Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Game Of Thrones series finale.
For a show supposedly concerned about the power of a good story, Game of Thrones sure botched some of its own. While the series finale of tied up major plotlines, it left us wondering about far more.
Our advice: Don’t go walking amid the unkempt briar patches of unanswered questions the show left behind after its eight sprawling seasons. It’s easy to get lost, trip, and fall on a plot hole.
We've picked over the final hour-and-a-half of Game of Thrones and catalogued the questions that will keep us up at night. Throw your hands up in frustration or laugh it off. However you react, the conclusion's the same: Certain Game of Thrones questions will remain forever unanswered, for now our watch has ended.
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1. How did Drogon know what the Iron Throne meant to Daenerys?
2. Where did Drogon go with Daenerys’ corpse?
3. Are there any survivors in King’s Landing? Any at all?
4. Did Jon confess to killing Daenerys? There was no evidence.
5. Has winter arrived to King’s Landing or is it snowing ash?
6. Why did Grey Worm wait to execute Tyrion and Jon if he was so willing to execute the Lannister soldiers?
7. What gave Tyrion, a prisoner, the jurisdiction to upend the government structure and institute a benevolent oligarchy?
8. How were the seats of the Small Council in Dragonpit chosen?
9. Why did the Stark pack get three votes?
10. Will Brienne ever write her own entry in the Kingsguard book?
11. How will the Dothraki, who are terrified of water, cross the Narrow Sea to get back to their home? If they stay in Westeros, will they be forever treated as outsiders? Or will they start Dothraki-Westerosi families?
12. How did the Dothraki army magically replenish after being on the front lines of the war against the White Walkers?
13. Will the people of the isle of Naath think they’re being invaded by a group of stern soldiers? Or are the Unsullied going to liberate the slaves?
14. Will the Unsullied catch Butterfly Fever, a terrible flesh-eating disease native to Naath?
15. What will happen to Daenerys’ free cities in Essos? Will Daario Neharis continue to manage Meereen?
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16. Did Varys manage to send any letters about Jon’s parentage? Will they be discovered?
17. Why were the Night King and the Three-Eyed Raven locked in a centuries-long pursuit?
18. What are the full powers of the Three-Eyed Raven, anyway? Will Bran eventually grow into a tree?
19. How will Bran balance king and Raven duties?
20. How is having a king who can warg into his citizens' bodies considered a democratic improvement? Did Bran warg into Daenerys?
21. What did those White Walker spiral/crop circles, which were shown approximately 300 times, mean? What do they need a Night’s Watch for? Is it just a cold prison?
23. Has Jon gone full wildling, or is he still on active Night’s Watch duty?
24. How was the Wall fixed so quickly after zombie Viserion blew it down? Will it be completely rebuilt?
25. Is Bran the ultimate puppet master? Can he be considered "good" if he knew that Daenerys would carry out a massacre so that he'd eventually sit on the vacant throne?
26. Is Bran so far from being human that he’s not offended that his nickname is “the Broken?”
27. Why does Bran need a Master of Whisperers if he knows everything?
28. If Bran was going to be King all along, then why was he the only character to completely disappear for a season? Or was this decided in the writer’s room last week?
29. What’s stopping the Iron Islands and Dorne from seceding like the North?
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30. What’s so special about the North, man?
31. What does the North remember?
32. What does the new Prince of Dorne think of this mess?
33. What have the surviving people of King’s Landing been eating the past few weeks?
34. Why did Yara support Daenerys when her brother, Theon, supported the Starks?
35. Can we retire the phrase “bend the knee” and replace it with “kneel” from season 2 of Fleabag?
36. Will the Stark girls ever experience romantic love?
37. Will the Starks have children? Actually, aside from Samwell (John Bradley), will any character have children?
38. What is west of Westeros? Could it just be the other side of Essos? Is this world round?
39. Will whatever is west of Westeros be happy to meet Arya "Columbus" Stark?
40. Why has no one tried to sail there before? Or if they have, why doesn't Bran know about it?
41. How was Robyn Arryn’s glow-up so strong?
42. How did Cersei and Jaime’s faces stay so well preserved after being crushed?
43. Does Tyrion realize that if Cersei and Jaime had stayed in the map room, they might have survived?
44. Did the crocus poking out of the snow above the Wall mean that Summer is Coming?
45. When will the inevitable peasant insurrection happen?
46. Who was the green-eyed person Arya was destined to kill, according to Melisandre’s prophecy?
47. Speaking of prophecies: Who was Azor Ahai or the Prince that Was Promised?
48. Did any prophecy matter?
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49. Why did Arya spend a year learning how to steal people’s faces in Braavos?
50. Will there be a spin-off focusing on Arya’s adventures? Or Sansa's? Or anyone's?
51. Why weren’t there any women in the writer’s room?
52. Was anything ever supposed to add up? Or, were we supposed to forge a narrative through unconnected points, like real life?
53. Is there a Game of Thrones support group we can attend, so we can learn to leave these questions behind?
54. Will we get back those hours we spent reading pages of Reddit and watching hours of fan theory videos that ultimately went nowhere?
55. Finally, come on, Sansa — spill. Weren't you really annoyed that your ex-husband nominated your brother to be King? Said that his story was better than yours? We are.