Tyrion Betrayed Daenerys In The Season 7 Finale, According To This Theory

The Season 7 finale of Game of Thrones was influenced by a number of important, off-screen interactions. Arya and Sansa plotted with Bran to execute Littlefinger. The Night King made a plan of attack against the Wall. Jon and Daenerys agreed to get down. The audience, of course, saw none of it. However, the most important bit of missing dialogue may have come from a conversation that was cut short.

Tyrion Lannister met with his sister, Cersei, in one of the most tense scenes of the season. After some verbal sparring, the siblings found common ground when Tyrion discovered Cersei’s (alleged) pregnancy. However, immediately at this moment, the scene cut away, The audience is left to guess what happened next, only sure that neither party was finished with the conversation yet.

Cersei denied Daenerys Targaryen’s truce, which is why Tyrion sought out the risky conversation with his sister in the first place. At first, Cersei wouldn’t agree to a ceasefire without some explicit promises from Jon Snow. But, after speaking with Tyrion, she had a completely different position, agreeing to fight alongside Jon and Dany in the Great War.

Even though Cersei was secretly lying about the truce, something happened during her meeting with Tyrion that made her change her public position. Something—someone—convinced her it was a good idea to lie her way out of the situation.

Multiple Reddit users pointed out that earlier in the episode, Tyrion had already given his thoughts on the morality of deceit. When Jon Snow’s earnest northern honesty nearly doomed the realm, Tyrion lamented, “Have you ever considered learning how to lie every now and then? Just a bit?”

Fully on board with the whole “Great War to save the realm” thing, Tyrion doesn't mind lying if the ends justify the means. Perhaps Jon wasn’t the only person in King’s Landing Tyrion advised on the benefits of white lies that day.

It would be out of chraracter for Tyrion to outright stab Daenerys in the back. He seems to truly believe in her potential to create a better world, and he isn’t switching his allegiance to Team Cersei anytime soon. However, Tyrion could have betrayed Daenerys by telling his sister to lie, as theorized by FacelessGreenseer on Reddit.

Now that Tyrion believes in the threat from the North, he knows the most important thing is for Dany and Jon to focus on the White Walkers. In this light, it makes sense that he would be fine with Cersei faking a truce. Tyrion’s betrayal could have been as simple as telling Cersei his queen was gullible. After all, all it took was a half-hearted speech for Daenerys to believe Cersei would join the northern campaign. Tyrion might not care if Cersei holds the southern kingdoms for a few extra months while Jon and Daenerys deal with the real threat. 

When speaking to her other brother (but only lover) Jaime, Cersei may have dropped a clue about Tyrion’s involvement in her deception. When Jaime expressed astonishment at Cersei's plans to break her word to Daenerys, she replied, “I always knew you were the stupidest Lannister.”

This is both a sick burn—and probably true—but it could have a deeper meaning. By saying Jaime is the stupidest Lannister for not seeing the necessity of her lies, she could be saying that Tyrion, in contrast, did.

Cersei correctly guessed that something has happened to one of Daenerys’s dragons. This shows a level of deductive reasoning audiences just aren’t used to from her character. Reddit user FacelessGreenseer thinks this is part of Tyrion’s betrayal—and that the information came from him.

It certainly makes more sense than Cersei figuring it out like a Westerosi Sherlock Holmes. Tyrion could have shared the information in the hopes it would embolden Cersei to deceive Daenerys.