Much to the chagrin of fans everywhere, the wait for the next season of 'Game of Thrones' is going to be a pretty long one. The seventh season of the smash hit series is scheduled to premiere in June 2017 as opposed to its usual time around Easter. Worse yet, there will only be a scant seven episodes in comparison to the usual ten. Still, fans will take what they can get, and the extra wait is just more time to speculate on what could be in store for the latest season. For those not caught up on 'Game of Thrones,' beware: there are some serious spoilers for the end of the sixth season ahead.
Since we last left things at the end of season six, it looked as though much of what the show had been teasing forever was finally going to happen. The penultimate episode, "Battle of the Bastards," finally saw the sadistic Ramsay Snow get his much deserved comeuppance in an exceptionally brutal fashion. Surprisingly, what fans saw was relatively tame, because the original scene was supposed to be far more gruesome, if you can believe that.
Even better, Daenerys Targaryen is finally making her way to Westeros, complete with a massive army and three very hungry dragons. The dragons have in many ways become stars of the show in their own rights and are expected to be featured prominently in the upcoming season. One of the juiciest rumours for the seventh season is the supposed introduction of the Dragon Pit alluded to within the books. In the novels, the Dragon Pit was a massive structure located within King's Landing that once housed the dragons of the Targaryens before it was ransacked and the dragons were destroyed during the Targaryen Civil War. It's generally assumed that we'll see the pit in one way or another during the show, whether it's Daenerys looking for a new home for her fire-breathing pets or perhaps even as a prison for the creatures. That's all going to depend on what happens when the Khaleesi and her fleet finally land at Westeros, but we'd be genuinely surprised if it didn't make an appearance.
The show has almost single-handedly made dragons more relevant than ever before. Since the show popularized the great wyrm, we've seen them become major plot devices throughout pop culture, such as in a number of AAA video games including 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' and the latest game in the 'Dragon Age' series of role-playing games. Dragons are also the subject of one of the newest and most popular games available among a range of titles based on fantasy and pop culture found online, and you can attribute much of that success to the popularity of 'Game of Thrones.' The dragons have easily turned into the most beloved non-human supporting characters within the cast. They're probably more popular than most of the supporting actors themselves, too.
Speaking of supporting actors, there are also rumours that we might be reunited with one of the few characters that actually managed to escape the show with his life. Gendry, the boy who may or may not be the bastard son of the late king Robert Baratheon, could return to the fold as we near the conclusion of the series. Actor Joe Dempsie was recently spotted in Belfast, where much of the show is shot, leading fans to believe that the character will reappear. The last time we saw Gendry was way back in season three as he rowed away in secret to escape his own sacrifice at the hands of Stannis Baratheon. It's been alluded that Gendry could be an important character in the events to come and we know that Melisandre has left the wall, so it wouldn't be too far fetched to see the two reunite.
With nearly a year before the newest season is finally here, anything and everything could happen when it comes to 'Game of Thrones.' The one thing we know for sure is that big things will go down. If fans thought season six was exciting, they haven't seen anything yet.
