Well, it’s hard to believe, but another season of Game of Thrones is almost at an end.
Thus far, the show’s epic sixth outing has left us with little to complain about.
(Maybe it got too deep in the weeds with Faceless Men, Three-Eyed Ravens and other mystical mumbo-jumbo at times, but that’s a gripe for another time.)
Things started out at such a breakneck pace that we were actually glad when showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff eased up on the reins a bit.
The first half of this season gave us the predicted resurrection of one character, the shocking death of another, and some fan favorites returning to badass form.
(The sight of Daenerys’ nude triumph over her Dothkraki captors will surely remain etched in the memories of fans … for a number of reasons.)
The most recent episodes have had their share of jaw-dropping moments (We’re really staring to hate that damn Waif that’s got it out for Arya.), but they often felt like place-setting installments that were less about advancing the plot and more about arranging the pieces for an unforgettable endgame.
Today, HBO released the titles of the final two episodes of Game of Thrones Season 6 (We already knew that next week’s installment is titled “No One,” a favorite phrase among Jaqen H’ghar and the rest of the Faceless), and naturally, the Internet is going ape with speculation.
For as long as it’s been in post-book territory, the show has delighted in throwing us curveballs, but for the penultimate episode (historically the season’s most eventful), Weiss and Benioff seem to be laying all their cards on the table.
Entitled “The Battle of the Bastards” – and directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who helmed last season’s Night’s King coming-out party “Hardhome” – the episode is all but guaranteed to revolve around the war over Winterfell.
The titular “bastards” are undoubtedly Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton, the latter of whom [POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!] you can be certain will be killed in some spectacularly satisfying way, possibly by Sansa.
We’d feel terrible if we got your hopes up for nothing, but a bastard’s gonna die, and you can be damn sure it won’t be Jon again.
As for the finale, little is known about the plot, but it’s also directed by Sapochnik, it’s the show’s longest episode to date at 69 minutes, and with a title like “The Winds of Winter” (also the name of the forthcoming sixth installment of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series), you can be fairly certain that it won’t disappoint.
We’ve known that winter is coming since the the series debuted back in 2011 – and it sounds like with the finale of Season 6, it’ll finally arrive.
Watch Game of Thrones online at TV Fanatic to get caught up in time for what sounds like a thrilling string of episodes.
