Farwynds Oceanseer

Since there is no "wildling prince" to send south with Gilly and Sam, and the trailers suggest that Aemon will be cremated at Castle Black, I'm wondering if Jon will send Shireen to Braavos if and when Sam and Gilly sail for the Reach? She would be safer there than at the wall, with wildlings worried about her greyscale and Mel thirsting for her king's blood. We wouldn't get to see Aemon learning about the hatching of the dragons, surmising that Daenerys was TPTWP, wishing he could be a head of the dragon, or murmuring about the Sphinx. But Shireen's greyscale could start spreading again, Dareon could still desert with the silver that could be used for a healer, and Arya could still get in one of her coolest kills. It would probably be next season; it looks like she's got the insurer and Meryn Trant this year.

You're right. Well, Aemon + Sheira Seastar was pretty much crackpot anyway. You've got to wonder, though, why Aemon shows no awareness of BR's existence when they both served together at the wall for some time.

I don't have evidence for this, but I immediately thought of Sheira Seastar (although Aemon would be 20-30 years younger than Sheira or BR); maybe that would explain why Aemon and Brynden Rivers don't talk?

Now that TV Alliser Thorne has shown actual leadership ability, does anyone else think he'll be merged with Ser Denys Mallister if the election comes next season? I see the Mallister merge more than Bown Marsh. The wound that Thorne got from Tormund could conceivably harden him against the wildlings, but, unlike Marsh, he doesn't seem stupid enough now to forget that the WW are coming and will be less difficult to fight if thousands of potential free folk wights can be made living allies.

It's too bad Tyrion's beetle-crushing soliloquy was so verbose; at half the length, with a clearer grounding in Tyrion's point of view, it could have been an other Emmy moment. Instead it came across as the work of a promising but unpolished student in a creative writing class. When you make a near miss while attempting literature, you come off as pretentious. I noticed Tyrion punctuated his mystification over Orson's beetle-crushing by letting a bug escape from his grasp--the point being, I suppose, that even if he used to laugh at Orson, he no longer sees any appeal in crushing crippled or broken things. Anyone want to bet that he steps on a beetle shortly after hearing the truth about Tysha?