Game of Thrones: Winter's arrived and someone left the door open ...
It’s just two weeks before the biggest show on television returns: Game of Thrones, Series 6 is an unknown quantity, since there’s no book six to refer to.
May contain spoilers. Then again, it may not. I just don’t know!
This time last year, I was feeling extremely smug, being an avid reader of A Song of Ice and Fire and knowing how Series 5 would end (probably).
This time around, not so much. At the end of book 5, Brienne was nowhere near Stannis - she was luring Jamie into a trap (probably) and the would be Baratheon King was still fighting. And Ser Davos was nowhere near Castle Black but out searching for Rickon and Bran - whom we’re sure to finally catch up with during Series 6. Aren’t we?
With some characters discarded from the entire series altogether and their stories being played out by others, we can’t even begin to speculate who’ll come and go in Series 6.
We know that new characters played by Richard E Grant and Ian McShane are on their way, with suggestions that Grant could be appearing in Arya’s storyline, playing Izembaro, the leader of a mummers group, while McShane has famously been accused of leaking info - not that he cares much, basically telling people to get a life - “it’s only tits and dragons!” And then letting slip that he’s (probably) killed off at the end of his one episode …
One of the changes that made me shake a fist at George was Sansa’s storyline. While she did suffer at the hands of Joffrey, her eventual escape to the Eyrie meant she was comparatively safe. And then they threw her right back in lion’s den with an even more sadistic, power hungry monster.
So where next for House of Stark’s eldest daughter and, apparently - for all the interested parties in Westeros - its only remaining heir? Having taken over the storyline of her friend Jeyne Poole, we’ve been left not knowing if she and Theon survived the jump from Winterfell’s wall. Yet in the books, she was never in that position - she was still undercover as Alayne Stone at the Eyrie, with Littlefinger’s plan to marry her to Harry the Heir on track. Will George Martin and co-producers, Benioff and Weiss, bring her around to her original storyline? In a sample chapter released from The Winds of Winter, she’s at the Eyrie and organising a tourney for Sweetrobin, where she meets Harry for the first time. Infuriating, isn’t it?
Ser Meryn Trant (Ian Beattie, top) and Ser Barristan Selmy (Ian McElhinney, bottom) - who both succumbed to death at the end of Series 5 while still alive in the book - were just as keen to speculate about possible future developments at a recent comic con, citing their interest too, in where Sansa goes from here (and if Jon is really dead and what role his parentage will play, and well, everything else really).
Ian B confirmed that Meryn Trant’s storyline converged with Raff the Sweetling’s (part of whom’s story also became Polliver’s), whose death at the hands of Arya takes place in The Winds of Winter, according to another of George’s sample chapters, bringing an outcome of Book 6 to bear on Series 5. And George also confirmed Ser Barristan as a point of view character in The Winds of Winter - are you still following?
All the show runners have confirmed this year is that Jon Snow is truly dead (but the first episode is called The Red Woman, inferring a large role for Melisandre, whose biggest trick is the ability to bring someone back from the dead, so …) Daenerys meets a strong man (you think? In a series renowned for its brawn?) and Cersei sees her daughter again (they can hardly keep her from the funeral, can they? Well, they might, they’re a sadistic lot, those showrunners).
The producers have at least confirmed that the series and the books will diverge and that watching first won’t detract from future reading. So it seems likely that the final outcome will be the same (unless George is really torn about who should win) but the journey to it will be completely different. Kind of a two-for-the-price-of-one, if you like. Thanks, George!
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