My own thought has always been that the bittersweet ending will be that in order to defeat the White Walkers , ALL magic in Planetos will have to be destroyed , meaning that the Children , dragons , glass candles , Asshai , etc will also have to cease to exist . How such a thing could be accomplished we ' ll have to wait and see but I see that as a possible end scenario , followed by a Scouring of the Shire type chapter or epilogue where all the sacrifices made are in the end more or less for naught as the majority of the survivors forget or never realize the magnitude of what happened and things go back to the way they ' ve always been . <| sep |> looking for you too ! <| sep |> I was looking at the top posts for the past month and worked my way down to this .