Cersei Lannister is one of the principal villains on Game of Thrones. She’s back-stabbed her fair share of our favorite characters, blew up half of King’s Landing, and probably doesn’t doesn’t tip well, either. She’s taken to the villain role with relish, climbing over a mountain of bodies to reach the top.
Cersei was a bad apple right from the start, when we met her in “Winter is Coming.” We’ve been rooting for her downfall ever since. But not only has she survived, she’s risen in the world to the point where, at the end of Season 6, she’s sitting on the Iron Throne.
But her reign may be short-lived. Daenerys Targaryen, intent on claiming the throne for herself, is brining her army to Westeros. Arya Stark is back in town, and Cersei’s name is on her list. In short, Cersei has a lot of enemies, and one of them may finally take her down in Season 7. But which one?
Here are, so to speak, our final four: the most likely candidates to topple the new queen. We’ve ranked them in order of who’s most likely to do the deed and finally bring a cathartic sigh of relief to Thrones fans everywhere.
WARNING: SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
5. Cersei survives
We don’t believe this one is likely, but if Cersei somehow escapes Dany’s assault on King’s Landing, or—gulp—defeats the Mother of Dragons, what might that look like?
We’ve speculated before about a Cersei-and-Euron supervillain team up, and if the spoilers can be trusted, it’s going to happen in one form or another. If Cersei survives Season 7, Euron will likely play a key role. He might smuggle Cersei out of King’s Landing before Daenerys attacks the city, or weaken Dany by decimating her armada at sea.
However, we don’t think the smuggling option is very likely. Cersei has coveted the Iron Throne her whole life, and now that she finally has it, we don’t see her leaving it willingly. If Daenerys mounts a successful attack on King’s Landing, we see Cersei going down with the ship, so to speak, perhaps dying in another wildfire explosion. Like the Mad King, Cersei may well try to leave her would-be conqueror naught but “charred bones and cooked meat.”
That leaves defeating Daenerys on land or sea. It’s not impossible, but if the show wants to get Dany up north to fight the White Walkers by the end of the show, she’ll need to get past Cersei. Even if she has a rough time of it, we expect her to succeed in the end.
4. Daenerys Targaryen
When we last saw Daenerys, she was sailing for Westeros, intent on reclaiming the throne upon which Cersei now sits.
So might Daenerys be the one to finally take down the Mad Queen? On the surface, it seems a likely option. Dany possesses a large army, three dragons, an armada, and a burning desire to reclaim the throne from those she feels took it from her family. The two queens are bound to clash.
But unlike someone like Arya, Daenerys doesn’t have a personal vendetta against Cersei. She’s never met Cersei, nor has she been directly harmed by her. From a storytelling perspective, it might be less satisfying for Dany to eliminate the new queen than it would be for, say, Tyrion to do the deed.
So while Dany might assist in Cersei’s fall, meaning her army forces Cersei from the throne in defeat, we don’t think she’ll land the final blow. Think about what happened with Ramsay: Jon Snow (and Littlefinger) did the bulk of the legwork fighting him on the field of battle, but Sansa, someone Ramsay had personally harmed, got the honor of killing him. Something similar may happen here.
Next: A girl has many names on her lips
3. Arya Stark
Now we’re cooking with butter. Over the years, Arya Stark has morphed from a precocious tomboy into a full-blown assassin. At this point, she may have the skills necessary to take down even a queen. Lest we forget, Cersei has been on Arya’s death list since Season 2, and that list is growing shorter by the day. Basically, only Cersei and the Mountain, both of whom reside in King’s Landing, remain on it. (Melisandre was on at one point, but seems to have been forgotten.) See where we’re going with this?
True, Arya may turn north instead of south, especially if she learns that Jon Snow is King in the North. But it’s also possible she’ll head for King’s Landing and vengeance. About a month ago, this casting call made us think that the latter option is more likely. For Season 7, HBO wanted to cast a city guard who comes across “a suspicious-looking person on his nightly patrol.” Immediately, we thought of a King’s Landing guard who tries (and probably fails) to stop Arya from sneaking into the Red Keep.
Arya made a beeline for Walder Frey as soon as she landed in Westeros. He’s dead, and the next people on her list are in King’s Landing. We’re betting on her single-mindedness here.
So how likely is Arya to pull off the ultimate hit? She has training and she has desire, two things you need if you want to accomplish your goals. But does that add up to a dead Cersei Lannister? It could, particularly if Arya is capable of assuming a disguise and going deep undercover, as she did with Walder Frey in “The Winds of Winter.”
But honestly, we don’t see Arya being the one, either, not because it wouldn’t be satisfying, because there’s a stronger candidate on the list.
2. Tyrion Lannister
Tyrion has already proclaimed himself “the greatest Lannister killer of all time” and would likely welcome a chance to kill the sister who has tormented him since birth. Cersei took her vendetta against her little brother to a new level when she blamed him for Joffrey’s death. Cersei threw everything she had into getting Tyrion convicted and executed, but he escaped.
Now, Tyrion is Hand of the Queen to Daenerys Targaryen, and is sailing with her to Westeros. If Daenerys successfully assaults King’s Landing, she may give Tyrion the chance to exact vengeance on his sister. That’s something he freely dreams about in the books, although the show has turned down his bloodlust a bit. Still, we know that Tyrion is fully capable of killing members of his own family, and given the opportunity, he may kill his sister as well as his father.
But even though Tyrion has the motive and the opportunity, there’s another we believe is finish Cersei once and for all.
Next: Sororicide 2: The Sequel
1. Jaime Lannister
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! If you ask me, Jaime Lannister will be the one to finally kill Cersei.
“But wait,” you say, “Jaime loves Cersei, and Cersei loves Jaime, and they are going to live happily ever after.” Okay, you probably didn’t take it that far, but maybe you don’t think there’s murder in the twins’ future. But really, on a show where family members kill each other all the time (Tyrion kills Tywin, Ramsay kills Roose, Euron kills Balon), this isn’t a huge leap. Let’s look at the evidence.
First and foremost, look at the image above. That’s the look Jaime gives his dear sister after he returns to King’s Landing to discover that she’s blown a chunk of it to oblivion, killing more than a few innocents in the process. Destroying the city with wildfire was exactly what Jaime killed the Mad King Aerys to prevent. Now Cersei has picked up where Aerys left off, and that won’t sit well with Jaime. That’s particularly true now, after he’s spent time with Brienne and gotten back in touch with his tarnished sense of honor.
And if we can dip into the books for a second, we’ll find even more evidence that Jaime could be the one to pull the proverbial trigger. On the page, there’s more to the prophecy Cersei heard on the show at the beginning of Season 5. In addition to telling Cersei her children would die, the woods witch also tells her that she will be murdered by her younger brother. Tyrion? Yes, Tyrion is certainly her younger brother. But so is Jaime, since Cersei was born a few minutes ahead of him.
Let’s envision a scenario where all this comes together. Imagine that Daenerys is at the gates of King’s Landing. Cersei, desperate, decides to burn the place to the ground rather than give it over to another. The Mad King hid caches of wildfire all over, and Cersei easily discovered the stash under the Sept of Baelor. She may already know where the rest are. Or she could learn before Dany arrives, or place her own caches.
The Mountain and Qybrun don’t seem likely to say no to Cersei, so that only leaves Jaime. He could be forced to kill his sister to save the city, again. We aren’t saying he’d enjoy the deed, but it would be a great way to bring his story full circle. Robert’s Rebellion ended with Jaime killing the ruling Targaryen monarch as the Lannisters invaded King’s Landing. This go round, he may kill a ruling Lannister monarch as the Targaryens invade King’s Landing.
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