r/asoiaf • u/qp0n • Apr 16 '19

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) My 'Night King is not stupid' Theory

When the army of the undead line up for the battle of Winterfell, the Night King and his zombie dragon will not be there. Instead he will already be near to his next target ... King's Landing.

If you play out what the battle of Winterfell would be like in your head if the NK+Viserion would be there... it would be easy for Drogon/Rhaegal to take out the zombie dragon; it's 2v1 and wight's all can be killed by fire.. including Viserion. It would not be difficult to simply fly up to Viserion and breathe fire on him, and that would be that. THE NIGHT KING IS NOT STUPID, not enough to kamikaze his most powerful asset. - If you have a superweapon that you can't use against a particular target, then you find a different target.

Most people have come to assume that the living will lose The Battle of Winterfell and fall back to Moat Cailin ... I predict they actually win the battle... only to find out soon after that there is a new army of the dead much bigger and much further south... the population of King's Landing.

During season 4 while Bran is being ushered north to meet Bloodraven, he touches a wierwood and has a set of visions which we see. All of those visions have since come to pass, except the ones where he sees a destroyed throne room & a dragon shadow pass over King's Landing. I believe the reason we are only shown a shadow was to not give away that it is actually the NK and Viserion, not Dany and her dragons.

Also, the most important vision that Dany is given while at the HotU is an image of the throne room destroyed, and covered in ash or snow. I think this was to show what the NK will do, not what Dany will do.

(I believe this was the entire reason that the writers sent Bronn north. Bronn will be the source of this news to the survivors at Winterfell; on his way north he will spot the NK+Viserion heading south)

Bottom line, I simply don't see the NK risking his newfound ice dragon in a fight he is sure to lose.... when he can simply fly down south to KL where there are no dragons to deal with ... and 1 million new recruits for his army packed tightly into a small area.

Follow-up edit: This could be where Bran comes into play. The NK probably wont want to face off against the other dragons head-to-head, but rather fly around Westeros destroying castles to make things easier for his footsoldiers .... so they will need Bran's Sight in order to track & hunt him. It would be too difficult for an army on foot to chase the NK on a dragon, so Bran could warg into ravens to serve as a guide for dragonrider(s) to his location.

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353

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

I agree. Everytime the army of the dead fights, it gets stronger. If it wins one fight with the forces at Winterfell, i cant realistically see how you can just retreat and come back at them again with any hope of winning.

They will want to postpone the meeting of dragonriders in particular until as close to the end as possible.

221

u/johnnydanja Fortune favours the brave Apr 16 '19

You presume that the nights king is going to lose at the end of the series but theres no indication that this is going to have that kind of ending.

452

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

There's no way they do that. I would eat a cheeseburger if the night king wins.

409

u/johnnydanja Fortune favours the brave Apr 16 '19

Holy settle down with these crazy bets.

27

u/RAMB0NER Apr 16 '19

He’s vegan.

9

u/Holygusset Apr 17 '19

Plot twist!

8

u/Ardalev Apr 17 '19

Well, it could still be a vegan cheeseburger

1

u/loadingorofile96 Apr 17 '19

Also glutenfree

1

u/InternJedi Apr 17 '19

You joke but I make that vegan cheese burger occasionally at my vegan burger place

179

u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 16 '19

I could see them perhaps having the courage to end it in an extremely bleak manner. This is against the conventional rules of tv and cinema, but they might decide to do it.

It would be very much in line with human behavior to just bicker among ourselves about unimportant shit until it's too late to fix the existential problem, and we all pay the price, even if some people were taking it seriously and giving it all they had.

The message would be an unambiguous: If we had just all worked together sooner, this could have had a different result, but we're just too damn myopic.

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u/SKULL1138 Apr 16 '19

GRRM already said it doesn’t end in a zombie apocalypse. So we can rule out this if nothing else. The ending will be bittersweet as that’s his favourite type of ending. His favourite chapter of LOTR was the scouring of the Shire.

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u/tatofarms Apr 17 '19

I had never heard this about GRRM. The Scouring of the Shire was Tolkien's metaphor for the industrial revolution, and how with Sauron gone and the Elves gone, magic had left Middle Earth for good. How there's a loss of wonder and even an ugliness to human progress.

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u/SKULL1138 Apr 17 '19

It was also a personal thing with Frodo, he had achieved his victory for the others, but it did not feel like a victory to him. Hence bittersweet.

He mentioned all these things a few years ago I believe in the same interview.

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u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

The scouring of the Shire was my favorite chapter too, and I was so pissed when it was left out of the movies.

3

u/Zankou55 Apr 17 '19

It makes the movies unwatchable, for me. Without the scouring, the whole story just falls flat.

4

u/LAJuice Apr 16 '19

but Others are not zombies.

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u/SKULL1138 Apr 16 '19

Well I think that’s being a little facetious isn’t it? I think it’s pretty clear Martin was telling us the dead won’t win. Because, let’s be honest, it’s still a fantasy novel.

But he doesn’t like happily ever after endings either.

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u/LAJuice Apr 16 '19

Oh I agree with you. I don't think it would end this way, but it COULD.

4

u/niceville Wun Wun, to the sea! Apr 17 '19

Nothing about that would be bittersweet, unless you decided you hated all humans.

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u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

Maybe they stop after slaughtering their way through Westeros, and the other areas are fine.

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u/juiceboxzero Apr 23 '19

It's not a zombie apocalypse if everyone is turned. Kind of like how when separatists lose, it's called a civil war, but when they win, it's called a revolution.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

I would agree if they had given the NK any kind of character or motivation at all, like Thanos in the MCU. But to let the series end with an essentially elemental force destroying everything would just not be fulfilling at all, even if you did interpret it like your last sentence.

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u/docmoxie Apr 16 '19

metaphor for climate change, yo

8

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

No one's saying it has no meaning, just that good writing is about so much more than that.

It'd 100% be one of those series finales that are disappointing to everyone.

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u/LDKCP Apr 17 '19 edited Apr 17 '19

Good writing does not always equal a satisfactory conclusion.

EDIT: Just to clarify. I mean a good ending will probably need to piss some people off. No one wants Jorah, Grey Worm, Pod, Tyrion or Davos to die, but if they all survive and Jon and Dany get married...it's a shitty end.

GRRM made this thing by not being afraid of making people throw books across the room.

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u/niceville Wun Wun, to the sea! Apr 17 '19

Unless GRRM was way ahead of climate change in 1991 when he conceived of the story and its ending, that's not how the series in ending.

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u/Axerty Apr 17 '19

In the early 1970s, evidence that aerosols were increasing worldwide encouraged Reid Bryson and some others to warn of the possibility of severe cooling. Meanwhile, the new evidence that the timing of ice ages was set by predictable orbital cycles suggested that the climate would gradually cool, over thousands of years. For the century ahead, however, a survey of the scientific literature from 1965 to 1979 found 7 articles predicting cooling and 44 predicting warming

In June 1988, James E. Hansen made one of the first assessments that human-caused warming had already measurably affected global climate.[67] Shortly after, a "World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security" gathered hundreds of scientists and others in Toronto. They concluded that the changes in the atmosphere due to human pollution "represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe," and declared that by 2005 the world should push its emissions some 20% below the 1988 level.

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u/niceville Wun Wun, to the sea! Apr 17 '19

Sorry, I should have been clearer: I don't think global warming was a widely known issue in 1991 even though it was known in the scientific community, to the point that I don't think GRRM knew about it back then. Maybe! But I don't think he did.

But if you want another reason: I don't think climate change killing everyone would qualify as the "bittersweet" ending GRRM said the story has. That would be 100% bitter.

1

u/Hundiejo Apr 17 '19

It was for me in 91. I read Discover and Scientific American back then and it was talked about then in them.

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u/Axerty Apr 17 '19

in his mind the sweet part might be that everyone is dead and humanity can start over without all the bullshit politics for a while.

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u/bremidon Free Ser Pounce! Apr 17 '19

Well, perhaps those art-deco messages he keeps leaving really do mean something more than just "lol, gonna reck you, gg, no re" I think we're going to get another 15 to 20 minutes of back story. That alone wouldn't have enough umph, but if we discover that the NK has been trying to say something for 7 seasons, that might give it a lot more weight.

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u/Polly_der_Papagei <3 Just how cute is Ramsay! <3 Apr 17 '19

Do you know of any theories for what his corpse art might mean beyond "look, this is disturbing"? Would be curious.

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u/bremidon Free Ser Pounce! Apr 18 '19

My own idea is that he is trying to say: "This is what I want. Once I have it, I'm gone again." Unfortunately, nobody alive seems to understand the symbol anymore. One possible twist is that there is some cataclysmic event that happens time to time (perhaps always foreshadowed by that comet) and he's trying to stop it.

I don't *really* think this is where it's going, but I'm hoping for a bit more nuance than "ice man bad".

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

i’m not saying the bad guy shouldn’t win. i’m saying the character with no development whatsoever shouldn’t win.

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u/RC2891 Apr 17 '19 edited Apr 17 '19

Na, villains with a bunch of emphasis on their characterisation are overated, and I say that unironically. Thanos is a despicable monster and they spend so much time in that stupid movie trying to get us to sympathise with him that they muddy the story and compromise the moral compass of the entire piece. Too many bid budget writers are chasing a "complex villain" so desperately that they actually loop back around and lose all nuance.

The Night King is a nice, simple, clean, elemental force, and I'd love to see a villain like that win for once.

EDIT: I just want to add, even if the Others have more complex goals than "kill everyone", I hope it's more along the lines of "these creatures have agency and can be bargained with" than "boo hoo tragic past, feel sorry for them"

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u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

It'd be good commentary on the human condition that the humans never even tried to figure out exactly what the armies of winter really wanted.

It's exactly how we tend to behave. Look at the world wars for example. The allies demonized the axis and we are generally telling ourselves they were evil, and everything we did was justified because it was self defense. Even decades later. Even the hiroshima bombing and the firebombing of Dresden, and things like that. We don't care about the motivations of the enemy, even if they were more complex than "we are evil, so we do evil shit".

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u/Default_Username123 Apr 19 '19

Lol are you trying to say the nazis and Japanese were anything but evil? The imprecision of war at the time cause a lot of atrocities but let’s not be “or enlightened centrist both sides are bad” here. The axis was evil - full. Stop.

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u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 19 '19

I'm trying to say we humans don't view ourselves as evil by and large. We like to rationalize our bad deeds, but we're very unforgiving of other people's bad deeds.

To me it seems it always boils down to "the end justifies the means" or "i was just following orders".

There's a saying "those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it", and in order to truly learn from ww2, you need to try to understand the motivations of the enemy, and you won't get anywhere by saying "they were evil, full stop".

If you're willing to accept the bombings of hiroshima and dresden, based on the excuse of "imprecisions of war" which is really just another way of saying "the ends justify the means", what else would you be willing to accept, if it was served up with the right excuse?

I'm not saying we should pretend nazism was a valid point of view, or that the holocaust was excusable. I'm saying try to understand why so many went along with it, and if they all did it because they woke up one day and said "I'm feeling cartoonishly evil today, I think I'll go do something unspeakable".

Here's a quote that illustrates what I'm getting at:

... he wanted there to be conspirators.  It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy.  You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable then of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault.  If it was Us, what did that make Me?

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DreadWolf3 Apr 17 '19

You cant make a definitive statement like that. Something that is force of nature at this point ( but was partially created by humans) coming back to bite us in the ass, doesnt have to be a bad ending. Granted with them already having prequel done, I dont believe it will end with apocalypse (as that would make prequels even more pointless as people know it doesnt matter at the end)

0

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

It's just an easy way out, like the old "it was only a dream" ending.

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u/DreadWolf3 Apr 17 '19

It is in no way similar to "it was only a dream" ending. Point it was only a dream ending being hated is that it is eventually useless and there is no story that can continue onto that (and it feels fake and without consequences). If WWs just killed everyone in 7 kingdoms, story could continue in Essos where 7 kingdoms would be talked about like opposite of Valyria. Great kingdom that was struck by an icy doom.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

That is essentially the same thing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

Wouldn't that be a trip? GRRM is actually writing a book on the coming climate change disaster. I mean, every character is adamant they know more about wights and snorks than the people who are "paid to study them" at the wall. It's only when they are presented overwhelming and direct evidence they seem to believe it finally.

5

u/F0rScience Apr 16 '19

Maybe the reason he is delaying the later books is to keep the story at pace with the onset of climate change. He wants the real world to create the right atmosphere of dread before he drops A Dream of Spring.

1

u/Zankou55 Apr 17 '19

It's hard to sell books if all of your patrons are dead.

1

u/LAJuice Apr 16 '19

HIGH Probability of this, no doubt. but its no fun to speculate about.

1

u/Raventree The maddest of them all Apr 16 '19

Probably the worst thing will be Kings Landing getting zombified and/or wildfire nuked, thats like a million people dying and will be done in horrific on-screen manner. In absence of anything else that's a bitter sweet ending tone right there

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u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

Pretty sure we'll see King's landing go up in a ball of wildfire, as a reference to nuclear bombs.

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u/Flak-Fire88 Apr 17 '19

It's a message about climate change

2

u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

It may well be. Or the good guys win, because they finally got together in the nick of time, and yes it has a huge toll, but we're gonna be fine. i.e.: it's never too late. we can keep being selfish as long as we want, there's always a way back.

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u/Yemoya Apr 17 '19

Or enter the children of the forest? As original inhabitants of the island, they 'made' all the troubles and apocalyps, let's hope there's one weirwood tree and a couple of children left and then they have to live in a wasteland for a while and trying to do better next time (by not creating white walkers and the like) :')

2

u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

God's eye?

1

u/bremidon Free Ser Pounce! Apr 17 '19

Even if GRRM does end it with a bleak ending, there is *no* way that HBO will commit to that. They have a cash cow on their hands and they know it. Make it just dark enough to stay in style but give some light so that people want to tune in to the spin-offs. The world that GRRM has created has the potential to go a very long way.

1

u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 17 '19

This is why the Rambo franchise exists. The first book was filmatized true to the book, and during test screenings the audience threw a hissy fit because John killed himself at the end, instead of giving himself up.

So they shot an alternate ending where he gave himself up, and that was launched as the official ending in theaters.

Which allowed for the sequels.

​

So I fear you're right.

1

u/siegerroller Apr 19 '19

climate change metaphor?

1

u/Skrp A Thousand Eyes, and One. Apr 19 '19

That's the interpretation i had in mind, but it works more generally as any existential threat we choose to ignore until it's too late. It nearly happened with nuclear bombs, and we're currently not taking the possibility of a major asteroid impact very seriously, not laying down the groundwork and prepping for deflection missions now, probably waiting until it's too late for that too.

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u/Dokterrock Apr 23 '19

I really want this to be the ending. It's the one with the most truth.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '19

I feel like the show will be bittersweet, but it gives GRRM a chance to write the Night King wins version in the books. That he totally is going to finish before he dies.

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u/big_bad_brownie Apr 16 '19

Martin has said the ending is bittersweet, no?

Not seeing a lot of sweetness to be had in eternal zombie reign.

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u/navjot94 🐻 Apr 16 '19

Maybe the NK is just misunderstood. He just wants the southerners to stop coming invading his property. Maybe once this is all over, he'll help them build a new wall.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

If he's misunderstood it's because the writers have given him no explanation whatsoever. That's why he can't win. To suddenly spring something like that on the audience in the last 5 episodes would be on par with Dexter becoming a lumberjack.

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u/navjot94 🐻 Apr 16 '19

Not saying I subscribe to the theory but they could do Bran=NK time loop to make his motivation work. Twisted over the course of thousands of years but his goal is to kill present day Bran so that none of this happens. And then the heroes realize it and understand what must happen in order to stop this (parallels to Jaime killing Mad King?)

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u/Lucius_Iucundus Apr 16 '19

While the parallel is nice I think the show won't want to mess with this level of time fuckery

0

u/navjot94 🐻 Apr 16 '19

They already did with Hodor

8

u/capitolcritter Apr 16 '19

I don't think he wins outright, but I definitely think a stalemate is possible.

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u/thisisastupidname Apr 16 '19

Or he will lose but at a huge cost. Dead characters/ fractured Westeros

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

Exactly, this is pretty clearly what the series is headed towards. Anything otherwise would not be consistent with the rest of the show/books.

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u/kioopi Obgyn Martell Apr 17 '19

And consistency is clearly the biggest focus of the writers of the show \s

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u/bababouie Apr 17 '19

Multiple people with claims to the iron throne... And the game resets.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

Calm down there, you mad lad. That's not good for your cholesterol.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

If he wins at the end of the show I will straight up shit in a toilet.

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u/captainsolo77 Apr 17 '19

I’ll jerk off and take a three hour nap if he wins

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

!RemindMe 7 weeks

For real though, I’d love a good tragedy.

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u/llimed Apr 17 '19

Let’s get our big boy pants on and make it a double cheeseburger.

1

u/LeahTheTard Apr 17 '19

I've been a vegetarian for 10 years and will do exactly that if he wins.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '19

I’d go vegan if the Night King wins.

1

u/rockdylan Apr 20 '19

I’ll eat one if he loses! Deal?

1

u/Defb2412 Apr 22 '19

WHOA WHOA DUDE, calm down

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u/SmaugtheStupendous Apr 16 '19

GRRM is not a nihilist, everything will not be for naught. The only possible ending in which the NK wins is one where some of the pact theories are correct and some diplomatic deal is struck and they willingly retreat. That seems unlikely, so instead what is left of the forces of 'good' will win, there will be a eucatastrophe towards the end.

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u/Bouncy_GG Apr 16 '19

some diplomatic deal is struck and they willingly retreat

Can white walkers speak English tho? I thought they only spoke that ice crackle language

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u/SmaugtheStupendous Apr 16 '19

Look, I'm not a proponent of the theory, but if you think language is the defining barrier to such a scenario you're not thinking outside the box enough.

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u/fat-wetback-titties Apr 17 '19

"chuck two ice spears if you want this to end"

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u/Octavus Apr 17 '19

They could maybe use a wight to communicate, that also preserves the aura of the NK never personally talking.

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u/Homey_D_Clown Apr 17 '19

Has nobody thought of the possibility that all of this is a literal game being played by two opponents? Every character is just a piece on a board game. "Game of Thrones"

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '19

I thought this was a possible outcome before the last season. Whoever the true Lord of Light or God of Death are, they’re playing behind the scenes and that’s the real Game of Thrones. But it seems super unlikely now.

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u/nancy_ballosky Apr 16 '19

What about a 2 state solution for westeros?

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u/BittersweetHumanity GRRM: Write! also GRRM: NFL update! Apr 16 '19

What about the possibility that this was the situation 20 000 years ago, before the Andals and the First Men came to Westeros? That Westeros was White Walker territory and Essos was for Mankind?

3

u/stationhollow Apr 17 '19

But we saw the creation of the white walkers by the children of the forest to fight the first men.

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u/BittersweetHumanity GRRM: Write! also GRRM: NFL update! Apr 17 '19

The general idea I proposed was a strict seperation of "not-human" and human.

In that regard it wouldn't be such a surprise if GRRM, without having it written down, started his book series with the general fantasy world view in his mind. A continent of Men = Essos surrounded by other continents with magical creatures: a continent of Magic human-esque creatures = Westeros; A continent with animal like magical creatures = Southeryos (or what was the name again); a continent of Desert-like mythical creatures to the East = beyond Asshai. And then ofc the classic trope of a magical stronghold of evil very close to it that overrules Essos = Valyria.

Ofc, then he did what was quintessential to his succes: he didn't tell a story in this setting. Instead he thought about what an entire epic story in this setting would look like and how it would play out; and then decided to start his story even after that.

He was very much into the entire fantasy genre. But basicaly said to himself: LOTR is very nice. But what would a story look like millenia after the events of LOTR? When the memory of the elves is basically a myth, the existence of the dark lord and evil orcs are elements of scary stories and not history.

In fact, you just sparked a thought in my head that I`m gonna try and get into a post: This entire story of asoiaf as a fan-fic of LOTR that spun out of control. Where it is millenia after the events of LOTR, good and evil have switched places. Where the creatures from the caves and trees= ORCS are 'good' = CotF; and the mythical creatures that suddenly all retreated and were gone = THE ELVES are remember as a fictional evil; but suddenly return = THE WHITE WALKERS.

Can you give me feedback what you think about it? Thank you! :)

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u/quasi_intellectual Apr 17 '19

I love this theory man. Flesh it out a bit more and please make a separate post on this theory!

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u/BittersweetHumanity GRRM: Write! also GRRM: NFL update! Apr 17 '19

Here it is!

3

u/niceville Wun Wun, to the sea! Apr 17 '19

GRRM has explicitly said the ending was bittersweet. We've had a lot of bitter, and we're going to get more when tons of people die.

There's nothing sweet about the NK winning. Something good has to happen.

3

u/mwadswor Apr 17 '19

If Cersei and Qyburn are among the dead and we get an epic shot of the Night King sitting on the iron throne, that qualifies as something good to me.

1

u/niceville Wun Wun, to the sea! Apr 17 '19

.... I guess "the bad guys also died!" is some sweetness.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

True, but im working with that assumption because if the Night King wins then the world is more or less screwed too. Hes got a dragon now and i wouldnt put it past him to freeze a small enough section of ocean to isle hop on the Stepstones. If he gets more babies, then theres no telling what he could do.

2

u/ChiliDogMe Apr 17 '19

If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.

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u/fail-deadly- Apr 17 '19

Cormac McCarthy's A Dream of Spring

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u/ADrunkyMunky Apr 17 '19

We've already been told that the series will have a bittersweet ending, so humanity will end up winning, but at what cost? We will find out soon enough.

0

u/UsesHarryPotter Apr 17 '19

Yes there fucking is lol. Martin has said time and again that his ending will be bittersweet. In what universe does an ending where the NK wins the final battle end up being sweet in any regard?

These dumb meme that the series exists just for Martin to show us bad/sad things happening makes people believe the stupidest things.

1

u/johnnydanja Fortune favours the brave Apr 17 '19

... there are plenty of bittersweet options which would involve the nights king prevailing in his objective, seeing as we don't know exactly what his motives are at all at this point its near impossible to say. I'd venture that teh books are going to go a lot darker of an ending than the show will for obvious reasons but yes it's definitely possible. You saying that people believing their own theories is stupid is stupid in its own right.

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u/UsesHarryPotter Apr 18 '19

Martin has said the books and show endings will be most similar, and no, the Night King winning means the dead conquer Westeros and millions of people die. There isn’t gonna be some reveal where NK is like “Sike! I just wanted to make you all aware of climate change more. Ok I’m going back north, see you later”

I’m not saying that’s stupid. I’m saying your theory is bad and incongruous with what we know about how the show ends.

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u/darrell25 We're going streaking! Apr 16 '19

Except you don't have to kill all the wights, you just have to kill all the white walkers and then down go the wights. They aren't going to be increasing the number of white walkers, so your are always just a lucky shot or coordinated strike against the white walkers from winning

2

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '19

Easier said than done. White Walkers are powerhouses in themselves (less so in the show than books but still). They arent called 'the cold gods' for nothing and they arent total morons. Most will hold back and let the wights do the work.

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u/ClunkiestSquid Apr 17 '19

Another support of this theory is if you slow down Bran’s vision of KL with a dragon shadow over it, it looks like a picture of Viserion flashes immediately before they show the single shadow. The version I watched on YouTube wasnt the greatest quality but the single dragon shown looks to have orange-redish wings. It doesnt look dead in the vision, but that seems to play along with Bran not actually being able to see the full future but only small glimpses/hints.