Game of Thrones spoils its own ending in the first season.

“The common people pray for rain, health, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah Mormont tells a young Daenerys Targaryen in the show’s eighth episode. “They don’t care what games the high lords play.”

With the White Walkers dramatically defeated at the Battle of Winterfell, the high lords’ games once more dominate the show’s final episodes. But as fans fervently speculate as to which ruler will ultimately sit on the Iron Throne, they miss one of the show’s key messages: it’s never mattered who wins the game of thrones. For the ordinary people of Westeros — who have faced war, displacement, and winter for much of the show’s run — have already lost.