The end is coming. Game of Thrones will return to screens in 2019 – an exact date is yet to be confirmed – for its final six episodes, with showrunners David Benioff and Dan 'DB' Weiss bringing the epic fantasy saga to a close after eight years.

It's anyone's guess how the biggest show on television will wrap up, but fans, of course, have their theories. Tyrion will be revealed as a secret Targaryen. Jaime will kill Cersei, becoming the Queenslayer. The Hound and the Mountain will clash in the Cleganebowl. Jon Snow (or Daenerys, or Sam, or The Hound, or Davos) will be revealed as Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised.

And many, many more.

HBO

But is it possible that none of these theories, even the more cohesive and convincing ones, will come to pass? Might Benioff and Weiss even be making a concerted effort to subvert our expectations?

Weighing in on the final episodes a few months back, Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry, said: "I'm sure David and Dan don't pay too much attention to people's theories and speculation there is all over the internet, but it would be a bit of an anti-climax if a well-popularised theory turned out to be the way it ended.

"There are many pitfalls [to avoid] and I think they really have achieved that with this. It's an ending I don't think many people will be expecting."

Related: Game of Thrones: Who's dead and who's alive?

The fan theories, though, aren't just spurious suppositions based on nothing. (Well, apart from the suggestion that Tyrion's fiery Targaryen heritage was confirmed by way of a Doritos advert.)

They're informed guesswork, based on all that we've witnessed so far on the HBO series, along with quotes given by cast and crew and, of course, clues gleaned from the source material, George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novel series.

Many of the more complex theories have been crowdsourced, with fans from all across the globe pitching in with their own observations and ideas. It's almost a modern-day equivalent of the infinite monkeys with the infinite typewriters – throw enough brains at it and someone will have the right idea by accident.

Gather enough telly-savvy fans on a subreddit and the chances are that, between them, they'll eventually piece together your puzzle, no matter how intricate and convoluted it might be.

HBO

All of which is to say that, in all likelihood, some of the Game of Thrones fan theories currently doing the rounds will have correctly predicted where George RR Martin originally intended to take his story.

What if, though, as Dempsie implied, Benioff and Weiss were to deliberately avoid playing out the ending that fans have already predicted? What if, aware that the original path they'd been charting has been rumbled, they take taken a sudden and severe left turn at the very last minute?

It's not as ludicrous an idea as you might think. Jonathan Nolan, creator and showrunner of HBO's equally ambitious Westworld, confirmed prior to the show's season two launch that one planned twist for a forthcoming episode had to be scrapped because Reddit users had "already figured [it] out".

Do not underestimate the power of the fans. We absolutely have the power to shape our favourite shows by our reaction to them. (Surely that's why Lost invented such a convoluted and ludicrous explanation for the smoke monster, rather than just revealing it to be a cloud of nano-bots like everyone supposed it was?)

HELEN SLOAN / HBO

But when he made that admission about the abandoned twist, Westworld's Nolan also made a key observation. "It's annoying sometimes when people guess the twists and then blog about it, but the engagement is gratifying, on one level, because if someone guesses your twist, it means you've done an adequate job [of structuring the series]."

Exactly. The theories are based on all that's come before, so to intentionally veer away from them now would feel like a cheat. More than that, it would be a cheat.

Let's say Game of Thrones delivers a truly shocking ending that purposefully debunks all of the fan theories. The entire cast is wiped out and Hot Pie is revealed as next in line to the Iron Throne. Or it turns out that all of Westeros is a simulation and all of the characters are sprites being controlled by a team of computer programmers in Halifax.

That might be satisfying in the short term – with the following day's headlines doubtless raving about how the series had "delivered an ending that no-one saw coming" – but in the long term, veering off the rails just for shock value risks damaging the show's legacy.

Jeff Kravitz Getty Images

[Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss]

People still harangue the Lost writers over the Smoke Monster reveal, while even the otherwise-beloved The Sopranos has been criticised for delivering an ending that seemed deliberately designed to be obtuse and abrupt.

The best thing that Benioff and Weiss can do is stick to their guns and unfold the story as it was always supposed to unfold, even if that means that a few story developments have already been exposed by fans in certain corners of the internet.

Let Game of Thrones pay off its various storylines and play out its character arcs the way it's supposed to, rather than going off-track just to avoid being called predictable by a handful of devoted theory-crafters. The end result might not be all that surprising, but it'll be a hell of a lot more satisfying.

Game of Thrones season 8 will premiere in 2019. The show airs on HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic and NOW TV in the UK. Season 7 is now available to buy on DVD, Blu-ray or digital download.

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