Warning: this article contains spoilers.

So whaddya reckon? Sound? Fury? Whimper? Bang? We are facing, at last, our final hour (or thereabouts) in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Who will live and who will die? Who will sit on the Iron Throne, and is there any chance it could be Drogon?

Rational minds, should any such things still prevail over what must be the most fatigued writing rooms and fandom in history, would suggest that the last of Daenerys’s dragons is an unlikely choice of ultimate heir. Though you could legitimately suggest that as it has shown as much intelligence, and tankards more expressiveness, than Jon “Eh?” Snow, it might at least be due some kind of promotion.

It looks as though it’s shaping up to be a straight fight, as the series has more or less always promised, between the two last remaining Targaryens: Jon (the secret one) and his aunt Dany (the now-mad one). Not least because this has been a radically compressed last series that has neither been interested in nor had time for anything much other than the bleedin’ obvious, with that sometimes taking place off-screen too.

Will Arya Stark up the place? Photograph: Helen Sloan/HBO

But there is still room for and hope of something more interesting happening. Arya, her lifetime plans to wreak her vengeances now stayed by the Hound’s intervention (and the fact that most of her kill list are lying under King’s Landing rubble) could turn her thoughts to Starking up the place. Sansa would help. And, after her touching scene with him in the pre-penultimate episode, perhaps her ex-husband Tyrion would too.

Much as many of us would like to see him – or rather, Peter Dinklage, who’s been holding the whole thing together since the portion of the cast that could actually act started dropping like flies (miss you Jorah, Varys, anyone over the age of 25) – take charge of everything, he has no appetite for kingship itself but would make an able Hand to the queen again.

A woman on the throne would be nice recognition of how far the female characters in the show have come – from decorative asides and prostitutes to full-blooded protagonists – and if she was not mad, so much the better. Personally, I am Team Brienne all the way – a reward for the indignity of her storyline with Jaime, which should (and this be the hill I shall die on, Ser Brienne) have ended with his knighting of her.

Will she yet emerge from the rubble? ... Cersei. Photograph: Helen Sloan/HBO

Of course, it could be something outrageous. Cersei could yet emerge from the rubble. There can be few who would not welcome her return and the chance of either success or a better send-off for the show’s most compelling villain this time.

It could be Drogon, especially if fan theories about Bran warging into him at the Battle of Winterfell were correct. The White Walkers could return and raze everything to the ground, shattering the Iron Throne into a million frozen fragments. Or maybe the nearly a million fans who have signed the petition to have series eight rewritten entirely will be victorious and we’ll end up with an interactive, Bandersnatch-y episode with 800,000 endings to keep them all happy.

What, after all, do we say to the death of our favourite TV show? Not today.

Tuning in for the finale? Watch along live with Stuart Heritage’s liveblog