Game of Thrones season 6 went pretty well for a lot of the characters. Daenerys set sail for Westeros, Jon Snow and Sansa kicked Ramsay out of Winterfell, Cersei got revenge on the Sparrows…but the good times aren’t likely to last, particularly on a show like this. We’re getting towards the end of the series, and it’s time for showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to raise the stakes before the big finish. How do they do that? Author Vladimir Nabokov has a suggestion: “The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”
Expect some rocks in season 7. Expect gut-punches. Expect the worst, because that’s the way the story has to go if it’s going to have a satisfying ending. We should be prepared for a thrilling experience, but also an emotionally devastating one.
So what’s going to happen? What follows are 13 distinct story possibilities, all of them the worst case scenarios. (I don’t look at spoilers, so these predictions are SPOILER FREE.) What’s the worst that can happen? Let’s find out.