bran stark overdrive

Nice observation! I had not read that line in full but from what I did catch I got the impression that Brienne was trying to present Jaime in the most heroic, positive way possible, as one might with a beloved historic figure, even though the viewers know it was really much more complicated than that. Her last line, "Died protecting his Queen", cemented that for me. I think Brienne was intentionally altering his story (though not by too much) to show him in a positive light.

Yes, Dany is most certainly dead. I'm not arguing that. The afterlife suggestion however is more open to interpretation (unless you choose to take Jon's brief word on the matter as fact, as you may). When watching the HotU scene after the finale my take-away was that it was a vision of the moments before and after her death, and I found it moving - a fitting (perhaps comforting) end for a once-beloved character. Again, that is just my interpretation.

As it were, Dany's vision in the House of the Undying turned out to be a vision of her last moments. Dany walks into the throne room, snow (ash) is falling. She looks up, notes the destruction, walks towards the throne. Reaches out to touch it, nearly does but turns away. She enters a door - it's the wall, she's north of it, the gate closes behind her. Snow is everywhere. In the distance she sees a Dothraki tent, she enters to find Drogo and baby Rhaego, waiting for her. I like to think Dany is happy in the Night Lands now.

It's a shame Varys had to die before Jon could teach him the secret to instantly growing a pair of balls.

My personal favorite is Aenys. You'd have to be one cruel parent.

D'oh, that's a shame, I would have probably loved it too. The more I think about it the more I think you're really on to something. Here's how I see it, assuming two things: 1, that D&D intentionally placed Arya in the AAR/TPTWP role (I believe they did) and 2, that GRRM will not retcon the prophecy the way D&D did (I will eat my proverbial hat if he does). If this is the case then book-AA would have to be someone who similar enough to Arya (at least in show-verse) that Arya could take over their endgame role fairly easily. Since that person would need to be of Targaryen ancestry to be consistent with the prophecy, we're left with Jon, Dany, Robert's bastards, fAegon and any as-of-yet unknown Targaryens (and surely I'm missing a few). I'm going to write off Jon and Dany from the start - if either of them were slated to be TPTWP in the books it seems too big a plot point for D&D to change. The others (Baratheons, fAegon et al) are possible, but I don't see D&D choosing Arya of all people to complete their hero arc. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's likely that GRRM's TPTWP is also female. That leaves us only the as-of-yet-unknown Targaryens. With the possibility that Jon may have had a twin who was taken in by Howland in mind, at least in the show the character most similar to Arya is Meera. D&D all but wrote Howland's existence out of the show and reduced Meera to a barely-secondary character - at first I thought this meant they had less importance in the books than I'd assumed, but now I'm thinking it may be the opposite. The show has juggled a fairly staggering amount of main characters, it makes some sense that they would aim to trim that down on behalf of the viewers (whether we like it or not). We have already seen D&D combine GRRM's characters and give storylines that belonged to a book character to a different character in the show (Gendry/Edric is a good example, though Meera exists in the show while Edric was wiped completely). I posit that D&D's choice of Arya to carry the TPTWP role suggests that R+L=J&M and book-AA will be Meera. Thank you for your insight, The Map Guy. If you have the time, would you mind linking me to some of your posts on the theory?

Are you a believer in the R+L=J&M theory? I could definitely (or would like to) see that playing out in the books after having been cut from the show for the sake of simplicity. Even a step further towards crackpot territory, since D&D like to combine characters, I could see some of Arya's current storyline belonging to Meera in the books, especially if the Jon's sister theory proves to be true. She would at least make sense, prophetically, to be suggested as AAR/PTWP having been born of Rhaegar's line, and she and Arya have enough similarities to possibly make them interchangeable in certain situations. Gonna be a while before we know I suppose, but it's nice to have something left to theorize about.

Fully agree with you, and that's much of why I made the thread; at time of posting the only suggestions I'd read were "it was Bran warging a horse" and "Arya just has magic powers", neither of which made sense. Some fantastic insight in here now though, as I expected!

I've read a lot of comments about this in the main thread and I think it deserves its own. I don't think the appearance of the horse was related to/caused by Bran. Though anything is possible, the scene looked to me like further suggestion that Arya is Azor Ahai Reborn. Bran is capable of a lot, but in the past when we've seen deus ex machina events such as these it's been attributed to the Lord of Light. Especially with the fire and light imagery behind them, it struck me hard as an allusion to R'hllor, and the idea that Arya can't die because she has something left to do for tLoL (trying to stop Dany seems likely now). The amount of time spent showing Arya can't be killed points to this also, imo. What do you all think?

"You're a good man, Theon. Thank you."

That is very true and a great point, I'm just not sure Dany would see it that way. She already seems to perceive Sansa as a threat and has been fairly vocal about her growing distrust of Tyrion and/or his abilities, and is running out of advisors to convince her otherwise. I would much prefer they work it out diplomatically as you've suggested, their scenes yesterday were refreshingly human and I'd like to see more of them.

I read the interactions between Tyrion and Sansa as fuel for a future conflict between Sansa and Dany (and Dany and Tyrion). Dany would view any potential relationship between Tyrion and Sansa as a massive threat to Tyrion's loyalty to her, and without Jorah there to keep her grounded I worry about what that might mean. This feeling was compounded by Missandei's reaction to Sansa's "dragon queen" comment, which I have no doubt will make its way back to Dany.

The AA/TPTWP prophecy was written in High Valyrian, which is gender neutral, so "prince" could be referring to either male or female.

Beric's great mission was to save Azor Ahai Reborn during the War for the Dawn - seems like a pretty fitting and noble end for a R'hllor worshipper.

Yes, Arya is Azor Ahai/TPTWP. It was subtly confirmed by Melisandre throughout the episode, beside the fact that Arya killed the Night King with a Valyrian steel weapon, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Melisandre knew it the moment she saw Arya on the rampart. She knew it when Beric died saving Arya ("the Lord of Light brought him back for a purpose, that purpose is now fulfilled") and she knew it when she came face to face with Arya- "green eyes, brown eyes, *blue eyes*" (blue eyes referring to NK) was Melisandre telling Arya who she was, immediately afterward Arya went straight for NK. Melisandre killed herself because her purpose (finding and assisting Azor Ahai) was fulfilled, albiet at the last possible moment.