Who's going to die in Game of Thrones Season 7? Odds on 50 characters

Use your ← → (arrows) to browse

Jaime Lannister

The Season 6 finale left many characters at a crossroads, and perhaps none faced a more complicated future than Jaime Lannister. We last saw him AT the Iron Throne after returning home to discover the Sept of Baelor a smoking pile of ashes. Jaime watches Cersei’s coronation with a look of apprehension and dread.

At first blush, we might expect Jaime to be appalled by his sister’s actions. After all, she did exactly what he killed the Mad King to prevent: blow up part of King’s Landing with wildfire. Also, Cersei’s power play resulted in Tommen’s suicide. These things won’t sit well with him.

But let’s not forget who Jaime Lannister truly is. Despite a few glimmers of the good man who could have been, largely drawn out of him under the influence of Brienne of Tarth, he is an elegant beast. A highly skilled fighter, Jaime is treacherous, conniving, and not above flinging children from towers or threatening to catapult them into castles to get what he wants. Through it all, the one thing that keeps him going is his all-consuming love for Cersei. Recall his declaration of loyalty to her in “The Red Woman”:

Fuck fate. Fuck prophecy. Fuck everyone who isn’t us. We’re the only ones who matter, the only ones in this world.

He may have been under a lot of stress when he said it, but he still said it.

For better or worse, Jaime is inextricably bound to Cersei, the new Dark Queen of Bad Decisions. He’s as likely to kill her before she can make more chaos as he is to reign at her side as her king.

When a king or queen sits the Iron Throne, they don’t tend to last long, and Cersei has a lot of enemies eager to bring her down. As Ani said above, she’s likely dead by season’s end. Whatever path Jaime decides to take, we see him outliving her, as it would behoove the show to explore the emotional fallout that comes from losing his other half. Perhaps he’ll wander the countryside, utterly bereaved, crazed and bloodthirsty as a rabid wolf, a beast who deserves no mercy except to be put down. Unless, somehow, Brienne of Tarth can rescue him.