This post contains frank discussion of several plot points from Season 8, Episode 4 of Game of Thrones. If you’re not all caught up, or would prefer not to be spoiled, now is the time to leave. Seriously: this is your last chance, and you won’t have another so, get out while the getting is good.

The heartbroken, crying Brienne of Tarth was truly all of us as we watched Jaime Lannister ride away from both Winterfell and his tidy little redemption arc. Jaime is on his way back to Cersei’s side in a decision that will, surely, cause his downfall. This decision not only goes against the wishes of Brienne and Jaime fans who would prefer those two crazy knights survive this war together; it goes against what we understand to be Jaime’s reaction in a similar situation in the books. We’ll get to the books in a bit, but speaking to Vanity Fair last summer, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau explained the reason behind Jaime’s big decision.

Over the course of eight seasons, Game of Thrones has continually stripped each of Jaime’s defining characteristics. His stature in court, his fighting hand, his crop of golden hair, his tense relationship with his father, his even tenser relationship with his kids, his bad reputation, his good reputation: by now, all of that is gone. All that was left of the villain who opened the series by pushing an innocent kid out of a window was an improbable hero who had nothing left to do but try to build something new. But he couldn’t, and that will be the tragedy of Jaime Lannister.

“Can we redefine ourselves?” Coster-Waldau asked himself as he approached this final season. “Most people have moments in their life where you go, ‘Can I really, fundamentally change?’ . . . The core of him has always been Cersei. . . . When that’s taken away, what are you then? What’s left? Is there anything left? When he leaves [King’s Landing at the end of Season 7], obviously he has no idea. He doesn’t know the answer to that question.”

Leaning on his own long marriage—which the actor stresses with a laugh is nothing like the Jaime/Cersei relationship—Coster-Waldau planted the seed that Jaime might find himself headed back to Cersei in Season 8. He explained the subtext of Jaime’s goodbye to Cersei—“I don’t love you anymore. . . . I’m calling your bluff, and, you know, you can’t hurt me now because my heart has been destroyed by you. You can’t hurt me anymore than you already have”—may not stick.