Spoilers for all of Game of Thrones Season 5 ahead.

For people who love such a brutal, bloody show, Game of Thrones fans sure are a hopeful bunch. We’ve already discussed at length why basically everyone believes that Jon Snow will be back, even though we saw his blood pooling around his head at the end of the Season 5 finale. But the former Lord Commander isn’t the only Westerosi character benefiting from some serious crossed fingers. After all, this is a show that just introduced a zombie version of the Mountain—can’t everyone, theoretically, live forever?

Maybe, but in reality, there are a few firm answers. Even as everyone continues to swear that Jon really is dead, director David Nutter, who helmed the season finale, is offering a few firm answers on some of the other apparent cliff-hangers. Based on his words, here’s what we really do know for sure.

Stannis is dead. “It would have been gratuitous,” Nutter told Variety about his reasons for cutting away before Brienne’s sword separated Stannis’s head from his body. “You really got a sense that Stannis had nothing else to live for. Brienne’s lifelong mission had come to an end. It’s a situation in which Stannis was ready to die and prepared to die.” (Yes we’re sorry about it, too.)

Sansa and Theon are definitely alive. Their Thelma and Louise moment seemed a little dicey, given that we had just seen Myranda offed by virtually the exact same fall, but Nutter promises “it’s safe to assume they survived that jump.” Book readers pretty much knew that—as VF.com writer Joanna Robinson has explained, even though Sansa isn’t involved in the book, Theon survives a similar fall.

Myrcella is a goner. It seemed pretty clear she wasn’t long for this world, no matter how fast Jaime turned that boat around back to Dorne, but show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirm her death talking to Entertainment Weekly, and suggest that Cersei won’t necessarily be leading a war party to Dorne for revenge. “In her mind, Myrcella was taken away from her by Tyrion; she still blames him for Joffrey’s death, and he is directly responsible for Myrcella going to Dorne,” says Benioff. “So in her worldview, both of her children’s deaths are to be laid at his doorstep. This is one more thing to motivate her homicidal hatred of him.”

But Trystane may make it to King’s Landing. It would be convenient for Jaime to “eye for an eye” this situation and kill Trystane, conveniently located right there on that ship, to get immediate revenge for Myrcella’s death. But talking to E.W., Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who, granted, isn’t a show-runner and says he has no knowledge of Season 6) suggests that Trystane will survive the journey, only to meet Cersei’s wrath. “Cersei has someone she could enact revenge on—Trystane,” he said. “He’s supposed to take his father’s seat on the council.”

Meryn Trant is definitely dead. You probably weren’t wondering, but just in case, Nutter tells The Hollywood Reporter that “the killing of Meryn Trant needed to be as honest and real and grotesque and powerful as possible.” Nutter says it was the show verging a bit into Quentin Tarantino territory, which is both true and hopefully not inspiration for Tarantino to work a murderous girl prostitute into The Hateful Eight.