ASOIAF: How Will Tyrion's Story End? Will He Return to Westeros?

"Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?"

"Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all."

--A Dance with Dragons

I see two possibilities for Tyrion.

1. I think Tyrion's dark turn in A Dance with Dragons will be short-lived. I think that he will return to the basically good-hearted, if still clever and somewhat tricky political mover that he was in A Clash of King--only wiser, more canny, a better player overall. He will use his friendship and connection with Daenerys and Jon Snow to unite them together against the threat of the Others. He may or may not be a dragon-rider. As much as people don't like the idea, there's oodles of foreshadowing for it...perhaps(it's not foreshadowing until it happens, of course, though.)
2. I think that Tyrion's dark turn in A Dance with Dragons is here to stay. And that he'll likely get even worse; I see him doing something really cruel soon and I see him not so much continuing on a downward spiral as becoming the villain that everybody thinks he is; he will manipulate the, frankly, easily-manipulated Daenerys into wrecking the realm which has mistreated him so badly; he will  his own back on his family, too, one way or the other. Again, he may or may not be a dragon rider. If the story goes this way, I reckon that Jon will end up killing him, because I still believe that Jon Snow will remain, mainly, a hero.

The show's cutting of the ambiguities of book Tyrion's character and almost-total elimination of his 'dark turn', makes me, grudgingly, admit that the first possibility is perhaps more likely.

It could also be a combination of the two possibilities, I suppose.

With season 6 rapidly approaching, many people's theories and assumptions are going to be put to the text. I'd rather have the book, but it's still pretty exciting!

Written March 10th, 2016