby that she's after, this baby that she's trying to kill for this prophecy,
so it won't come true.
Mm-hmm.
And he makes her go away, and she thinks that it's magic that she can't figure out, and
then something happens and she dies, blah, blah, blah.
And then at the end, you go, "Oh, Willow, what did you do with the baby?"
And he goes, "It was my old disappearing pig trick."
Oh.
The thing from the beginning pays off at the end.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Set up, payoff.
I'm not going to spoil the entirety of Knives Out, even though that movie is kind of old
at this point.
But there is a thing at the beginning of the movie that tells you the ending of the movie
in the first five to 10 minutes.
And it's awesome.
Yeah.
It's such a good payoff.
Yeah.
At the end, you're like, "Oh my God."
It blows your mind.
Set up and payoff.
Yeah.
If Arya had some greater connection to this, it would have worked out.
And they tried to retcon it with Melisandre being like, "You're going to kill a blue eyed
person."
And it's like that doesn't...
That's so stupid.
That doesn't make any sense.
You're just shoehorning in a thing.
A prophecy is not really a setup.
Yeah.
Anyway, we're not-
No, and it's shoehorning in an unrelated thing.
We're not talking about theories anymore.
Now, we're just yelling at each other.
Yes.
Now, we're just yelling.
You're right.
But speaking to what-
... you were saying, narratively, I feel like part of what made Knives Out really charming,
what a lot of people loved about it, was that it doesn't pull a twist ending on you.
It's a story that makes sense.
They don't pull a giant twist in the third act where it turns out that it was actually
Ana de Armas was the one that killed him.
Right.
It's not that.
But I feel like a lot of stories right now, especially in the last 10 years or so, are
built specifically on the idea that there has to be this giant twist at the end and
it can't be what anybody is expecting, right?
Do you feel like that?
Right.
And that's what happened with the Arya thing, to be honest.
They were like, "It can't be Jon Snow.
It's too obvious," when, again, that would have been the correct payoff.
And the funny part-
And that's why people thought...
Yeah.
Go ahead, sorry.
I was looking up, just because I need to refresh myself on some of the series.
It's been a couple of years.
And I found a vulture article written by a writer named Alicia Lutes from right before
the finale aired, and she was like, "What if Bran became king?
That would be stupid."
Yeah.
And I was like, "Oh God."
Right.
That's literally what happens, and it's the dumbest...
Because, again, that's trying to subvert expectations when it's like-
Right.
It's the person you least expect, but the justification for it in the show just makes
no sense.
No, because it all goes back to Game of Thrones was so successful, and this is George RR Martin's
doing, and cutting off Ned Stark's head is the best subversion of expectations in recent
fantasy history.
Right.
But it also sets off a massive war that takes up most of the rest of the story.
It's not just like, "Ha ha we did it for shock value."
It serves a serious narrative purpose.
Right.
Nothing that Benioff and Weiss decided, did that.
But yeah, I have a few theories I want to touch on if that's okay, or unless you have
another one, Brian?
I just want to wrap up what I was going to say.
Yeah.
That's why people thought the White Walkers were going to come back, because when you-
Yeah, because it was like how it-
Because, again, the setup is that the first thing we see in this series are the White
Walkers.
Yeah.
And then to end it with, "Well, they're gone now," it doesn't work.
No.
So that was the one theory that I thought was really good-
Yeah.
... but it didn't pan out, and that's a shame.
The other theory that I read about that I thought was interesting was that apparently
dragonglass was theorized to be dragon poop.
I never saw that one.
That's awesome.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't.
It didn't turn out that way.
No, it wasn't anything.
Dragonglass, Tom, is the material that you can use to kill a White Walker.
It's one of the only two, yeah.
And someone on the internet theorized that it was actually dragon poop.
They didn't go all in on the dragon poop?
They didn't go with that one.
So that was another theory that was pretty interesting that didn't pan out.
But anyway, Nina, you wanted to say something.
No.
I'm fascinated by the dragon poop.
No, that' it.
That's literally the whole theory.
Oh.
What did dragonglass wind up being?
It's just-
It's just dragonglass.
It's a thing that exists, okay.
It's just some stuff.
It's kind of like vibranium.
Yeah.
You hear about it, and you let it go.
Yeah.
You're like, "Sure, that exists."
So I had-
So Nina, what other theories did you want to talk about?
Yeah, I had two that I really wanted to happen.
Well, one that I really wanted to happen, and one that I was like, "This would have
been interesting," but it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
So I'll start with the one that didn't make a whole lot of sense.
There was a long running theory leftover from the books that kind of makes a little more
sense than the books that people did carry into the show, that Tyrion Lannister, played
by Peter Dinklage, was actually a Targaryen, and that he was the love child.
Secret Targaryen.
Yes.
He was the love child of maybe non-consensual affair between Daenerys' father, I believe
Aerys, and Tywin Lannister's wife.
And it would have explained a lot of...
Like Tywin constantly is like, "You're no son of mine."
In the books, I think he doesn't really look like his siblings, which is also unfair, because
they're literally twins.
But I think in the books he's supposed to have purple eyes-
Right.
... which is kind of a symbol of Targaryens, and his hair is much blonder.
And obviously, a lot of that changed when they cast, when they perfectly cast Peter
Dinklage to play him.
But I thought they were going to do that at one point, because when he does meet the dragons,
they don't immediately murder him.
Right.
Yeah.
And I was like, "He's actually interacting with them calmly, and they're responding to
him.
Can they sense the Targaryen bloodline?"
That's a setup.
And it was a really cool setup, and then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,
also nothing.
Didn't pay off.
But the one that I'm most upset that did not pay off is, this is another one that comes
from the books that it could have easily fit into the show, involving three characters
that all got really lackluster endings.
So in the books, and we saw this in the TV show in a cold open that was at the beginning
of, either season four or five, forgive me for not remembering, internet, where a young
Cersei visits a witch in the woods who tells her that she will have-
Maggy the Frog.
Maggy the Frog, thank you.
And she tells her she will marry the king and that she will have three children, and
they will all wear crowns, and they will all wear shrouds.
So she will have three Royal children who will all die.
And there is another part of that prophecy that Cersei will be killed by the Valonqar,
which means little brother.
And they don't really deal with that in the show, but Valonqar, it means little sibling,
I guess, if you want to be really, really literal.
And the really cool twist about that is this that she assumes it's Tyrion who is her younger
brother, and that's kind of the unsaid reason why she really hates Tyrion.
Mm-hmm.
But Jaime is two seconds younger than her.
Right.
So there was a long simmering theory that Jaime would kill Cersei, and I was dying for
Arya to kill Jaime, steal his face, and kill Cersei.
I was dying for that to happen.
That would have been awesome.
That would have been so cool.
I was like, "Please do that."
And it would have been a good setup, yeah, because-
It would have been a great setup.
Yeah.
Right.
It would have been amazing.
And I'm so mad that they didn't take that incredible opportunity of like, "Yeah, we
have this character who can change faces."
Mm-hmm.
And then it gives Jaime a better ending than he had, and Cersei just got crushed by rocks,
and Arya just sailed away to Kokomo or wherever.
Yeah.
I'm unhappy.
To Kokomo.
I'm unhappy, because that was right there for the showrunners to take.
Right.
And they just didn't do it.
And they could have done it at the last second anyway, right?
Because he-
They could have done it in the final.
They could have waited until the finale, and they could have done it.
They could have done it before.
He was right there.
He even went there.
Yeah.
He went there, and they could have just done it, but they didn't.
Yeah.
No.
And that's the fan theory I'm most disappointed about, because that's so cool.
Imagine how satisfying it would have been to see Arya peel Jaime's face off and stand
over Cersei.
That was the last name on her list that she never finished.
Yeah.
It would have-
Yeah.
Again, that's another great setup and another great payoff that could have happened, or
could have even just-
Drives me crazy.
... been Jaime himself that also could have worked out-
I honestly would have been satisfied with that-
Yeah.
... because that would've completed Jaime's redemption arc instead of undoing his redemption
arc.
Right.
But I would have loved to see the face come off, and it's Arya, and she's achieved what
she wanted to achieve.
That would have been perfect, but that is not what we got.
Well-
So there's that.
I think this was a great conversation about Game of Thrones, but clearly Tom does not,
because he left.
R.I.P.
Tom.
Tom left the chat.
R.I.P. to these theories and also to Tom.
Oh well.
But hopefully, everyone else watching stayed till the end.
Yeah.
Unlike Tom.
Thanks for watching.
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