Timm

I think he will be banished beyond the wall. But on his own. (Ghost?)

Fair comment. But my point was not about the end point for the characters, but about the future of the Stark house itself. Little points: - I think anyone who enjoys seeing their serial rapist eaten by dogs might be said to be mentally and emotionally scarred (the dogs are irrelevant here, she has suffered horror). - Jon may have Stark blood, but he is still a bastard in the public eye (unless there are proper records / witnesses to the annulment from Elia and the marriage to Lyanna*). - Many think that "A Time for Wolves was intended to be ambiguous; did it refer only to the Starks, or also / only to actual wild animals in the same way as A Feast for Crows, that is, a bad outcome for all humans. *I suppose that the word of the King Robot may be enough. But Jon is now a Queenslayer, pretty much a Kinslayer and a socially disgraced member of the Night's Watch. The chances of him siring an acceptable heir appear vanishingly small.

I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but the show did quite, emphatically (and probably accidentally) make it clear that events have finished off the Stark lineage. Rob dead. Rickon dead. The Last of the Starks are Arya - sailing away from love and marriage. Sansa - traumatised and no love interest on the horizon. Bran (won't be having kids). Jon goes not count. The Starks may have "won", but it is a pyrrhic victory if there is no heir. That is the way their line ends - not with fire, not with ice, but without issue. As to what this means for the books? Well, I think much of a Dream of Spring is the pressure on Sansa to produce an heir, much like there was for Elizabeth I.

That's how I felt. But talking to several unsullied (no books or forums) viewers, all of them have said something along the lines of "classic game of thrones - never saw it coming". And you know what, they are right. This is a classic interrupted arc. This is how the unsullied experienced the end of Ned's arc and the Red Wedding - out of left field - foreshadowed yes, but only in retrospect. Those who liked it kept watching . Those who didn't, stopped. Some of us here, if we had not read the books, may have stopped watching at that point. But now, finally, we experience GOT as unsullied. It is not ASOIAF - it is Game of Thrones, with all its faults and glories. We will never find out the answers to all those questions, just as we will never get to see Ned tell Cat that he was true to her, or find out whether Robb would have won the war. The Night King played the Game of Thrones, and he didn't win. Game Over.

Do we actually know he is a bastard in the show? There is the theory that he could be Cersei's son that "died". I know that is a lumpy theory that would be full of plot holes and therefore won't appear in the books, but I doubt that would bother D+D. Plus, they have already removed the main plot hole, with Cersei's little speech in Winterfell.. Edit to add: I do actually think there is a good chance of a true-born Gendry in the show. It would explain why his small sacrifice of blood was so effective, whilst the burning of Shireen accomplished so little - because Stannis is no King whilst Gendry lives. Also in the books: