It is happening again. Since Season 3 of Game of Thrones, fans have been patiently waiting to see if Lady Stoneheart, a character who shows up at the end of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords, would appear on the show. It didn’t happen at the end of Season 3, but fans more or less shrugged that off. “She’ll show up next year,” they told themselves. “After all, Season 3 is only an adaptation of the first half of Storm of Swords.
When she didn’t show up in Season 4, they began to get more anxious. I’ll admit that it was around this time that I made up my mind that she probably wasn’t going to appear. Executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss were talking about entering the endgame ahead of their seven-season hardline, and I figured there just wouldn’t be time to tell her story. When she didn’t show up in Season 5, my suspicions seemed confirmed.
Well, now we know that Game of Thrones will run for at least eight seasons, so timing isn’t quite as urgent an issue. Also, there are a few other pieces of (highly circumstantial) evidence that have given me pause. This is all very speculative, but I’ve lately become convinced that it’s not impossible for Westeros’ most elusive Lady to make an appearance in Season 6.
CAUTION: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR A FEAST FOR CROWS AND A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
First things first: for anyone who doesn’t know (this is your last chance to turn back before being spoiled, incidentally), Lady Stoneheart is the name given to Catelyn Stark after she’s resurrected by Beric Dondarrion following her death at the Red Wedding. Before Beric brought her back, Catelyn’s body spent three days in a river, so her skin is the color of curdled milk. Most of her hair is gone or turned white and brittle, and the throat wound that killed her is still hanging open. Essentially, she’s a walking corpse, and she isn’t pleased about it. She becomes the new leader of Beric’s brotherhood without banners and directs it to one purpose: vengeance. She and her men spend their time stalking the Riverlands and hanging anyone who was even tangentially connected with the Red Wedding, which mostly means members of the Frey family.
It’s that last bit that set off alarm bells in my head when a couple pieces of news surfaced recently. We haven’t seen Walder Frey, or any member of his vast brood, since Season 3, when the eldest Frey presided over the Red Wedding. That may be changing soon. David Bradley, who plays Walder Frey, recently admitted that he would be returning to the show at some point. That by itself isn’t surprising. People haven’t forgotten the Red Wedding, and they want to see Walder Frey get his comeuppance, whether it’s by Lady Stoneheart’s hand or someone else’s.
Walder Frey, killing the mood at parties since 2013.
If that was the only bit of news out there, I probably wouldn’t have thought too much of it. But there’s also this Season 6 casting call for “a son who is unable to live up to the demands of his savage father.” The son is in his late 30s, and is described as “hapless.”
Now, this could describe any number of characters*, but a lot of people have been assuming it describes Merrett Frey, one of Walder Frey’s many sons. Fleshy, a drunkard, and given to severe headaches, Merrett’s main purpose in A Storm of Swords is to run into Lady Stoneheart and be hanged, an unlucky end to an unlucky life. He could certainly be described as “hapless.”
Now, it’s possible, even probable, that this character isn’t Merrett Frey specifically but rather some kind of amalgamation of Frey sons. Still, my bet is that it’s a Frey, and one of the big things the Freys are up to around this point in the books is getting hunted by Lady Stoneheart.
There are other signs that we’ll be heading back to the Riverlands, aka Stoneheart territory, in Season 6. Another casting call suggests that the show will be casting the role of Septon Meribald, a rural priest who administers to the needs of the smallfolk in the Riverlands, for next year. Plus, it seems likely that Jaime will be heading this way after he returns from Dorne, since that’s what he does in A Feast for Crows. In short, the show seems to be setting us up for a story in the Riverlands, which means plenty of opportunities to bring in Stoneheart.
You don’t wanna see the ‘After’ picture.
The final piece of evidence comes courtesy of the show’s special effects department. A couple of months ago, prosthetics supervisor Barrie Gower revealed that there was a special effects sequence originally planned for Season 4. It got pulled and pushed to Season 5, and then got pulled again. “But now, in Season 6, it looks like we’re going to do it. Fingers crossed they won’t chicken out,” Gower said.
What could this special effects sequence entail? Well, whatever it involves, it would have to be able to work in Seasons 4, 5, or 6. That eliminates something with the dragons, who’ve grown over that time. It could conceivably involve the White Walkers, but that doesn’t help my case, so forget I said it. It could also be our introduction to the decrepit Lady Stoneheart, a scene that would certainly require the services of a prosthetics expert like Gower.
Again, all of this is speculation. It could be that the mysterious special effects sequence has nothing to do with Stoneheart, that the hapless son isn’t one of Walder Frey’s, and that Jaime will hang out in Dorne for another season. But it could point toward something else, something sinister and merciless.
And so our watch begins…again.
*The other big theory is that this character will be Dickon Tarly, brother to Sam and son of known hardass Randyll Tarly. I don’t think so, though. For one thing, Dickon is Sam’s younger brother, and since Sam isn’t in his late 30s, Dickon can’t be, either. Also, unlike Sam, Dickon actually lived up to his father’s expectations, so the description doesn’t seem to fit.