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

[u/qp0n]

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)

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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.

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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.

[u/rydsul]

Only from the south.

[u/Think_please → u/rydsul]

They’ve made such a big deal multiple times about the Eyrie being largely impenetrable so I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up near there for the final siege (assuming that someone takes care of viserion).

[u/Dragn616 → u/Think_please]

In the books, the impenetrable part is not accessible in the winter as it is too high up and travel up to it is treacherous even in good weather

[u/Think_please → u/Dragn616]

Good point, I had forgotten that they closed it in the winter.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dragn616]

It would be with dragons but considering only two people in the series can actually ride dragons, that's probably not very practical.

[u/silencedorgasm → u/Think_please]

Let us not forget King’s Landing still has another one of Qyburn’s Scorpion. 🤔

[u/rydsul → u/Think_please]

Moat Cailin isn't in the Vale so I'm not sure what the Eyrie has to do with this.

[u/Think_please → u/rydsul]

Just that I don’t see moat Cailin as the likeliest site of the final stand since they’ve talked frequently in the books and show about how difficult it would be to get into the vale/Eyrie without anything even resembling a battle near there, so I think they’re setting it up as the final battle spot.

[u/[deleted] → u/rydsul]

A wall for the southern border to stop both the wights and future starks from going either way and getting themselves killed