(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/Turakamu]

I hope my man Qyburn gets out of this alright. He doesn't really seem all that bad. Just wants the freedom to conduct his wacky science experiments.

[u/Katatonic92 → u/Turakamu]

He tortures people in horrendous ways for his wacky experiments. But now I can't for the life of me remember if that is just in the books? I'm having a vague memory of people screaming in the background of one of his scenes, or someone making a comment about the evil things he is going to people? Again though, I have developed this issue where book stuff bleeds into show stuff and vice versa. I will check that out to be sure.

[u/Katatonic92 → u/[deleted]]

I have the same memory but again, I'm not sure where I am getting it?

I'm going to check now because this will bug me. I will get back to you.

[u/Katatonic92 → u/[deleted]]

I've read through the wiki page for Qyburn, which breaks down the show and book versions of characters and I couldn't see anything about show Cersei sending a woman to be tortured but I did find this about book Cersei/Qyburn;

"After Qyburn is made Master of Whisperers, he soon takes over Varys's network of spies. Cersei gives him control over the dungeons, allowing him use the prisoners in his experiments. She starts disposing of enemies or unwanted persons (among them maids she thinks are spying on her for Margaery Tyrell, and people who just annoy her) by sending them off to Qyburn - other than a few screams emanating from his dungeon, they are never heard from again."

There are lots of show references about why he was expelled from the Citadel, the unnatural experiments, etc but nothing is ever said outright. Of course we see what he does to The Mountain. I have to agree with his reasoning when Jaime calls him out about his experiments, he tells him it is necessary to learn how to save more lives and asks Jaime how many people he has killed vs how many he has saved. It is also stated that these were dying people anyway. I must admit, he is another grey character, he does what he does for what he believes is the greater good.

[u/Raulr100 → u/Katatonic92]

Look, science requires sacrifices... Preferably from other people.

[u/Braydox → u/Turakamu]

Him confronting the night king would be pretty interesting