What Will Be the Final Scene of “Mother’s Mercy”?

With only two episodes to go before the long cold winter between seasons sets in, there’s one big question that’s still on everyone’s minds: how will this season end?

We’ve got quite a few hints that there’re terrible things on the way. Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) told us there’s a scene “more shocking than the Red Wedding” that comes “towards the end of the season.” Emilia Clarke promised that “YouTube reaction Vids are coming.” And Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne) threatened that the end of Episode Ten will, and we quote, “Break the Internet.”

Spoilers ahead, plus lots of speculation.

So what could they all be referring to? In truth, it’s probably three different scenes. Cunningham’s character is with Stannis, and if the Mannis listens to Melisandre and sacrifices Shireen, there will definitely be a reaction. Clarke, meanwhile, is over in Meereen, and if the pictures are any indication, there’s going to be a helluva scene coming in Daznak’s Pit, and we’re not just talking some Spartacus-type gladiator brawling.

But what could Portman be talking about? Are Pod and Brienne part of it? That would be very interesting, because we do know one thing about the final scene of the season. Benioff and Weiss casually mentioned it in one of their pre-season interviews. “The very first scene of the season and the very last scene of the season are book scenes.”

As we all know, that “very first” scene of the season was straight from A Feast For Crows, Cersei V, and was the flashback of Young Cersei and the prophecy of Maggy the Frog.

So what is the very last scene?

I am going to propose four wild theories for this, all of which are book scenes, and all of which are possibilities.

1. The Return of Varys: This would be the most accurate ending the show could go with: end the season with the very last scene of the very last book that’s been published so far. For those familiar with A Dance With Dragons, we’re talking about the epilogue. In it, Kevan Lannister has returned to King’s Landing and restored order after the months and months of chaos stemming from Cersei’s mismanagement. He’s already realized how awful the Tyrells are, but they have Randyll Tarly (Sam’s father) on their side, and their armies are basically keeping order, something that’s more important than ever as the snow starts falling. But before Kevan can make any more decisions, he is tricked into going to Pycelle’s room, where he finds the Grand Maester dead, and is then himself murdered with a crossbow, much like Tywin before him. The murders are meant to echo Tywin’s death, in order to arouse suspicion. The real murderer who steps out of the shadows is Varys, who had been missing ever since Tyrion’s escape at the end of A Storm of Swords.

Arguments for this: Varys has been missing ever since Tyrion was kidnapped by Jorah. Kevan Lannister is on his way back to the Red Keep to take charge, and Pycelle is working for him. It makes sense that their murders happen together and at the end of the series. It may even make sense to have Varys be the one to do it, as it will return him to King’s Landing after his detour in Essos.

Arguments against: This moment is the big reveal that Varys was working for the Targaryens the entire time, and his claim for killing Kevan is that he’s doing too good a job reuniting the Kingdoms behind Tommen. Chaos, in his words, is what is necessary to make it easier for the Targaryens to return to power. But we’ve already had the big reveal of who Varys was working for the whole time, and more importantly, the show gave him dialogue regretting the chaos that was sewn. So this wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Besides, the Targaryen he’s sewing discord for is the (so far cut) Aegon Targaryen, not Dany. But in the show, Varys is looking to work for Dany, and to work with her directly, instead of this weird preparing for a Targaryen return that those returning are not involved in, nor might not actually want.

2. Dany’s Return to the Khalasar: This would be the most traditional ending the show could go with. But first, let’s get the big probable spoiler for this coming week out of the way, because this ending is predicated on it. Dany will be rescued from the Sons of the Harpy’s murdering knives and her terrible new husband by Drogon. He flies in, she jumps on his back and flies away, leaving the chaos and mess she’s made of Meereen behind. In the final (regular) chapter of A Dance With Dragons, Daenerys X, we learn that she can’t control Drogon, and she can’t get him to take her back. Instead, the flight and the stress and the lack of clean water and food on her journey back to Meereen leaves her sick and plagued with hallucinations. To end on this note would mean more visions in the vein of Bran’s visions in the weirwood tree, and would also make a nice bookend to Cersei’s flashback at the very beginning of the episode. When she wakes up, she discovers a clan of Dothraki nearby, she rides Drogon over and lands in front of them, with the idea to return to the last place things made sense and start over.

Arguments for this: Two of our four seasons (Seasons 1 and 3) have ended on Dany’s story, first with the birth of her dragons and then with her freeing the slaves of Yunkai. Ending the season on her next big step would be in keeping with that. Season 2 also basically ended with her—only the White Walker epilogue with Sam bumpered that. In many ways, Dany is the last hero left in the novels, the savior Westeros is waiting for, and although she is across the Narrow Sea, ending the season with her would remind us that this is her story.

Arguments against: Though Dany taking herself back to the Dothraki people represents a reset for her, that’s not really something that’s going to break the internet, is it? This is not couch pillow-clutching stuff. It is very “season finale conclusion,” but if we’re looking for shock and awe, this isn’t going to fit.

3. “For the Watch”: “Every time you ask when the next book is due, GRRM kills a Stark” goes the meme, and for the third time in five books, Martin returned to that well in A Dance with Dragons. The third to last regular chapter in that book, Jon XIII,  leads us to yet another culmination of misdirection, unreliable narrator, and once again, playing on our belief that the hero cannot die, at least, not before the big battle. Yes, everyone, you haven’t been imagining the foreshadowing of Angry Olly. Stannis is right: Jon is the same honorable fool that Ned was, and that’s what gets him killed. But it’s not even peace with the wildlings that pushes things over the edge. It’s Jon receiving the news that “Arya” (or in the show’s case Sansa) is married to Ramsay Bolton, and being tortured and raped. After all that insistence that he wouldn’t go south with Stannis, he gets caught up in the moment, and declares that the Watch will go South and rescue his sister and free Winterfell. It is the last straw. In a moment reminiscent of Caesar’s death, Jon is lured into a circle of mutineers who stab him over and over while crying, “For the Watch.”

Arguments for this: If I was a betting woman, my money would be on this. Watching Jon be betrayed by his Black Brothers, stabbing him over and over, when he’s the last traditional hero and the last Stark really left standing? Hysteria. Especially if they literally cut it off as Jon blacks out, with no indication of whether he survives, like in the books. Black out, cliff hanger, freak out. Couch pillows clutched, YouYube vids of horrified unsuspecting viewers, the sobbing and screaming of the Unsullied asking once again why gods why? The rage of those who realize they have not been fooled not once, not twice, but three times in a row by this show, via the same damn trick. It’ll be anarchy.

Arguments against: …But what if Jon’s blackout isn’t the end of the season. What if… What if everything book fans have been hoping and praying and waiting for these last four years since A Dance With Dragons was released is given to us, here, now, this day. There’s one thing book readers have wanted, more than Dany and Tyrion’s meeting, more than the Hardhome Massacre showing just a taste of Winter’s bite. What if the ending scene isn’t Jon’s death—what if it’s his resurrection, revealing him to be Azor Ahai reborn?

4. Mother’s Mercy See that title? Though some of us assume this is a reference to Cersei’s Walk of Shame (a huge scene that will take up a good chunk of Episode 10), the moment it was released, everyone else immediately thought back to another mother, one that’s been dead now for two seasons, and one the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom has been fervently hoping will reappear, despite the fact that there is no sign of her week after week. If this is in fact the ending scene, it would not come from the final chapters of A Dance With Dragons, but from a chapter towards the end of A Feast For Crows, Brienne VIII. Let go of the fact that the way Brienne’s injuries in the books are sustained has been done away with—Biter and company were all collectively wiped out by Arya and the Hound in the middle of last season. Instead, let us imagine that when Stannis reaches Winterfell at the end of the season, there is a great Battle between his host and the Boltons’. Brienne takes this as her cue to try and rescue Sansa, but upon seeing Stannis, forgets everything and attacks him, perhaps even killing him, giving the Boltons the win, and probably being badly attacked by Davos, Melisandre, and gods know who else in the process. This would be a sensible way to sustain the injuries needed. When she awakens, she has been taken by the Brothers Without Banners, and brought before Lady Stoneheart.

Arguments for this: Well, I will say one thing. Fans are a stubborn lot, and they want to believe. And frankly, this one, though the most far-fetched of them all, has one big argument going for it—namely that Daniel Portman would actually be in the scene.

Arguments against: All of them, I’m afraid. I mean, when the producers say “she’s not in the show” and George R.R. Martin says “I’m sorry she’s been cut from the show,” I would be pretty certain she’s been, you know, cut from the show.

But if this did happen, you have to admit, it would break the internet.

• Published on 06/03/2015 at 2:57 PM CDT
• Last updated on 06/03/2015 at 2:57 PM CDT