Screencap via HBO

HBO’s Game Of Thrones, the hit show about sibling fucking, is currently in the process of filming its seventh and kinda-sorta-not-really final full season in Spain. While most of the plot developments of the first six seasons were either matters of public record or relatively simple to discern, author George R.R. Martin’s failure to write the final books in the series on which the show is based means there’s no scaffolding upon which the showrunners can build the plot of Season 7, and no canon sources for fans to follow along with.




However, that doesn’t mean that the plot is of the next season is a mystery. A bit over three weeks ago, a Reddit user called awayforthelads “leaked” extremely detailed plot developments from the upcoming season on /r/FreeFolk. (This subreddit is one of the main hubs for speculation and theorizing, and a few reputable leaks have broken first on the site.) Another Reddit user who claims to be close to one of the “major actors/actresses in the show” said that the leaks were bullshit, and claimed that despite the granular detail put forth they were merely idle speculation, the same as any theory. Between that and the ludicrousness of the plot details offered by awayforthelads, the “leak” was thus easily ignored—until it began to prove apparently true, in ways far too detailed to be just luck.

[SPOILERS TO FOLLOW. I’M TALKING BIG SPOILERS, ABOUT THE WHOLE DAMN SEASON INCLUDING SOME DEATHS AND SHIT SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW MIGHT I OFFER YOU SOME OTHER FINE GAME OF THRONES BLOGS ON SUCH TOPICS AS THEORIES, PODRICK’S DICK, OR PAGES. THIS PARENTHETICAL IS OVER]


While awayforthelads has deleted his account, screenshots are out there and other users have aggregated his posts and followed along as reports from the set have tacked eerily close to his original leaks. Here is a compilation of the spoilers, and they are wild. The big ones are as follows: Jon and Daenerys spend much of the season together at Dragonstone, and in the finale they have sex while the Wall crumbles; Arya and Sansa are reunited, and Arya executes Littlefinger at Sansa’s command; Euron and Cersei form a doomed alliance against the Daenerys/Jon coalition; Samwell, Gilly, and Bran put together that Jon Snow is actually the rightful heir to the Iron Throne and the trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen (this is complicated and involves an annulment and Jon being named Aegon, same as his half-brother); Jon and a host of others go north of the Wall to capture a wight to prove the nature of the looming threat to Westerosi rulers; and the Night King kills and possesses Viserion, turns him into an ice dragon, and uses him to burn down the Wall. It’s unclear whether or not Euron resurrects that horrifying Cthulu monster that our old friend Poor Quentyn predicted he would, but in all these plot events are both pretty insane and actually in line with where the show seemed to be headed after Cersei nuked King’s Landing and Daenerys set sail for Westeros.

An assiduous Reddit user has compiled a running timeline of the plot points laid out by awayforthelads and noted where reports from the set have confirmed his information. Watchers On The Wall, a highly reliable fan site that regularly breaks news about the show, has confirmed that Cersei, Tyrion, Jon, Daenerys and a host of other main characters are present at the Dragonpit in King’s Landing when a wight is offered as proof that the white walkers exist and are a threat—a plot point too unexpected to have just been pulled out of someone’s ass. They’ve also confirmed that Jon and Daenerys meet at Dragonstone in what’s probably the third episode.

Not every piece of information has been confirmed, but enough of the tentpole moments seem to be coming true that awayforthelads’s information can, improbably, be trusted. HBO is probably mortified, just like they were when a bunch of full episodes leaked a few years ago, but it’s not as if the revelation that there’s a goddamn ice dragon will turn viewers off. If you’re this deep in a blog post replete with spoilers, you’re probably into the show enough that you’d watch it even if a Reddit user confirmed that the next season would be a meditative one-act play where Hodor’s ghost chats with Benjen Stark; if the whole thing sounds lousy, you (and HBO brass) can take comfort in the fact that so much of Game Of Thrones takes place between the action-adventure set pieces that the show will doubtless still manage to surprise you.