Shae Back From the Dead on *Game Of Thrones*, Apparently

Tyrion’s concubine lover Shae is killed by his hand at the end of season four, after Tyrion breaks free from lock and key and sticks it to his dad. As far as anyone knows, the woman who heartbreakingly turned on GoT’s most widely beloved character was asphyxiated at King’s Landing.

Yet she was just snapped standing on a wall at Meereen, and in one photo with Varys.

On one hand, we might consider this to be too ridiculous to be true — both Jon Snow and Shae? There must be a catch. We could call this a flashback to an earlier time in Shae’s life, before she arrived at King’s Landing, but the presence of Varys definitely complicates this notion.

Varys (who originally helped to get Shae across the Narrow Sea at Tyrion’s request) is known to be a custodian — in his twisted, duplicitous way — of Tyrion’s interests, at least insofar as they intersect with his own. This has the look of Varys coming to clean up for Tyrion, or perhaps, indicative of the fact that Varys may have co-conspired with Shae in the murder attempt on Tyrion? Crazier things have occurred on this show.

The other theory: the more far-fetched idea that Shae is a hallucination Tyrion sees while starving in the famine in Meereen. Possible, but — we’ll need a bit more to go off of.

At this point, remember — we are way off book. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are going to need to get creative here, and based off of this little bit of information (and how much more unlikely the resurrection of Jon Snow is) it seems totally in the realm of possibility that Shae will be returning alive and well.

It feels like some weird twist in a soap opera 25 seasons in to see characters we very clearly saw die back on the scene. But hey, winter is coming, and why the hell not, if giants made of ice and evil are stalking around whipping up a zombie hoard? Whatever, no parents. Game of Thrones, baby.