Things have never looked better and worse for Cersei Lannister. She ends season six of Game of Thrones having won the game and sitting on the throne, but at the same time all her children are now dead and her twin brother seems to be realizing something about her he doesn’t like. What’s worse, Daenerys Targaryen is currently crossing the Narrow Sea with a fleet consisting of Unsullied, Dothraki, Greyjoys, Tyrells, and the Dornish. Oh, and three dragons.
Bad news for Cersei, but good news as far as the actress that portrays her is concerned. Lena Headey shared her hopes for season seven with Entertainment Weekly, and what she really wants is an epic death for her character.
Headey, meanwhile, seemed hopeful for a climactic confrontation between Cersei (now installed on the Iron Throne as Queen of Westeros) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke’s character, who ended the season at the head of a fleet headed to Westeros to reclaim the Iron Throne that was taken from her family). With all her children dead and her relationship with her brother (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) suddenly complicated, Cersei’s story doesn’t look like it will have a pleasant ending. Headey, for her part, is hoping for a “great death by Arya.” (Speaking to EW after the season finale, Headey joked that she hoped either Arya or Tyrion would kill her character off. “No one would relish her death as much as he would,” she said of Peter Dinklage’s character.)
That ignores the possibility of Jaime Lannister himself being the one to end Cersei’s reign of terror. In the books, Maggie the Frog’s prophecy against Cersei went further than just predicting the death of her children and a young queen taking everything from her. It also said she’d die at the hands of “the valonqar,” which is the Valyrian word for little brother.
Cersei was technically the first child to be born, with Jaime coming out second clutching her heel. So he and Tyrion are both little brothers. But with such a genealogy-rich show, you’ve got endless options when it comes to little brothers — Bran is a little brother. Grey Worm is a little brother. Jon Snow too. And maybe the show took that valonqar detail out so Arya could scratch another name off her list in the form of Cersei Lannister.
There’s lots of different possibilities when it comes to Cersei dying … it’s Game of Thrones after all! And let’s not forget the possibility of her turning things around and taking out her enemies like she did at the end of season six. With nothing else to lose, we’re probably going to see some big moves from our current Queen of Westeros. We can’t wait!
