Game of Thrones Season 7 ended with a few massive cliff-hangers including what’s going to happen now that the Night King has breached the Wall and which unlucky Winterfell resident will have to be the one to awkwardly tell Jon Snow that his new blonde bedfellow is also his aunt? But there was one open-ended question that not even the Game of Thrones crew themselves could seem to agree upon. What was with that haunted finale look Tyrion threw at Jon and Dany on the boat as they retired behind closed doors to, um, discuss matters of state? Was there romantic jealousy in the air? At the time, the episode’s director, Jeremy Podeswa, said, emphatically, no but Tyrion himself, Peter Dinklage, has a different opinion. For a refresher, here’s how that look went:
Dinklage weighed in vaguely when the Season 7 finale debuted last summer, but speaking very recently with Entertainment Weekly, the actor was able to shed more light on what emotions he was playing there: “It’s complicated. . . . A lot of the time with Tyrion, it’s professional and personal. Obviously, he has feelings for Daenerys. He loves her—or thinks he does.” Jealous love for Daenerys would explain why Tyrion was so dead-set against her flying up North in Season 7 to rescue Jon and Jorah from beyond the Wall and why he was so curious about her feelings for the curly haired King in the North. In that episode, he called Daenerys “the most important person in the world” while begging her not to play hero. It’s an oddly impassioned phrasing that makes a lot more sense if it’s coming from a man who loves her. Dinklage’s romantic interpretation—he has also used the word “smitten” to describe Tyrion’s feelings—also shines some light on this Season 6 moment after Tyrion tells Daenerys to leave her lover, Daario, behind in Essos as they travel to Westeros.
Tyrion was also responsible for sending Ser Jorah away from Mereen in Season 5 (after correctly discerning that Mormont was in love with Daenerys). Dinklage further elaborates on Tyrion’s feelings for Daenerys: “She’s awe-inspiring. He’s questioning that because he doesn’t have a good track record for falling in love. There’s jealousy wrapped up in there. And he loves Jon Snow, too. They’re the two people he has the most in common with, in a way—they’re both outsiders in their own families who have refused to follow the path their family has taken, and hopefully for the better. He’s wondering how smart of a move [Jon and Dany getting romantically involved is], because passion and politics don’t mix well. He knows the two of them getting together could be very dangerous.”
O.K. so in Dinklage’s mind, at least, Tyrion is mixing the personal with the political as he gazes down the hallway at Jon and Daenerys. A very common fan theory about the final season is that Tyrion will betray his allies Daenerys and Jon to his longtime foe and family member Cersei Lannister. And, significantly, we didn’t see the end of Tyrion’s conversation with his sister where she revealed she was pregnant. The scene cut off with that revelation . . .
. . . and a short time later, the siblings emerged having arrived at a truce. Will that truce involve Tyrion plotting against the Queen he loves and the King who loves her? Well, despite the fact that the show has moved well beyond the books at this point, there is some information from George R.R. Martin’s original 1993 outline/publisher pitch that bolsters the idea of a love triangle turning Tyrion from hero to antagonist in the saga’s final chapter. We’ve already discussed at length that the HBO series has re-purposed Martin’s original plan to have Jon fall in love with his sister Arya (oh, yes). Jon is still in love with a relative, but now it’s his much more age-appropriate aunt, Daenerys. There was, however, also a third side to the love triangle in Martin’s original plan. He wrote:
Most of Martin’s other planned themes in that original letter have come to pass in some form or another, which could mean that a “deadly” jealous rivalry between Tyrion and Jon Snow is also on the cards. In the books, after he’s killed Tywin, Shae, and escaped King’s Landing, Tyrion is a much darker figure. We haven’t really seen the same depths of bitterness in Peter Dinklage’s performance these past few seasons, but Tyrion becoming an antagonist in the later books would probably come as no surprise to most readers and would be exactly the kind of heartbreaking rug pull both Martin’s book and the HBO series have delivered over the years.
Worth noting that Tyrion may not be the only one hoping to drive a wedge between Daenerys and Jon Snow in Season 8. Incest concerns aside (something we find ourselves saying a lot in the Game of Thrones fandom), Jon’s competitive sister, Sansa, seems unlikely to take kindly to another Queen in her castle. This has been the broad interpretation of a few seconds of unseen footage that snuck into HBO’s 2018/2019 preview two weeks ago.
With very little information about the final season to go on, fans were eager to chew over this shot of Sansa embracing her brother Jon in the Winterfell courtyard while looking significantly over his shoulder. Is she shooting daggers at Daenerys who will inevitably arrive by Jon’s side? (Northerners, historically, don’t take kindly to Targaryens. Then again, who does?) Worth noting that Sansa is still technically married to Tyrion. Will the jealous duo pair up to work against Jon and Dany? Will Bran’s incest bombshell do all that work for them? Is that “new” Sansa shot actually old unused footage from a Season 7 cut scene? Only time, and Season 8, will tell.
