George R.R. Martin gives biggest clue yet to Game of Thrones ending

GEORGE R.R. Martin has sent Games of Thrones fans into a spin with the biggest clue yet as to how his epic series of fantasy novels will end.

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GEORGE R.R. Martin has sent Games of Thrones fans into a spin with the biggest clue yet as to how his epic series of fantasy novels will end.

Speaking at his old college, Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the author emphasised that he is “attracted to the bittersweet ending.”

He accepted that readers “yearn for happy endings in a sense” and agreed that “you need to have some hope,” Vulture reported. But in a heavy hint as to whether we can expect our heroes to simply ride off into the sunset, Martin compared the Song of Ice and Fire series to another classic in the genre, Lord of the Rings.

“I always say to expect something bittersweet in the end, like [J.R.R. Tolkien]. I think Tolkien did this brilliantly. I didn’t understand that when I was a kid — when I read Return of the King.”

At the end of the third novel in Tolkien’s trilogy, Frodo succeeds in his mission to destroy the ring that symbolises evil, but when he returns home to the Shire, he finds it in chaos. His world has been tainted forever.

Novelist George R.R. Martin has said he admires J.R.R. Tolkien’s dark ending to the Lord of the Rings series.

Martin said he admired Tolkien’s use of allegory to reveal the imperfect reality of post-War Britain, suggesting that his characters may not experience pure, unadulterated triumph either.

The television series has not always followed Martin’s writings to the letter, however, so it’s possible producers will choose a more crowd-pleasing ending. When Peter Jackson made the movie version of The Return of the King, he (controversially) had Frodo return to a peaceful country, and only see a vision of the chaos that could occur.

It’s the second time Martin has revealed the ending will be “bittersweet”. In an interview with the Observer in August, he also mentioned that Tolkien’s Return of the King would have a strong influence on the tone of his final instalment, saying, “It ends with victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory.”

Martin this week admitted he never expected the TV series to catch up with his writing, but now that it has, it wouldn’t have any effect on how he wrote. “I’ve been hearing them come up behind me for years, and the question is, ‘How can I make myself write faster?’” he said. “I think, by now, the answer is, I can’t. I write at the pace I write, and what the show is doing is not going to change what the books are.”

He also revealed he was OK with achieving celebrity status late in life, saying he felt “a certain sympathy for the teenage assholes,” such as Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan.

Game of Thrones will be back for season six in spring 2016, and Martin’s sixth book, entitled The Winds of Winter, is also expected to be released next year. We already have a long list of questions from the season five finale, so speculation is sure to have reached fever-pitch by then.