Sansa's 'Game Of Thrones' Season 7 Arc Will Be Intense

It's hard not to be enamored with the flame-haired Stark sister. As such, it's natural to wonder what Game of Thrones Season 7 episodes Sansa Stark will be in. After all, her presence in the show sometimes feels like an opportunity to cleanse the viewer's visual palate. Whereas so many of the other female characters (think: Yara Greyjoy or Daenerys Targaryen) thrive through violence, Sansa's methods are subtler and potentially more far-reaching in their effects.

In fact, you might even consider her a more warm-hearted female equivalent to the likes of Littlefinger, whose power lies not in brute strength, but in his ability to watch and wait and strike at the best possible moment. Which is what makes the IMDb records on Sansa's Season 7 appearance in the show a touch concerning. The online database only has casting information for the first four episodes of the seventh season and pretty limited details at that, listing the entire cast for the first episode, but then only three names per episode for Episodes 2, 3 and 4.

As it stands, the actor who plays Sansa, Sophie Turner, has only been credited with an appearance in the season premiere, "Dragonstone" so far, which doesn't even cite her character in the plot description ("Jon organizes the defense of the North. Cersei tries to even the odds. Daenerys comes home."). However, this should be taken with a grain of salt.

After all, according to HBO, "Returning series regulars on Game Of Thrones this season include... Sophie Turner," and surely the actor wouldn't be billed as a series regular if she was only starring in one episode. There's also the fact that Kit Harington and Turner have been teasing a storyline centering on Sansa taking a more prominent role in the show. Harington told USA Today of her enjoying Ramsay's death: "That’s who Sansa is going to be in the future. She’s as brutal as any of them. Before, she was a victim in many ways. Now, she is very much a protagonist, someone who’s driving the story."

In an interview with W Magazine, Turner also teased an eventful Season 7 storyline for Sansa:

"Now that she’s became a leader, she has Winterfell, she has her home, she has her brother. She’s got to the point where she has that power that she’s been longing for. And the ability to kind of hopefully bring the people that she loves back to her or create a safe haven if they do come back to her. It’s more about her figuring out how to treat that power and how to surround herself with the people that are best for her."

She also hammered home that the elder Stark sister may play a more prominent role this season in the same interview:

"I never saw her storyline going in the direction it has, but now that I’ve got a taste for playing someone that was an underdog and now is really coming into her own being a strong, powerful female character, I’ve really got a taste for it. That’s what I look for now."

Of course, a strong storyline for Turner's character was teased at the end of Season 6 when, after Lady Lyanna Mormont encourages the Northern lords and Vale lords to embrace Jon as the King of the North and they do so, Littlefinger and Sansa lock eyes, and the Stark daughter looks troubled. This follows on from a conversation the pair had in private when Baelish had confessed that he was dreaming of being "on the Iron Throne and you by my side" and had stressed "you, my love, are the future of House Stark" before asking, "Who should the north rally behind? True born daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark, born here at Winterfell or a motherless bastard born in the South?"

As such, Sansa's anguished look implies that the fact that Jon appears to accept the position of King of the North with absolutely no reference to Sansa, whose efforts (with her writing a letter in secret to Lord Baelish to ask for his support in the form of extra troops) won the Battle of the Bastards, must have bred some resentment. Given that Jon and Sansa will be in close proximity for at least the beginning of the next season, expect tension and lots of it.

So, no, we don't know exactly what episodes Turner will appear in yet. But given the complex storyline teased by the actor in interviews and her status as series regular, the smart money is on Sansa appearing in practically every episode.