Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

Gwendoline Christie called Game Of Thrones' ending years ago, was scoffed at by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Image for article titled Gwendoline Christie called Game Of Thrones' ending years ago, was scoffed at by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Photo: Jeff Kravitz (Getty Images)

[Spoilers for Game Of Thrones season eight, episode six.]

Gwendoline Christie, most famous for her role as Game Of Thrones’ Brienne Of Tarth, was ahead of her time. Years ago, while promoting an earlier season of the show, Christie appeared on Extra alongside co-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau—Jaime Lannister himself. While there, Mario Lopez, the unaging cornerstone of the American entertainment industry, asked the pair who they’d bet on to win the Iron Throne.

Advertisement

Coster-Waldau’s answer is safe. He predicts either Daenerys Targaryen or that glass-jawed (glass-bellied?) chump, the Night King, will come out on top. Christie, with greater foresight, says “Those seem like the obvious choice and what we know about the show is that it constantly surprises you.” Despite the vast number of possibilities that exist within the context of an unexpected choice, she nonetheless picks the real winner right away: “So, I’m wondering if it might be Bran.”

Advertisement

As is always the case when someone proposes an idea before it’s time, Christie’s accurate guess is dismissed.

Advertisement

“Huh,” Lopez responds, clearly skeptical. “Take a season off, come back, and, uh ...”

“We keep seeing the world from his perspective, don’t we?” Christie continues, refusing to be discouraged by the short-sighted host who’s too wrapped up in actor schedules to see she’s right. “We keep seeing the visions.”

Advertisement

“The Three-Eyed Raven as the king?” Coster-Waldau says in disbelief. “No, it doesn’t make sense.”

Sure, he’s right in that the way the show got to Bran’s rule doesn’t really “make sense.” But Christie points out that this choice could have come about as the result of the story’s chronology being presented out of order—that Bran may have ended up king based on some narrative twists that actually take advantage of his build-up as a mystical shape-shifter...rather than the show just saying he should be ruler because he has, as Tyrion suggests in the finale, an interesting story.

Advertisement

Coster-Waldau doesn’t seem convinced, but that doesn’t matter. Christie got it right; she’s been vindicated by time. Now that the clip has spread, Christie, magnanimous in victory, has offered an appropriate comment .

Advertisement

Who knows what would’ve happened if Lopez had asked Christie even more specific questions about the show’s final season? Would she have foreseen Cersei and Jaime biting it at the hands of a bunch of lousy rocks? Would she have thought Dany’s great army would just sort of fuck off in a bunch of ships after their queen’s assassination? Greatest of all surprises, would she have been able to predict that her character would end the show sitting around in King’s Landing updating Jaime Lannister’s biography?

We’ll never know.

[via Extra TV]

Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com