Where Drogon may have gone after the Game of Thrones finale

Game of Thrones’ finale left us with plenty of unanswered questions. From the future of the realm to the future of some of the great houses, there are lots of things we may never get the answer to. But when Drogon took flight near the middle of the episode, the show gave us something we can possibly answer: Where is Drogon going?

[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for Game of Thrones through the series finale.]

After Drogon saw Daenerys Targaryen dead, he melted the Iron Throne, picked up her body, and flew off from the ruins of the Red Keep. The rest of the episode plays out with no real mention of the dragon until the first small council meeting of King Bran’s reign, when the King of the Six Kingdoms asks if there’s been any word on Drogon’s whereabouts. According to Sam, the dragon was last spotted heading east, and Bran says, “Perhaps I can find him.”

HBO

That’s the last word on the subject that the show is willing to give us, but east is enough to give us a starting point to guess where Drogon might be headed.

The first possibility is that Drogon is taking Dany back to her ancient family home in the ruins of Valyria. Drogon may have felt some special, even magical, connection to the homeland of both dragons and the Targaryen family. It’s possible the dragon flew somewhere between the ruins of the castles that once made up the world’s greatest civilization and the Smoking Sea, the haunted waters that surround the city, and laid Dany’s body to rest there.

There is another possibility, though. While Valyria may have been the ancestral home and birthplace of dragons and the Targaryen dynasty, it wasn’t the birthplace of Dany or Drogon. All the way back in season 1, Dany was reborn when she stepped into Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre and her dragons entered the world. This happened somewhere in the vast Dothraki Sea, a wide expanse of grassland previously ruled over by the horselords of the Dothraki — before Dany set them all on fire.

The Dothraki Sea is also east of Westeros. It’s possible that rather than taking her to a place of ancestral importance, Drogon delivered Dany’s body somewhere with a little more personal significance: the place where Dany first became the Mother of Dragons, and set off on her path to liberate the world — for all the good and bad that came from that.

Helen Sloan/HBO

In fact, we already know that Drogon has an instinctive draw to the Dothraki Sea. Back in season 5, when Daenerys is ambushed at Daznak’s Pit in Meereen by the Sons of the Harpy, Drogon flies into the pit and saves Dany and all of her allies. In a desperate bid to escape the chaos, Dany climbs on Drogon and flies off with him for the first time. She has no way to control the dragon, and Drogon fights off his injuries and flies back to the Dothraki Sea. If this is where he flew Daenerys the last time he thought she was in danger, then it might make sense for him to return her there now that she’s dead.

Of course, unless we’re King Bran Stark, we’ll never know exactly where Drogon went. But whether he went to the Dothraki Sea or the ruins of Valyria, we can only hope that Drogon is safe and happy, and that Bran doesn’t bother him too much.