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Season 6 is coming with a vengeance. Several new images and trailers have been spread across the land to threaten our long, long summer.
The beginning of a new season for many marks the continuation of the war between the outnumbered, outgunned show viewers and the dominant, brutal book loyalists. Photocopiers and water coolers everywhere are about to be bombarded by the dreaded phrase “that’s not how it happens in the books”.
But season 6 is different. Hardcore book fans have had their summer. We’re almost neck and neck in the plot and we’re all but guaranteed to pull ahead of the books!
We aren’t out of the woods yet, TV fans, so if you want to protect yourself from getting dressed down by an Ice And Fire disciple in the canteen, here’s some book savvy ammunition to keep you safe until April 24th.
8. Sansa Stark And The Bolton Bastard
Ramsay Bolton is probably the most hated character in Game Of Thrones. You’ll remember the controversy surrounding last season’s rape of Sansa Stark. Ramsay Bolton is every inch the despicable fiend he is in the books, but his victim has been switched out, and I think for the better.
In A Dance With Dragons, Jeyne Poole is wed to the grinning sadist as a ringer for the missing Arya Stark. In an enterprising bluff to secure the North for the Boltons, Ramsay is matched with this poor young girl who he abuses in turn.
Why make the switch in the show? I believe this change kills two hard to reach birds with one stone. The books see Sansa learning to flex her manipulative muscles in the Eerie for quite a while. Not only have we seen this to some degree already, but the key to the North is hardly everybody’s favorite Stark.
This switch gains some previously lacking viewer sympathy. The show-runners have condensed the time-consuming Eerie angle and have given her a baptism of fire; something she sorely needed.
In their most controversial move yet, they got everybody to really care about what happens to Sansa going into season 6.
7. Lady Stay-Dead
You’ve no doubt been beaten over the head with this one a few times, but unlike the books, Catelyn Stark dies, and remains dead…thus far.
Sadly, no frightened hedge knights have urged caution on the King’s Road, no Lannister or Frey has been found hanged from an Ironwood Tree and no screen time has been dedicated to the lightning lord or that lovable drunk, Thoros of Myr.
Official word from the show is that Lady Stoneheart is a hard no, redacted from the plot. This is a crying shame. The show would benefit from some cathartic brutality against the bad guys and what better device than a resurrected Catelyn Stark at the head of The Brotherhood Without Banners, hanging some jive turkeys like laundry?
Official word is no. Hall Of Faces trailer? Definitely teasing us. And let’s not forget that their official word on Jon Snow is that he is dead and gone. Trustworthiness level; Littlefinger.
6. Brienne Of Tarth VS. The Hound
Big Brienne’s throw downs are some of my favorite scenes in ‘Thrones. Her abrupt and very intense clash with Sandor Clegane left the Hound broken and defeated at the bottom of a hill. But even this was a swerve.
In season four’s opening episode, following Sandor’s famous “chickens” conversation, we all watched him put a hurting on some Lannister soldiers, and Arya retrieving Needle in poetically cold blooded fashion. This exchange saw Sandor suffer wounds which would later become infected in A Storm Of Swords.
The book and the show have an ambiguous parting of the ways for Arya and the Hound, but we were treated to a knock-down, drag-out Hound & pound first. Afterward nothing more comes of it, but further in the original continuity there are possible Hound sightings.
Possible Future Hound activity notwithstanding, Lady Brienne is used by the show-runners to surprise every fan here. And it seems like pencillers Benioff and Weiss have found their favorite eraser. Bringing us to this next swerve..
5. Die Like A Mannis
“Go on, do your duty.” This is how to die like an absolute boss. Stannis Baratheon gained the respect of fans everywhere as he furiously terrorized the Lannisters but his death came as a shock to the readers as well as the viewers.
We were introduced to a cold, hard, unrelenting powerhouse in Stannis Baratheon. In the last season we got to see his more tender, or rather least intimidating side, just in time for him to burn his child alive. Because Game Of Thrones.
With his ties to the occult in flame haired danger-MILF Melisandre, he remained a firm and unsettling question mark as to his potential effect on the seven kingdoms. But there is one silver lining for us lovers of not on fire children. Brienne Of Tarth.
Brienne is basically the grim reaper of off-book ambiguous deaths, but boy does she bring the justice! She has also left the North wide open. Who, if anyone, can stand against the Boltons now?
4. Bolton Vs. Baratheon: Tables Turn
The comical speed and ease with which Baratheon’s massive army is stopped was the low point of last season for me. No less because Ramsay Bolton is proving to be the luckiest man in Westeros.
We saw a dejected Stannis defiantly draw his sword against a military host that dwarfed his own. Ice And Fire had it a little less predictable.
The Bolton side is buzzing with infighting and descent, forcing Roose to engage Stannis in open battle with fewer men – Stannis holds superior numbers, Iron Bank backing and a cunning plan.
“Who, if anyone can stand against the Boltons now?”
This question is the most viable reason for messing with this battle. With “the mannis” sweeping from North to South, this muddies the good-evil dynamic in the contest for the North. Winterfell is of great sentimental value to the audience and it may make more sense to have it hang in the balance between good and evil, rather than confiscation by a neutral party like Stannis.
Oh, and we don’t want to make it look too easy for regular men to sweep from North to South. After all, that’s what the white walkers are for.
3. The New Adventures Of Bronn
Bland old low-level politics and a little light murder are simply not good enough for such a dynamic and ever surprising character as Bronn of the Blackwater. And this arranged match with Lollys and the ensuing peripheral machinations in the books are not the main focus of the character in the show. Thanks to the Dorne connection.
Accompanying the golden pawed Lion, Jamie Lannister to rescue his Daughter-niece from possible assassination, Bronn gets to go on a jaunt that in those mean old books he had to sit out. In a beautiful swerve, we are treated to sword play, flirting, singing and flashing. Everything you could possibly want from a dirty weekend in Dorne. He even gets spiked, for God’s sake!
If you aren’t excited about this you should be. The showrunners’ willingness to inject Bronn where previously he was absent is an excellent sign of some unpredictable and volatile situations to come. If Jerome Flynn’s Flea Bottom cut-throat has charmed the execs into penning more shenanigans, there are endless possibilities for fun and heart stopping tension.
Not only is there a connection to the Sand Snakes but this leaves the door wide open for a reunion between Tyrion and Bronn. And the fights! Oh the fights.
2. Danny And Tyrion’s Early Meeting
That glorious moment the charismatic, tortured genius we all love finally met the last Targaryen. Being at a dangerous disadvantage didn’t bother Tyrion and it didn’t bother us. We knew it was the start of something beautiful.
Exiling Jorah Mormont a second time and earning a place at her right hand in record time, Tyrion Lannister now rules Mereen in Daenerys’ stead. So, how does this differ? Though it is confirmed for the forthcoming books, they have yet to be formally introduced.
Barristan Selmy, the oldest, hardest knight is still alive and at the side of Daenerys. This would certainly add tension to an already tentative relationship given how the Lannisters publicly and patronizingly tried to put the grizzled warrior out to pasture (lest we forget the scariest cake themed statement in fiction). The Drogon rescue scene is the closest Tyrion comes to meeting Danny, but seeing Barristan he thinks better of it.
This is an excellent swerve with many great benefits. We got to drink in the atmosphere of the meeting with no will-they won’t-they encounters, which I believe makes for a much more powerful first contact. It also sets up Tyrion to do what he does best in season six, with the help (in a mini swerve) of Varys and his network of spies.
1. Season 6…Anything Can Happen
Here we are. The North is seemingly lost, Jon Snow is (cough) dead, Whites to the North, Lannisters barely clinging to power, Daenerys surrounded by a strange khalasar, Arya blind, Sansa on the run and only two healers in the whole game!
There are a few sub plots the books have not been mined for. The most interesting being the Greyjoys. With casting confirmed for Euron Greyjoy, we may see the Kingsmoot heavily featured, maybe with the possible dragon controlling Hell Horn.
Keep a look out for Brienne’s ambiguous murder victims. Pray for Sansa. Hope for Bronn. And watch the trees. They may bare fruits, or they may bare Freys.
We are heading into unknown territory here. Benioff and Weiss have been briefed on the direction of the books, but the beauty of season 6 is this; until a new book is released, we won’t know which parts are swerves or not…..Or who is swerving who.
On that day, fellow TV show viewers, crank up The Rains of Castamere. Find your canteen plot wrecker, lean in close and whisper our new house words;
“That’s not how it happens in the show.”
Valar morghulis, bookworms……valar morghulis.
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