Game of Thrones: Are Sansa and Theon in Love?

This post contains frank discussion of several plot points from Season 8, Episode 2 of Game of Thrones. If youre not all caught up, or would prefer not to be spoiled, now is the time to leave. Seriously: this is your last chance, and you wont have another so, get out while the getting is good.

Listen, one of the purest pleasures on this planet is watching two people we care about fall in love. So Im not here to tell you what to do. Its the end of the world as we know it in Westeros, root for whomever you like. But do I think Game of Thrones is trying to tell us that Sansa and Theon are in love in the most conventional sense of that word? I do not. I think theres something much deeper at play here.

Its not overstating, I think, to say that Theon and Sansa enjoyed one of the shows most emotionally rich and rewarding reunions in a season that has, thus far, been crammed with them.

That the two decided to then share, perhaps, their last meal together only reinforces the importance of their emotional bond. Podricks lovely singing didnt hurt.

Theirs is a bond forged over, of course, that harrowing Season 5 storyline which saw Theon cut to pieces and Sansa violated. She brought him back from the brink by reminding him who he was. He killed Ramseys girlfriend in order to set them free, they took a leap of faith from the Winterfell ramparts together, the survived the freezing cold together. They saved each other in every way and it matters that theyre together in the end. But romantic love? Given that Sansa is a survivor of sexual assault I think Id prefer to wait to hear it from her directly before making any assumptions. Maybe thats what she wants maybe it isnt.

But whats more important in this final season of Game of Thrones is that all the cripples, bastards, and broken things that have been worn down by the wars of Westeros are able to find a reckoning or absolution in Winterfell as they teeter on the brink of a long night. Theon is one scarred hero returning to Winterfell but he has good company in Sansa, Jaime, Tyrion, Arya, Jorah, Daenerys, Jon, and more. (Theons specific condition of having parts of him literally hacked away also applies most directly to Jaime, Tyrion, and Jorah.) Winterfell is like a metaphysical weigh station on the way to the afterlife, if you want to get kind of Lost about it.

Sam put kind of a fine point on this season when Bran spilled the beans on what the Night King wants. He wants an Endless Night and Sam says “thats what death is, isnt it?” So its our morally messy heroes forced to confront the physical manifestation of death. What do you do when you know youre about to see death? Get your affairs in order.

It makes sense that this is where all the morality chickens would come home to roost. Winterfell the home of the honorable Ned Stark. George R.R. Martins books imply that Neds honor was, perhaps, a bit too rigid for this wild world. But if this final season is indeed lining up with the end of Martins books then perhaps the larger point is what grace can broken men and women find at the end of the world? “I took this castle from you,” Theon says to Bran. “Let me defend you now.”

In the Season 8 trailer, you can hear Bran say to someone, “Everything you did brought you to where you are now. Where you belong: home.” Assuming the “home” is Winterfell, Bran has to be talking to someone who grew up there: Theon Greyjoy.

Remember he was brought up there as Ned Starks ward—a kind of hostage-adoption situation after his dad, Balon Greyjoy, tried to rebel against King Robert. Theon would, memorably, go on to betray the Starks in Season 2 by taking over Winterfell in order to impress his dad. He burned two innocent village boys and pretended they were Bran and Rickon, then quickly lost the Stark family home to Ramsay Bolton and, well, everything went downhill from there.

When speaking about his run on the show for the Still Watching podcast, Hempstead Wright recalled that the hardest scene he ever had to shoot was the one where Theon executed one of the Stark family protectors: Ser Rodrik Cassel. (Yep, harder even than Hodors death.) This moment, as much as the fall out the window, scarred young Brandon Stark. He didnt have to watch his father die, but he did have to see this.