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Baby dragons, Euron the cuck, and Mysterio's multiverse lie: The week in fan theories
Welcome to The Week in Fan Theories, your guide to what fan theories are taking the internet by storm!
With so many fan theories floating around the web, it can be hard to know which ones to take seriously and which ones are wildly off the mark. Some theories are brilliant breakthroughs that reveal a whole new understanding of what a work of fiction means, or they're spot-on predictions about what's going to happen in the next installment. Others are deeply flawed theories that nevertheless get traction on news sites.
We've only got two weeks of Game of Thrones left, meaning there isn't much time for any remaining fan theories to actually be proven to be true. Although, given how much Benioff and Weiss are jamming into the oddly paced final season, you never know. Meanwhile, Marvel fans are dealing with the fallout of Avengers: Endgame and anticipating new surprises in the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home. Here's what to watch for this week.
THE GRANDMOTHER OF DRAGONS
Daenerys lost another one of her dragons in last week's episode, thanks to Euron Greyjoy's incredible aim and his teleporting, impossible-to-see fleet of warships. This leaves the Mother of Dragons with just one child left, Drogon. But, what if there are more dragons on the way, as some fans speculate?
Even if Drogon is the last dragon, it's not impossible that he — or rather, it — could have babies. In the book Fire & Blood, George R. R. Martin introduces the possibility that dragons can change sex, and it's not outside the realm of scientific or magical possibility that a dragon could lay eggs without needing a mate.
A new generation of dragons would certainly help ease the sting of Viserion and Rhaegal's deaths, but one popular bit of evidence for this theory actually doesn't check out. Several fans have speculated that one of the images on the astrolabe in the new opening credits indicates that Drogon will have three babies. However, this is almost certainly symbolizing the birth of Dany's dragons.
Consider that the other two images on the astrolabe — the Night King destroying the Wall and the Red Wedding — take place in the past, as did all of the images on the astrolabe from the original opening credits. It has never predicted the future. Furthermore, all of the astrolabe images have used heraldic beasts as stand-ins for people or Great Houses. In the Red Wedding image, a lion and a flayed man kill a wolf, which symbolizes Robb Stark's death at the hands of the Lannisters and the Freys, rather than actual animal-on-animal murder. Finally, there's also a comet in the astrolabe image, which everyone saw in the sky back in the Season 2 premiere to mark the birth of Dany's dragons.
So, while it would be nice if there were more dragons in Westeros' future, the actual evidence for it is about as weak as dragon scales when confronted with a scorpion bolt.
EURON CAN'T BE THE FATHER
When Tyrion makes yet another misguided appeal to Cersei's alleged humanity at the end of last week's episode, he mentions her unborn baby. Euron apparently didn't notice an issue with this, but many viewers did, leading to this fan theory. Honestly, if this theory doesn't pan out, that speaks more to the quality of the final season's writing than anything wrong with the theory.
Earlier in Episode 4, we see Cersei tell Euron that he got her pregnant, even though viewers know that it's actually Jaime's baby, and that she became pregnant before the summit in the Dragon Pit. If it really were Euron's baby, though, there's no way that Tyrion would know about the pregnancy, which should have tipped Euron off that he was being lied to. Euron is literally a cuck.
The final season is already playing pretty fast and loose with Cersei's pregnancy. The Dragon Pit summit, Jon and Dany's travel north to Winterfell, the preparations for the battle with the army of the undead, the battle itself, and their journey back down south apparently all took place in a short enough span of time that Cersei isn't visibly pregnant yet. So, while it would make all the sense in the world for Tyrion's plea to be the thing that drives a wedge between Cersei and Euron, it's sadly just as likely that it's lazy writing.
MYSTERIO IS LYING ABOUT THE MULTIVERSE
In the second trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio reveals that he's not from Spider-Man's world, confirming the existence of a multiverse in the MCU. Multiverses are a longstanding part of comics history, but this would be taking the film franchise into new territory.
However, there's another possibility: What if Mysterio is full of s**t?
Mysterio is a longtime villain in Spider-Man comics, one who normally uses illusions and trickery to do evil acts. So far, Gyllenhaal's Mysterio seems like he's more of a hero. This fan theory posits that Mysterio, not a multiverse, is behind all of the chaos we see in the Far From Home trailers. He could be lying about the multiverse to burnish his own image for selfish gain.
From a narrative level, this makes a lot of sense, and not just because it fits with what we know about the comics version of Mysterio. Endgame was the biggest movie in the MCU, and the stakes were incredibly high. Even if he's in Europe instead of a friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man isn't a cosmic hero, and that variety is important for the MCU. After all the Avengers movies, which tend to have the biggest stakes, the subsequent movies have all been smaller stories. Iron Man Three, Ant-Man, and Ant-Man and the Wasp all helped bring the franchise back to Earth. If Mysterio isn't lying, and the Far From Home will introduce the multiverse to the MCU, then the franchise risks expanding its scale at an untenable rate.
NAMOR THE SUB-MARINER MAY OR MAY NOT EXIST
In Endgame, Okoye has a throwaway line about an underwater earthquake, which some Marvel fans have speculated is a sneaky Easter egg referencing Namor the Sub-Mariner, one of Marvel's oldest characters.
In the comics, Namor is regarded as the first Mutant, although this is a retcon, and he was not a Mutant when he first appeared in 1939, well before the first issue of X-Men ever came out. This means the film rights issues aren't as simple as just saying "Disney owns Fox now, so it's okay." And, even if that were the case, Endgame was made before that deal was finalized, so even then it's not so simple.
Namor is even more complicated, though, because Universal may or may not still own the film rights to the character. Even Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige was a little unclear on what the status was as of April of last year.
So, given that there are no announced plans to make a Namor movie, and it's not 100 percent clear if Marvel Studios could even make one, it makes sense that the Russo Brothers wouldn't confirm or deny anything, especially since the "Easter egg" in question was so minor.
When asked if the underwater earthquake was Namor in an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast Joe Russo replied with "Maaaybe." Anthony Russo said, "Some people may interpret it that way," before Joe Russo admitted, "It could just be an earthquake."
This Schrodinger's Cat of an answer is maddening. Chances are, the underwater earthquake was just an earthquake, unless at some point in the future Marvel decides to make a Namor movie, at which point Endgame will be retconned to make it have been Namor the whole time. Fan theories just can't compete with a movie franchise that exists in a quantum state.
