Game Of Thrones: 15 Theories Better Than What We Got

This was what we had been waiting for for seven seasons. The battle between the living and the dead. As Jon Snow said time and time again, it didn't matter one bit who sat the Iron Throne if the Night King came and killed everyone.

He spent years of his life preparing for the battle, lobbying for help from his countrymen, and risking his life traveling to Dragonstone and North of Wall to make allies out of Daenerys and Cersei. The way the narrative was presented until the latter half of season eight, this was the real battle, not the scrap for who got to sit the Iron Throne.

But how would this battle play out? How would the Night King overtake Cersei as the main antagonist of the entire saga? Before it was revealed that he achieved no such feat, the theory was that he would actually prevail victorious from the Battle of Winterfell, and continue his march further into Westeros.

Cersei had been far too dismissive of the threat from beyond the wall, genuinely believing that the Night's Watch was concerned about nothing more than grumkins and snarks. Not only would the Night King's victory at Winterfell and subsequent march toward King's Landing have made for the type of huge twist we've come to expect, it would have made for an incredibly tense, surprising end to the saga.

Forcing Cersei to face an army of the dead thanks to her own selfishness and error in judgement? That's a far better "story".