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Game Of Thrones’ Cersei Has An Explosive Plan Up Her Sleeves

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Sunday’s brand-new “Game of Thrones” episode put Cersei Lannister in a dicey situation, but if certain fans are right, it also planted the seeds for an absolutely explosive finale.

In Sunday’s episode, when told to submit to the high sparrow or face violence, Cersei chose violence in a rather emphatic way:

Unfortunately, this didn’t pay the dividend she hoped. While it frightened away the High Sparrow’s fanatics, it also led to her losing one of her biggest advantages. Having learned that Cersei has an unstoppable zombie-soldier, King Tommen (likely at the High Sparrow’s urging) promptly abolished trial by combat, meaning Cersei can’t use it to save her skin when put on trial for her many, many crimes.

But Cersei seems to have another trump card on the way, of a much more incendiary variety.

After King Tommen’s address abolishing trial by combat, Cersei is approached by Qyburn, her spymaster, who vaguely tells her that he investigated an unspecified “rumor” and found said rumor was very, very real.

Well, that’s a big tease. So what’s going on? Fans online are already eagerly speculating on Reddit and elsewhere, and many of them agree the rumor can be summed up in one word:  Wildfire.

Longtime fans will remember wildfire’s devastating effects from Season 2, where Tyrion uses a boat loaded with it to devastate Stannis Baratheon’s fleet.

But wildfire wasn’t just a one-off weapon. Way back in Season 3, Jaime Lannister revealed that the reason he killed King Aerys Targaryen was because the Mad King built caches of wildfire across the city, and was planning to burn the whole city to the ground.

If Jaime never told Cersei about these caches, then she may have only heard rumors of them, which Qyburn has now confirmed. Wildfire offers a desperate Cersei a potent new weapon in her battle against the high sparrow. She could potentially use a stockpile to blow up the Great Sept of Baelor and wipe out the Faith Militant in one fell swoop. Alternately, if she’s convicted and facing execution, Cersei could go even more insane and try destroying the entire city.

If this is where the show plans to go, there’s an ample amount of foreshadowing for it. Back in Season 4, when Tywin Lannister orders Cersei to leave Kings Landing and marry Loras Tyrell, Cersei screams that she will “burn our house to the ground” before she is separated from Tommen.

Similarly, during on of Bran Stark’s visions this season, he has a glimpse of the the Mad King demanding the city’s destruction, accompanied by a vision of wildfire barrels exploding. This is odd, because the Mad King was unsuccessful in his plan to destroy the city. What if Bran wasn’t seeing into the past, but rather, the future?

But the most important foreshadowing for Cersei’s plot may have occurred Sunday night, far away from King’s Landing.

Jaime Lannister spent Sunday’s episode convincing Edmure Tully to surrender Riverrun to him. During a lengthy heart-to-heart chat in the dark, Jaime describes how women like Cersei or Catelyn Stark will do anything to protect their children. They would “start a war,” “free their worst enemies,” and “burn cities to ash.” Tellingly, those first two deeds have already happened. The third may happen in the next two weeks.

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