Who do you think will be the REAL Villain?

[Jolene Brown]

Edmure doesn't know Littlefinger as well as we do.

I know! That's what makes him so deeply villainous for me. I'm not condemning Edmure, it's just a mark of how awful Littlefinger is, that he has gotten away with manipulating or contributing mightily to manipulating the whole kingdom into a brutal and incredibly damaging war, destroying countless lives irrevocably, while people like Jaime, Kevan, AND edmure (so on both sides of the conflict as well) all are totally unaware that he bears even a shred of responsibility. It drives me nuts. Especially when a truly loyal and loving creature like Brienne is being hung by the very person she would do anything to fulfill an oath to. I am dying for the day when it all falls apart around Littlefinger's ears, and he is exposed for the murderous treacherous lying weasel that he is.

[David C. Hunter]

Dany and her Dragons, without a doubt

[David C. Hunter]

I think that's really interesting and highly debatable. I got the sense that popular consensus is that the White Walkers or what have you up North is the great enemy that humanity will fight against, and that Dany will be needed at the Wall to vanquish this enemy with dragons (also popularly considered "Lightbringer"). Like your post in the other thread- how GOT is bookended by 2 "powers"- WW in the prologue and dragons in the finale, and that one has been set up as evil and the other as a means of ridding that evil.

The White Walkers seem evil because that is what GRRM wants us to think. He has said in many many many interviews how cliche, unimaginative and boring it is in fantasy to have an 'evil dark lord enemy in the north'. He isn't doing it for nostalgic reasons, it will be a red herring and he will turn that convention on its head. The White Walkers at the this point will most certainly NOT be the final enemy.

[BabyMeraxes]

I think there will be a series of different villains given the differing plots:

Sansa=Littlefinger/Robert Strong

Jon=The Others/Melisandre and the Stone Dragon

Bran=The Others/Melisandre and The Stone Dragon

Theon=Ramsey

Tyrion=Varys/Illyrio/Melisandre and the Stone Dragon/Euron

Dany=Aegon/Melisandre/The Others

Jamie=Cersei/Robert Strong/UnCat

Victarion=Euron

Arianne= Aegon/Euron

The biggest threats will be a combination of Melisandre and The Others, or something else far more terrible that hasn't been introduced yet.

[butterbumps!]

The term "Others" is most often used interchangeably with White Walkers, but it's unclear whether it might refer to an assortment of things beyond the Wall.

The wights are basically reanimated humans- they are the undead people with blue eyes, and blackened extremities that we first see when one of them tries to attack Lord Mormont during the night and Jon "kills" it by tossing fire on it. They are somewhat clumsy and behave kind of like a typical zombie.

White Walkers are what we first see in the Prologue of GOT (this is confusing, because on the show, they portray the "monsters" in that scene as wights, even though they are White Walkers in the text)- They are the graceful and swift humanoids that are kind of like knights or rangers, with a language, armor and what appears to be a code of honor (they do not attack Royce as a hoard, but one by one):

The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor...

Will saw its eyes: blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice....

[they] stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood...

The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.

This is what Sam slayed with the dragonglass (obsidian) dagger, and what he and Jon discuss as being vulnerable to "Dragonsteel."

[Christine K]

The term "Others" is most often used interchangeably with White Walkers, but it's unclear whether it might refer to an assortment of things beyond the Wall.

The wights are basically reanimated humans- they are the undead people with blue eyes, and blackened extremities that we first see when one of them tries to attack Lord Mormont during the night and Jon "kills" it by tossing fire on it. They are somewhat clumsy and behave kind of like a typical zombie.

White Walkers are what we first see in the Prologue of GOT (this is confusing, because on the show, they portray the "monsters" in that scene as wights, even though they are White Walkers in the text)- They are the graceful and swift humanoids that are kind of like knights or rangers, with a language, armor and what appears to be a code of honor (they do not attack Royce as a hoard, but one by one):

This is what Sam slayed with the dragonglass (obsidian) dagger, and what he and Jon discuss as being vulnerable to "Dragonsteel."

Okay I think I get it then. So Other and White Walkers are the same thing, and Sam killed an Other, not a wight, right?

[Stanmore]

I don't like the idea that this series will all come down to one big villian or one major hero. The events of the series have been so complex so far and have relied on the actions of so many people. It would be cheap for Martin to throw that all away and say “this it what it was all really about.”.

I'd hate to get to the end and find out that Little finger was working for the others all along and that everything that's happened has been his doing. Or that Dany has come in with her dragons and burned the continent to the ground so the last 6 and a half books worth of Westeros plot has been utterly irrelevant

I'd rather the series ended with each of the major characters all fighting their own battles. What ever forms those battles may take.

[Last Eye of Bloodraven]

The dragons are not intrinsically good or bad, they just are big winged alligators that breath fire. :D

Maybe the same applies to the WW, they may even have some sort of moral code.

There's also the demon that appeared when Vary's lost his sauss and eggs. :ack: R'hllor anyone?

And that passage about cold that burns, both extremes are bad.

All in all I favor some sort of fight/imbalance between R'hllor and the Great other with humans as pawns.

Both can make undead and seem to demand absolute obedience.

The Long Night was round one, R'hllor won by points but got too weak and the Great Other made a tactical retreat.

Squaring up for round two. :fencing:

[Francis Buck]

Jon and Dany, on opposite sides.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Okay I think I get it then. So Other and White Walkers are the same thing, and Sam killed an Other, not a wight, right?

Correct. :) Wights are just reanimated corpses.

[butterbumps!]

Jon and Dany, on opposite sides.

You know- I've wondered if it will be Jon versus Dany and Jon versus Bran.

[DurararaFTW]

Cersei and Littlefinger are still THE villains.

[Christine K]

Correct. :) Wights are just reanimated corpses.

Thank you! And so then the Others sort of create the wights and bring them from being corpses into wights? By touching them I think?

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Thank you! And so then the Others sort of create the wights and bring them from being corpses into wights? By touching them I think?

I don't know exactly how they do it — touch or ether or who the hell knows — but yeah, the Others create the wights.

[butterbumps!]

Thank you! And so then the Others sort of create the wights and bring them from being corpses into wights? By touching them I think?

Therein lies the rub. We don't know, and there's been a lot of speculation whether it's the White Walkers, something about the "cold mist" that's co-morbid with the WW, Bloodraven or another Warg, the Great Other of even the Children of the Forest or something else, but thus far we don't have direct evidence of how wights are raised. This might be going a little off topic, but there's a curious part of the Nights King story in which he "ensorcelled" his men, and there's been speculation that he somehow wightified them, but that is not canon- just pointing it out because it adds to the mystery.

[BlueDragon]

The bookend idea is important. Beginning with Others and ending with Dragons is not happenstance. Kudos to whomever brought that up first!!! Whatever the Others have done in past history, it definitely threatens the survival of the humans, hence the Wall sitting there for thousands of years. The fact that the Others sleep for thousands of years, or mostly anyhow, makes me think of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. The Others might not be all that malicious in the end, but their 'life' might just be antithetical to human life.

In so far as fighting the Others, dragonglass (obsidian), Valarian steel and fire all seem to be needed although I am not clear about killing wights versus killing Others.

Obviously, the only things that kill others are connected to Valaria and its dragons. It would seem that there is some positive use for dragons, i.e. they are neither good nor evil, but have their purposes. Ditto direwolves who might play an additional role as the story climaxes.

Certainly, direwolves can sense wights and maybe Others.

Neither the Others or the Dragons seem absolutely evil to me; they are simply in opposition. In Eastern philosophy, yin/yang are not good/evil, but strong opposite forces that create life or existence through endless transformation.

The fact that no character presently understands dragons any more than they understand Others is significant and Tyrion seems set up to give Dany pointers about how to handle her dragons.

I am not looking for an ultimate villian, but see a lot of the characters as potential big villians at any point.

Who is Arya going to kill and how will that connect to the main plot line? This is an important question for me.

I don't think the Game of Thrones is the real game here. The real game is the long term survival of humans and the children of the forest.

I doubt any of the religious traditions we have been shown have much of a handle on the Gods. There seems to be good and bad magic in the series. Learning which is which is often at the center of any fantasy narrative.

[Babeldygob]

I strongly believe Stannis Baratheon will be the Night's King come again. He'd be the one leading The Others' attack upon the treasonous Westeros. He'd make a good villain IMO.

[The Mother of The Others]

Varys

[DoctorSwerve]

Part of me says either Littlefinger or Varys, however I think we may see both of them bite the dust in unexpected ways in TWOW.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I still believe that Bloodraven is the antagonist and is responsible for awakening the Others. Edit: I think that Bloodraven believes he did the right thing. It may be that he believed that awakening the Others would cause the return of dragons, thus strengthening the Targaryen dynasty. Who knows?

[another bastard]

I think that it will probably the both the Others and the Dragons as forces of destruction, with "Extremes" being the "real villain," so to speak. The successful hero or heroes will restore balance, and that means getting rid of both the extremes of ice (Others) and the extremes of fire (dragons).

I agree with the general logic behind this, however I think that right now the greatest threat is the Others, who give every indication of being personified forces of nature out of balance that threaten to exterminate all living things. (Old Nan said that they "hated ... every creature with hot blood in its veins," but "hate" may be part of the personification. I also doubt that many plants would survive their Long Winter, FWIW.)

I agree that the dragons and all of the fire magic are a form of imbalance on the other side, but at the moment three individual dragons have much less potential to cause apocalyptic destruction, so they might still be used as tools in the defeat of the Others - and hopefully destroyed in the process, as the magics of ice and fire mutually annihilate each other, paving the way for some kind of calmer equilibrium to be restored.

And I know that some people might disagree, but I see Dany as at least having the potential to recognize that the threat of all life being exterminated is more important than her juvenile dreams of conquest, and agree to use her dragons against the Others. If the Others hadn't returned, she and her dragons might indeed be the greatest threat to Westeros, but changes in circumstances can inspire changes in characters, and she might just rise above the "fire and blood" conquest ethos of her Targ ancestors, just as some of the other characters might rise above the petty game of thrones that they've been playing, also at great cost in human blood. At least I'm hoping so.

Sort of like global warming in the real world. It should inspire us to rise above our petty politics and power plays, etc. It hasn't really so far, but conditions probably haven't really gotten apocalyptic enough yet for the majority to realize that it really is an existential threat.