As long promised, the Game of Thrones season 6 premiere finally passed the storyline in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, leaving us longtime book readers in the lurch. Of course we watched the show anyway, and some pretty crazy stuff happened. Some of it will probably happen in Winds of Winter too, but decidedly not all of it. Let’s look at what probably won’t appear in the next book.

What The Game Of Thrones Season 6 Premiere Didn’t Take From Winds Of Winter

Sansa And Brienne

First off, it’s pretty obvious that Brienne won’t save Sansa Stark from Ramsay Bolton in Winds of Winter, since Ramsay won’t have Sansa in Winds of Winter. Sansa’s season 5 arc was totally invented for the show; in the books, she’s still in the Vale with Littlefinger. Brienne may save her in some way or another at some point, but it won’t be from the Boltons. That said, this was one of the coolest scenes in the episode, so I can't complain too hard.

The Fleet At Meereen

In season 6, Daenerys is now in the custody of the Dothraki once again—and she’s about to be sent off to Vaes Dothrak as a widow for the rest of her days. We’re pretty sure she’ll weasel out of that one. In the meantime, the entire fleet at Meereen got burned down—possibly by the Sons of the Harpy. In the books, Daenerys isn’t likely to end up without a fleet. The Iron Fleet of the Iron Islands has almost arrived in Meereen, and the fleets of the Free Cities, not to mention Yunkai, are hanging about too. Even if her own ships get burned down in the harbor, she won’t end up stuck in Meereen for long—at least not after she gets away from the Dothraki.

The Dorne Disaster

Oh, the Dorne disaster. Can we call it that? The most obvious future diversion from Winds of Winter is all the nonsense that goes down in Dorne. This started early in Game of Thrones season 5, when the writers sent Jaime down there to spice things up—which he didn’t. Then there was the new plot with Myrcella, which ended in her death… as it probably will in the books too, but under different circumstances.

But Game of Thrones season 6 turned the already weak Dorne storyline—where’s my Arianne?—into a total disaster. The Sand Snakes and Ellaria Sand killed Doran Martell, the Prince of Dorne, and his sole heir in the show’s continuity. They did this for… incredibly stupid reasons. It felt like a move out of some crappy basic cable epic knocking off Game of Thrones, not the show itself. The Dorne storyline in the books starts on similar grounds, with Arianne deeply resenting her father for his general uselessness. But it ends when she realizes he’s actually deeply cunning. He seems passive, but his plans are likely to be the downfall of the Lannisters. Instead of pursuing that nuanced storyline, Game of Thrones essentially said that Doran really was a doddering old fool.

And right or wrong, there’s no way that’s happening in the books.