Firstly, I wanted to write about the Las Vegas massacre. But I decided to start a petition because, to be honest, words are just about useless at this point if they're not spearheading direction action or legislation.

Plus, I don't think one rational person in this country doesn't believe that Congress needs to yank their heads from the wretches of the NRA's ass and impose some much-needed regulation.

Besides, I always thought returns to normalcy offered some comfort in situations like this. Returns to normalcy include leisure and entertainment.

So I thought, you know what, I had a really interesting conversation with a friend about a favorite television show of ours and, by golly, it'd be refreshing to write about a nice niche of a pop cultural phenomenon.

Because healing includes not only taking action but letting life go on. You can fight the good fight while rambling on like a fanboy. What's beautiful is that there's no binary.

Anyway, so yeah, season 8 will be upon us! Eventually! Season 7 was seen as an easy, mostly bloodless season, but I think it's merely a breather before the realm of darkness that will no doubt be the finale. Just how will a show built on shock choose to bow out? AY, that's why ya here.

George R.R Martin said the ending will be bittersweet, so that's the frame of mind I'll go off of. Besides, who likes their epic sagas of morality to cap off with a 100% happy ending, anyway?

*Insert phrase from the show here to wittily transition to the article, proving how much of a creative wunderkind I am! Hahahaha*

Oh, spoilers aplenty.

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5. Cersei Wins After a Thoroughly Devastating War, But...

The one thing I always found most interesting about this series was the precarious balance between good and evil winning out. The good guys triumph? Strap in, 'cause the bad guys are about to have a hell of a victory. Good characters survive? They barely did, and the cost was so heavy they may as well have lost. Either way, that's the system of Westeros: crush cruelty, but it'll find a way to spring back, because that's the inherent system.

In this ending, that balance reached its crux - and evil won again. It was all just a foolish dream to break the wheel, one that came close...but just wasn't good enough. Cersei has grown too ruthless, strode past the moral event horizon to achieve a victory no one with the slightest trace of a conscious could ever think. Westeros has finally swallowed itself. That leaves only one step forward for our protagonists at this point.

They finally leave that wretched, horrible country behind. We've always heard and seen how much better life is across the seas. Westeros isn't Hogwarts or Oz, where troubled people seeking a greater life can find fantastic refuge. It's a hellhole, and with it destroyed, with our heroes more united than ever...well, why not leave? Before his head resembled my early attempts to carve jack-o-lanterns, Oberyn Martell said the world is a big and beautiful place. They'll have to leave everything behind - and many losses will have been for nothing, blood will have been shed only - but their problems wouldn't follow them. They have lives beyond Westeros.

Cersei, who has set the path for her inevitable downfall twice over, survives, but she's made her hell and thrives in it. A fate worse than death. Queen of the Ashes. Her plan to betray Jon and Dany will have worked, but unlike either of them, she knows only pain. Something, anything past that is simply unthinkable. This was all she ever knew. Tywin's plan finally worked, but it's a zero-sum win. She has no Jaime, the kingdom she knew is but a husk...and her enemies have - in what may be her worst fear - found not only a new peace, but a world without her.

How's that for a Christmas miracle? What? What does that even mean?

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4. Jon or Dany Win the Iron Throne, But...

So, picture this. Either the dragon or the wolf is atop the throne, I don't know, this one is kind of interchangeable. Woo, the living won, probably at heavy costs and, yes, Tormund and Davos are absolutely biting the bullet most unfortunately, but they still won! One will live, one will die - don't worry, it's for a good cause. Jon holds Dany as she kicks the bucket following the final battle for the living, or Dany and Jon share one final look of love as his stubbornness finally claims his life on the battlefield. Those are just speculations, though this particular ending would require one of them to die. And bittersweet usually indicates one of the top protagonists to head to the wild blue yonder. Or some sort of inescapable loss. It's gonna happen. Fo sho.

But it's alright! The throne is sat upon by someone who's not a psychopath or a sycophant at last. Ah, sweet bells of Justice, ring thy resounding cheer! A new age has begun!

The ruler sits in the throne room, incessantly calm, as we zoom out - but doesn't the leader have a hand? Wait, where are their bodyguards? I don't see Davos or Missandei anywhere! Are they all dead?

Yes. War is random, war is all-encompassing, and war takes lives by chance. This is the story of who takes the iron throne. Many, MANY beloved side characters will not survive this war, a fact that the show would be foolish not to capitalize on. What could be more bittersweet than a hero ascending to that throne, utterly alone? Their friends, confidants, and army all wiped out in the war to ensure their ascension - is there a greater price to pay? This war was never going to be bloodless, or play to audience expectations. Maybe I'm just in love with that image of a lone peak, especially in the world of this series, but it's a trope that never fails to make for a compelling ending.

Their new world is theirs, but without any friend or lover by them to celebrate it, what's the point? That's all for this ending. The song of ice and fire fulfilled, and now turned into a lament.

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3. The White Walkers Kind of Win, But...

Going back and watching the earlier seasons with my sister, it struck me just how mostly every major character now was abused, kept down, biased against, or just held back in the earlier seasons. While a huge appeal is the show's deconstructive nature, it's given bigger strength to the overall - heavily incremented - triumphs of the overlooked in a world of horror. These people slowly soldiered on to make a stand against tyranny, corruption, wanton violence, misogyny, slavery and so many other forms of human evil.

But as much as the White Walkers' presence wonderfully renders the political backstabbing and whining irrelevant, it tragically looms over those aforementioned moral victories.

So it's scarily bleak to picture an ending where those White Walkers win - and the systems so fragilely reconstructed fall to ruin. Which, on the contrary, offers a shining gleam of humanity in that wasteland. Because these characters will fight on. They won't have majority power, but that won't stop them because it never did. The villains will die, as they never had the fortitude to confront their own horrors and the horrors of the world - they embraced it, and will be consumed by it. I mean, the White Walkers have an undead goddamn dragon who can shoot what I think is liquid nitrogen out of his mouth. They may very well win.

Can't you picture a type of resistance sprung, all over Westeros, where our heroes continue to chip against this enemy? Like, Jon is protecting what remains of the North, while Dany and the Unsullied patrol the lifeless seas. The battle we've bore witness to is over, but their story surely is not. If the show was one giant trial for who will survive the world's inherent dark, here is where we see those chosen to lead an entirely new age onward. And who knows? Maybe eternal winter is best for right now.

We end on the most devastating loss possible, but not to worry - a lone candle has been lit in a world of night, and that's all that's needed to sow the seeds for humanity's eventual resurrection.

Post-apocalyptic, for sure, but the White Walkers were never just another enemy. They were always the end all to the petty squabbling that overcame Westeros. This ending sees that reality coming to fruition. But it wouldn't betray or make void the suffering that came along the way. Rash nihilism never fully equates to boldness in terms of storytelling, and if the deep-rooted cynicism of the earlier season had persisted and grown, then maybe this ending would be fulfilling - albeit in a deliciously horrific fashion. Yet that would also be insulting to not only the character progressions themselves but to everyone who endured those horrors as they continued to watch.

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2. The Side of Good Actually Prevails, But...

Now this might be too subtle of an ending. No, I don't mean subtle as in the audience won't grasp it; I always believed underestimating an audience's intelligence was not only problematic, but downright insulting. If you can keep up for eight seasons of a show, you've probably a modicum of intelligence and memory.

What I mean is that this ending would, on a surface level, be a little underwhelming at least for a month or two. And after nine years of investment in this tale, that's the last thing anyone wants. But hear me out! Cause if they actually do go with this, goddamn would I be pleased.

So, we watched these characters break free of the chains of the past. Their tormentors have been quashed, their demons and flaws mostly excised, and they might just be free of the horrible worldview thrust upon them by their predecessors. Super swell! They channel that wisdom and newfound goodness into a victory. Cersei, Night's King, Euron - poof! They're gone. And the worst war in Westerosi history subsides, a future ahead with infinite more promise.

But the war was not without toll. Certain things were set in motion. Cycles quietly prevailed, unborn demons flourished.Peace

In other words, our heroes are set to become the exact people their parents were.

A small seed of madness is planted inside Dany. She'll try so hard not to become her father that she'll overlook her own kernels of insanity and become equally as dangerous. She won't quite be the Mad Queen, but it's not out of the range of possibility.

Jon, high off the victory, has his honor at its peak. For once, he doesn't have to compromise his values. He can settle down, live a simple life of love, and eventually, one day, succumb to the same fate Ned Stark did, killed by his own code because he's grown too damn proud.

Gendry - because you don't reintroduce a minor character in the final seasons unless you have big plans for them, so he'll probably rise to some position of power - has always been in love with the idea of the warrior his father was. He'll embody his same disastrous flaws.

Sansa, who has admired Cersei underneath her hatred for the woman, is unknowingly gaining her same ruthlessness. It doesn't matter if it's born of good intentions - what other way of winning does she know besides Cersei's methods? From one daughter of a slain father to another. It's too late.

That's bittersweet. Sweet in the temporary victory, bitter - highly bitter - in the fact that their offspring will be fighting the exact same fight. You'd reel in the utter high from seeing them come out on top...and that high fades. This world moves in cycles, and it's just beginning. Maybe for some time, it could be avoided...but in the end, it wins.

And now, we come upon the last possible ending that would bring the series full circle, while not betraying its themes.

Get ready for the most mind blowing, intricate, accurate theory of how this series might end...

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1. Hot Pie Assumes Power, Establishes a Democratic Government

"The secret is browning the butter before making the dough."

That motherf****r knows how the world works. He also said that cooking process takes time, which is why no one else bakes like that. Wisdom, patience, not afraid to get his hands dirty?

This is the way the world ends.