Preparing for the final arrival of winter - thank you Game of Thrones

Winter has arrived, and shit’s about to get real. The long awaited battle between the living and the dead is finally set to happen this Sunday night, and if you’re not expecting a gruesome bloodbath to unfold, you’d be a bigger fool than Jon Snow himself. Game of Thrones is no stranger to killing off important characters, but the definitive nature of this final season and the anticipatory body count for this particular episode puts the show into uncharted territory.

For the first time ever, fans know that characters will be dying. You could argue that expectations were pretty high for those penultimate episodes and bigger battles over the years, but you can’t equate expectation – no matter no high – with absolute certainty. When viewers tune into Game of Thrones on Sunday, they can be absolutely certain that death will be arriving at the doorsteps of Westeros. It’s gonna be a massacre of epic proportions.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty nervous about Sunday’s episode. We’re at a point where Game of Thrones no longer needs to hit its high notes with surprise plot twists and unexpected deaths – of which I’m sure there will still be lots of. The mere fact that there will be expected fatalities is enough to harbour feelings of intense angst and sadness. We’re at the emotional mercy of the creative powers that be, and I honestly could not be happier about that.

I could go on and on about why this show is so great, and will certainly do that at some point in the future. For now, I’m just cognizant of the fact that we will likely never see a show like Game of Thrones ever again. There will certainly be great television shows in the future, with ones that continue to join the ever-growing ‘greatest of all time’ list. But will there ever be anything like Game of Thrones again? Unless you believe that dragons and white walkers actually exist, the answer to that question is obvious.

I probably won’t write another post about Game of Thrones until the series is finished, primarily because I don’t think I’d have the mental capacity to reflect on my feelings repeatedly for another 3 weeks straight. Even though the weather’s starting to warm up in the real world, I couldn’t be happier that the full wrath of winter is yet to come. No matter what happens over these next 4 episodes, it's been a blast. Thank you for everything, Game of Thrones.