Game Of Thrones Season 8: Predicting The Fate Of Every Character

The winds of winter have blown over, and now we should have a dream of spring - and with it, a new season of Game of Thrones. As things stand, though, we're still over a year away from the next batch of episodes, which just so happens to be the final run of the series.

HBO have ramped up the secrecy around the production and, while a few set leaks have surfaced, the fact we're still so far out means there's little known about how the last six episodes of the decade's biggest TV show are shaping up, except for one crucial detail:

A lot of characters will die.

We're finally at the endgame that Game of Thrones has been building to since its very first scene - the Battle of Ice and Fire, the army of the living versus the army of the dead. As the season progresses, it's the latter's ranks that will be swelling, and by the climax of the series - which George R.R. Martin, in relation to the books at least, once said would be "bittersweet" - the battlefield is likely to be strewn with bodies from all sides.

To that end, we recently heard that a table read of the finale featured cast members dropping down dead one after another. Now, not everyone can die, because there have to be some people who make it out of this alive (otherwise it's just going to be bitter), but the likelihood does seem to be more will die than survive, because, well, that's the game of thrones for you.