Warning: This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 7, episode 7, "Beyond the Wall."

On Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones, a long-held fan theory was finally confirmed. The most shocking scene in "Beyond the Wall" saw the Night King kill one of Daenerys' beloved dragons with a spear. While Dany was frantically looking for Jon Snow and watching the wights march upon Jon's motley crew of fighters, the leader of the White Walkers set his sights on Viserion, who was flying out of Dany's sight, and took him down with one gigantic throw.

People were pretty upset about it:

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But that wasn't all, of course. White Walkers can reanimate human corpses into vicious wights, so why not dragon corpses? And that's what happened—in the closing scenes of the episode, the Night King had the dragon's corpse pulled out of its icy grave and touched it, bringing it back to life as an ice dragon.

This doubled Daenerys' loss. Not only did she lose one of her three dragons, but it now presumably serves her enemy. Twitter had fun with that little twist, too:

Knowing just how much Dany loves her dragons, one might expect her to be furious about losing one of them in Jon's foolhardy expedition. But we soon discover that—partly because she's developed strong feelings for Jon—she's actually grateful, because she now knows that the threat he's been telling her about for so long is real and important.

While it's a huge plot point in the series, one of the most interesting things about this development is that there have been theories floating around about ice dragons for some time. That's partly because they're mentioned in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, though not in this particular context. In A Dance with Dragons, Jon himself recalls a tale he had been told as a child: "The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy." Some people have also noted that Martin once wrote a children's book called The Ice Dragon, in which these creatures fought fire dragons.

Some have also pointed out that leaks about season 7 circulated last year, meaning that some Game of Thrones had at least guessed what Viserion's fate would be well before the episode aired on Sunday night. Theories have also been circulating online in forums like Reddit. And, of course, those who gave in to temptation and watched the episode after it was accidentally released on HBO Spain early would have known what lay ahead for Dany and her dragons. The only question now is what this devastating transformation means. Will Dany have to fight the dragon she loved like a son in the season finale?

From: ELLE US