Cleganebowl is the safest Game of Thrones bet I can imagine

Every dog has his day.

Photo: Gabriel Jimenez

With Game of Thrones ramping up to wind down, one of the predictions that I think you can make with high confidence is that there will be the Cleganebowl. This trope is so powerful, I just can't see a twist satisfying enough to justify not having Gregor/The Mountain have his comeuppance at the hands of Sandor/The Hound. Could you imagine if they screwed it up? There would be rioting in the streets that made the French Yellow Vests look like convention for duplicate bridge players.

It's funny how some things just have to come to pass, while others can be left as an out-of-the-blue surprise. Was Arya and Gendry making eyes at each other necessary? No, but it was an interesting surprise. Did Ramsay Bolton have to get eaten by his own dogs. Yes, yes, and oh hells yes. If he'd realized the error of his ways, came into the Light of the Seven™, and lived a quiet and pious life with his reconciled Lady Sansa at the Dreadfort, renamed Wokefort Center for Social Justice, you would have picked up your TV (device, whateves) and hucked it through the window while weaving a tapestry of obscenity and making the cat flee the room in abject terror.

Where there is some wiggle room in the story is Cersei. While I predict she'll die at Jaime's hand, I could see other conclusions that could be satisfying if that didn't happen (e.g., her ruling over nothing, getting shipped off to a nunnery, stewing in the dungeon while Sansa rules, who knows? Jon could win (meh) or lose in any number of ways and the ending could be satisfying. But no Cleganebowl? No way.