Winter has come and gone and now we finally know who holds the Iron Throne following Sunday’s series finale of “Game of Thrones.” Well, we know who would have sat on it if it still existed.
Though many tried to sit on the Iron Throne and rule Westeros over the course of “GoT’s” eight-season run, the 1-hour, 20-minute final installment saw the question finally, once and for all, rendered moot: the Iron Throne itself is no more, as Drogon melted it in a fit of rage after Jon Snow killed her just as she was about to finally claim it for herself.
But it’s OK, because in the end, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) rules the Seven Kingdoms — er, Six Kingdoms, at the end of the show. And he was selected via a vote! Well, kind of. It wasn’t the kind of popular vote we’re used to in modern democracies, it was more like the Holy Roman Empire’s elector system, in which the powerful nobles would get together and vote on who got to be emperor. Or perhaps post-Magna Carta England. Either way, the most powerful families in Westeros assented to Bran the Broken becoming king of the Six Kingdoms.
Also Read: ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 Death Watch: Who Died and How Bloody Was It?
Fans have been waiting to see who would win the coveted-sword-metal chair for almost a decade — and even longer, if we’re counting those who read George R.R. Martin’s currently unfinished “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series — so the question to this answer was inarguably the biggest going into the final episode of the eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones.”
And Martin has previously said that in his talks with Weiss and Benioff, he detailed how he planned to end his tale, which means this reveal is likely the exact same one fans can expect to see from the author, if he ever finishes the final two books in the series: “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.”
However, Martin has also made it very clear he’s not completed either book yet, so there is always a chance he could change his ending now.
