Potential spoilers for “The Gift”—What’s happening in Dorne?

It might not be the most popular storyline this season, but a few links have come our way that seem to confirm the rumors about one beloved character, and may indicate how the rest of the Dornish plotline will play out. Join us as we make some educated guesses about this coming Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Gift.”

Speculative spoilers ahead for next Sunday. Proceed at your own risk.

So this rumor comes from a site called Recapped.com. It was posted a couple of weeks back, before the airing of “Kill The Boy.” At the time, I dismissed it, as the site’s description of Episode 6, “Unbowed, Unbent Unbroken,” seemed a bit far fetched. Myranda—the kennel keeper’s daughter—giving Sansa a bath? Sansa’s rape would focus almost exclusively on Theon’s face? These things seemed less than likely only two short weeks ago (remember, we hadn’t even seen Myranda obsessively stalk Sansa around the Winterfell courtyard at that point).

But since these spoilers for last week were so dead on, it looks like we should consider what they have to say about this week.

Episode 7, airing on May 23, has the Gilly (Hannah Murray) and Samwell sex scene. Tyene Sand (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) is also supposed to get naked as she is talking to Bronn in prison. And Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) has a scene in bed with Daario.

This suggest three things:

• In the books, Sam and Gilly turn to each other after Maester Aemon dies. Does that mean the old man will die this coming Sunday? Or will Jon heading to Hardhome and leaving Sam and Gilly to deal with a growing coalition of potential mutineers be enough to drive the two together?
• I assume that the scene between Dany and Daario will deal with Dany’s command that Hizdahr zo Loraq marry her from a couple of week’s back.
• But the big one is the Tyene and Bronn scene, because that correlates to another spoiler that’s been running around since June of last year, when Oh No They Didn’t got a hold of an audition tape for Dorne.

In the audition tape (which was taken down many moons ago), Bronn discovers what we all already suspected after last week’s fight—that’s he’s been poisoned by Tyene’s dagger. The dialogue is still there to be read though, and it includes Tyene flirting like mad with Bronn and remarking on his lovely singing voice, before leaving him a vial of antidote. But if she and her sisters were so hell bent on doing in Bronn and Jaime only last week, why would she do that?

Well, looking at the books, we should remember that Arienne Martell (a character who has been cut, but who led the Sand Snakes on this mission instead of Ellaria) seduces a great warrior and fighter, Arys Oakheart, in order to carry out her kidnapping of Myrcella. If Tyene indeed gives Bronn this antidote, and then seduces Bronn on top of it, could this be the show working it’s way back to the book version of the story? Is Tyene now filling the role of Arienne and seducing Bronn to help the Snakes on a second, perhaps more successful, kidnapping attempt of Myrcella?

And if so, does that mean that Bronn, having successfully survived a poisoning, will find himself on the wrong end of Areo Hotah’s axe, as Oakheart did in A Feast for Crows? Will Myrcella’s face survive untouched? There’s been a lot of speculation over the identity of the “person we can’t see” in this clip and these pics—suggestions have ranged from Varys to Aegon Targaryen. But I believe, and continue to believe until it is shown otherwise, that the person they were not allowed to show on camera is a disfigured Myrcella. If these spoilers are correct, they suggest that could in fact still be the case.

• Published on 05/21/2015 at 12:26 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT