This Game of Thrones Theory May Confirm a Long-Awaited Fight

3 minute read
By Megan McCluskey
Updated: | Originally published: ;

Warning: This post contains spoilers for season seven of Game of Thrones.

Remember that Sandor “The Hound” Clegane and Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane came face to face for the first time in years if you think back to the season seven finale of Game of Thrones . The Hound arrived at the Dragonpit summit in King’s Landing and delivered the following message to his zombified brother: “You know who’s coming for you. You’ve always known.”

Some fans immediately assumed this warning meant the long-awaited Cleganebowl — a fight to the death between the brothers — would go down in season eight. But now, Reddit user Askingforafriendta has taken that theory a step further by connecting it to the Hound’s seemingly newfound ability to see fire visions.

We know the Hound can see visions in the flames and we know there’s an unspoken hatred between the Clegane brothers. We never understood it until they see each other face to face. When the Hound says, ‘You’ve always known,’ he makes a very clear claim. The Mountain has always known that the Hound would kill him.

I theorize that when they were children, Sandor looked into the flames and foresaw Cleaganbowl – Gregor dying at the hands of Sandor. When he told his brother what he saw, Gregor became enraged and tried to kill him with that fire. Gregor never attacked Sandor over a toy, he tried to kill him to prevent the vision from coming true. So Gregor has been rage killing ever since because he knew he was invincible to all but Sandor. Sandor has been avoiding the flames ever since not just because of the trauma of being burned, but because the visions he saw there caused everything between the brothers.

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As a reminder, the Hound once told Arya that the bad blood between the brothers stems from a childhood incident in which the Mountain held his face over open flames, horrifically burning him and causing him to develop a debilitating fear of fire. “He pressed me to the fire like I was a nice juicy mutton chop,” he said. “Thought I stole one of his toys. I didn’t steal it, I was just playing with it. The pain was bad, the smell was worse. But the worst thing was that it was my brother who did it. And my father who protected him, told everyone my bedding caught fire.”

Looks like it may finally be time to get hype for Cleganebowl.

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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com