Warning: There are SPOILERS ahead for Game Of Thrones. So if you’ve not watched its most recent episode, Beyond The Wall, then you shouldn’t read ahead.
While most viewers were understandably entranced by the goings on North Of The Wall in the Game Of Thrones season 7 penultimate episode, it was the disintegration of Sansa and Arya’s relationship that arguably left the sourest taste.
Their reunion earlier this season in The Spoils Of War has quickly become bitter, courtesy of a little meddling from Littlefinger. After being pushed in the right direction by the highly skilled manipulator, Arya found a letter sent by a younger Sansa that insisted the Lannisters were their ally, which she wrote under a huge amount of pressure by Cersei. Furious that her older sister had seemingly turned her back on the family, Arya has quickly become colder and more sinister towards Sansa.
Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor has teased that the sibling rivalry is only going to get nastier, too, even going as far as to reveal that it will soon become “violent.” Taylor told The Huffington Post that over the course of Game Of Thrones the pair have “turned into absolute lethal individuals” because of what they’ve gone through.
“I love the fact that these two come back, they’re both lethal, and I just wanted to give the impression, as much as possible, that one of them is going to die. But you’re not sure which one,” the Game of Thrones director explained, before then adding. “Arya is certainly lethal and sort of threatening, but when Sansa sends Brienne away, who is Arya’s natural protector, something is coming very soon between them, and it will be violent but surprising.”
While it sounds as though things are going to get much, much worse between Sansa and Arya, in another interview with Deadline Alan Taylor has at least suggested that Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen will probably make it to the end of the series. Taylor has long been associated with Game Of Thrones, directing episodes in seasons 1 and 2 before returning for Beyond The Wall, and it sounds as though George R. R. Martin made him privy to vital information regarding the show very early on.
“He alluded to the fact that Jon and Dany were the point, kind of,” Taylor recalled. “That, at the time, there was a huge, vast array of characters, and Jon was a lowly, you know, bas*ard son. So it wasn’t clear to us at the time, but he did sort of say things that made it clear that the meeting and the convergence of Jon and Dany were sort of the point of the series.”
Game of Thrones season 7 has all but confirmed that, and we’ll get to see whether Dany and Jon’s relationship is taken to another level when the finale airs on Sunday August 27.