Bronn, Brienne, and the Hound are all still alive in the books. What they are NOT, is in the middle of any central story going on. Hound is in a monastery, took his whole piece off the game board. Bronn married a Lord's daughter, then kicked out his new parents in law, so now he's got a castle and could give two fucks about anything. Brienne almost died until she said something to Lady Stoneheart and I guess she's off to get Jaime for her. D&D are such TV creatures, they couldn't bear to deny fans their favorites. If it was up to them Robb and Cat would still be alive in Frey's dungeon, until their final rescue by Faceless Arya.
I knew last season it was going to be trouble when the show confirmed all the favorite fan theories. I think given Bran total omnipotence was a bad move too. In the books, like Milisandre seeing into flames, his greenseeing is really just interpreting vague dreams. They really put no limits on this ability and I can't envision them not fucking this all up with a real superpower.
Let's play a game while we all wait for Season 8: think up the worst ways D&D can fuck shit up. Series finale: Bran and the Night's King face off. Bran knows he is fated to become NK thru some plot contrivance, and to prevent the end of the world he gets the dragonbone dagger from Arya and stabs himself dead. NK dies, the Others die with him, the world is saved.
I'm gonna call an 80's throwback ending. The good guys prevail, Jon kills the Night King in an epic fight. Then, as the show is ending, we see a flash of blue in his eyes.
Jon and Dany realize how closely they are related. Each episode they deliberate on whether their sexual relationship is wrong and screw on screen. "I try not to lust for my nephew, but the gods hath given you such a fair face." Lines like that. Bran becomes the night king. He's stabbed with a dragon glass dagger through the heart. But we don't 'know the twist' until after the night king loses the battle in like 15 seconds when Dany morphs into a massive dragon and sacrifices herself in a cataclysmic ball of flame while Jon sprints away in slow motion with their child in his arms. The series ends with Jon seeing a snowflake and saying "Winter is coming" all dramatically and then Bran opens his eyes in the far north and is revealed as the new night king.
The battle is won, Westeros is saved, cut to meetings and celebration, final words, camera moves up for a bird's eye view of the frozen battlefield, frost-tipped towers of King's Landing, frozen over Blackwater Bay. Up the camera goes, 20k ft, 30k, high like the intro cinematic. Higher now, thru the clouds and upper atmosphere, ionosphere, whatever the fuck-osphere, now we're in space, the entire planet is in view. It starts as a "real" view, then morphs into a image on a screen. A huge screen. Camera pans back, revealing the helmsman console of what is obviously the STARSHIP ENTERPRISE with Data at the controls. Data turns back to look at Captain Picard, "Sir, what do we do now?" Picard responds, "Alert Starfleet, Ensign Baelish killed by indigenous population, Prime Directive remains viable. Now set course and get us out of here". FIN
Bran is the night king theory debunked. It was far fetched to begin with, and the writers cramming some nonsensical jumble of multiple time lines into the last 6 episodes was the last thing this show needed. I'm sure we're still going to get some big reveal regarding Bran. The story line seems too significant for him to just zone out at Winterfell.
I take no actors at their word, too much riding on the show for this not to be partially crafted PR. With fans that can get as frenzied as this show's, plus the pirating and leaking of scripts, they are going to go all out in protecting their story until it's released. I'll be glad if it is bunk as it's a ridiculous time traveling plot, but I can't put anything past D&D from what we saw this past season.
The final season will be only six episodes in length. “Six one-hour movies” according to the show runners. And it will not be here until 2019, that is confirmed.