'Game of Thrones' Preview: Cast Teases 'Most Ferocious and Exciting' Season Yet
Warning: This story contains spoilers for Season 6 of Game of Thrones.
The cliffhanger is as old as TV drama itself, but not since Who Shot JR? has an audience been left screaming for answers as they were after last season’s Game of Thrones finale. To recap, as if that were necessary, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), the show’s de facto moral compass, a source of decency and statesmanship in a show that wallows gleefully in the mire, was killed. The strange thing was that the moment he fell, people started saying he wasn’t dead.
What’s come between then and now has shown either the staggering hold serial television has on our lives or that the Internet has turned the world into one big spewing volcano of hearsay, and we’ve all gone slightly mad. Where previously fans of Game of Thrones the TV show could check in with fans of George R.R. Martin’s source novels, and be assured that Snow was alive/dead, the end of Season 5 was the point at which Game of Thrones went “off-book” (to use the raggedy parlance of the production team). Jon Snow might be dead or he might not; for once, no one knew. It was precisely because no one knew that everyone wanted to find out.
Amidst all of the Snow talk, it’s easy to overlook that last season’s finale contained a grab bag’s worth of cliffhangers that left several other characters in dire straits. We’ll take you through them all below, but they’re exciting precisely because, in these off-book, unchartered waters, everyone took a genuine leap into the unknown. When we spoke to writer-producer Bryan Cogman on set in Belfast he told us, “Season 5 left all of our main characters in very vulnerable and dangerous and dark positions — those that survived. This is about picking up the pieces.”
Of course, that’s the kind of woolly summary that doesn’t tell you much, the kind that the Game of Thrones writers have got very good at giving. What Cogman did say is that they’re not going to make you wait. Season 6 will contain less preamble, less introduction, less slow burn.
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“That’s a function of where we are in the story,” says Cogman. “Most viewers, if they’re with us at this point, have watched the first five series. Otherwise they’re just going to be terribly confused. So they’ll either be confused and OK with that or they’ll go back and watch the first five. In either case it makes sense to just hit the ground running.”
You heard the man — let’s dive right in.
Jon Snow
Season 6 picks up straight from where Season 5 finished, and it’s Snow-time. Though preview clips have him looking quite dead, rumors abound that Jon Snow is soon to be brought back to life by the Red Witch Melisandre — she’s at Castle Black and it’s been done before (see: Beric Dondarrion).
After all, what kind of a series kills off a beloved character for nothing more than shock value? (Wait, don’t answer that.) We might even point out that Jon Snow was the only character who saw that the squabbling about House this or That and the Iron Throne was small potatoes compared to the incoming existential threat of the White Walkers and the Night’s King. But then Game of Thrones has shown time and again that no man is safe. Valar Morghulis.
Bran Stark
Jon Snow might be coming back; Bran Stark most definitely is. Actor Isaac Hempstead Wright skipped Season 5 altogether but he’s front and center this time around. “Bran has been at the underground tree Wizarding School, a sort of Branwarts,” jokes Wright, who appears to have grown about three feet in his year off. “He’s been honing his skills as a Greenseer and as a Warg. Now he’s moving away from the Warging and into other things, more into how he can channel the power of the Weirwood tree to be able to see into the past and the future.” Bran’s Mr. Miyagi is none other than Max Von Sydow, newly cast as the Three-Eyed Raven. “He’s trying to teach Bran what he can use his powers for. There’s also a slight sense every now and again that Bran might be able to interact with these past figures and characters through his visions — we’re not quite sure.” One thing we do know from the trailer is that Bran meets the Night’s King. Whether that’s in a vision or for real — and whether there’s a difference any more, as Wright suggests — remains to be seen.
Sansa and Theon
Last seen throwing themselves headlong from the walls of Winterfell in a bid to escape the cold-eyed psycho that is Ramsay Bolton, they begin Season 6 on the run from Ramsay and his hungry hounds. The casting of Danish actor Pilou Asbaek (Borgen) as Euron Greyjoy, Theon’s uncle, suggests some cold-rolled Ironborn action this season, and actor Alfie Allen says Theon also has unfinished business with his sister Yara. “He needs to go back to the Iron Islands and confront his family,” says Allen. “He needs to go and clear things up with his sister. Apologize to her for not going with her when she went to try and save him as Reek.” First, however, Theon needs to get away from the man who, lest we forget, chopped off his red hot poker. As for Sansa, she needs help, and fast. Happily, Brienne, fresh from killing Stannis and sworn to protect the Stark daughters, is still in the area…
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Arya Stark
In her bid to become a Faceless Man, Arya (Maisie Williams) ended Season 5 a sightless woman. Jaqen H’ghar, a man so mystical his life is like one long David Copperfield performance, blinded her for killing Meryn Trant when she was supposed to be killing someone else. Which means she’ll begin this season unable to see and, understandably, unsure of whether she really wants to be part of The House of Black and White at all. First, however, she needs to learn to fight blind. “Their methods of teaching at the House of Black and White, as we’ve come to realize, are not very conventional,” says Williams. “The Waif [Faye Marsay] simply throws her a stick and starts whacking her.” Then it’s a question of whether Arya sticks it out. “This whole season is a process of her training, being given an opportunity, f—ing it up, repeat,” says Williams. “But what’s really interesting is that she hasn’t decided to leave — ultimately she does want to be there.”
Daenerys Targaryen
The Mother of Dragons was herself mothered by her dragon, saved from a mob of Sons of the Harpy, but then, rather unfortunately, deposited by that same dragon in the middle of a Dothraki horde. This brings her full circle as she began her long road to leadership feeling distinctly uncomfortable amongst the long-haired horsemen. Given how many other characters are counting on a Targaryen to save the world from Lannister hegemony, Dany needs to get back to Meereen — to Tyrion, to Varys — and fast. Enter the exiled (and ill) Ser Jorah and her one-time lover Daario. She dropped a ring as a sign when she was captured by the Dothraki. HBO’s last trailer showed Jorah finding it. Game on.
Cersei Lannister
A Lannister always pays their debts, and Cersei wants vengeance: naked Walk of Shame? The discovery from her brother/lover that her only daughter is dead? Imprisonment by a religious zealot? The prophecy that all of her children will die? “She doesn’t let anything that’s thrown at her keep her down,” says Lena Headey of her crop-haired Lady Macbeth. “She’s such a survivor — she’s making plans. She’s at her scheming best this year.” And she’s got help — last year we saw Cersei in league with Qyburn (Anton Lesser) who has re-engineered the already ludicrously large The Mountain into some sort of medieval Frankenstein to do Cersei’s bidding. Needless to say her target is the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) the sackcloth-and-ashes cult leader who forced atonement upon her. Expect fireworks, says Headey. “When we got the scripts this year it was really beyond any of our desire — I can’t say anything but it genuinely is the most ferocious and exciting that it’s ever been.”
Game of Thrones premieres April 24 at 9 p.m. on HBO.
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