The Long Night may be over on the HBO adaptation but it looms ahead still in the books. Even worse, the long wait for Book 6, The Winds of Winter, has wracked up almost a decade. Hope is on the horizon with Martin promising it will be with readers by next summer. However, that still leaves another potential extraordinary gap until A Dream of Spring eventually arrives. At least fans can look forward to some major surprises.
George RR Martin and the HBO team already absolutely confirmed that some major plot points will be the same in the books and TV show, especially surrounding the ending.
However, it increasingly became clear when show creators and writers DB Weiss and David Benioff ran out of source material after Season 5 and started to diverge from existing plotlines in the books. The weaknesses of this became increasingly apparent.
Even so, it must be assumed that Daenerys will die, probably at Jon’s hand. Bran will end up as some sort of king and Sansa will find her destiny back at Winterfell.
But in the Season 4 episode Oathkeeper, the TV show totally veered away from Martin’s vision for one of the central foundations of the entire saga.
READ MORE: GAME OF THRONES AUTHOR GEORGE RR MARTIN JUST CONFESSED HE HAS ‘NO CLEAR PLAN’
For a start, in the books, the white walkers are described as rather terrifying, but also strangely beautiful.
According to George R. R. Martin, himself, the Others are: “Strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous.”
The Sidhe were the original Celtic notion of fairies, or what has commonly become also associated with elves.
As for the ancient evil of the white walkers or Others in the books, a far more ancient prophecy may come into play.
Excitingly, this all brings the notion of Azor Ahai ‘The Prince Who Was Promised’ back into play. But who is it?
Fans will still be hoping Jon Snow’s secret Targaryen heritage actually has a point. Or Daenerys might actually do something heroic before dying. Or be sacrificed by Jon to forge Lightbringer, as many fans believe.
There is also still the mysterious ‘other’ Targaryen, purportedly the elder son on Rhaegar and ‘first’ Aegon, introduced in the books but dropped from the show. Dany’s vision shows Rhaegar calling his son the ‘The Prince Who Was Promised’.
Fans will also perhaps be hoping Arya actually carries on with her famous list and kills Cersei, herself, among others…