Mark Gatiss (Tycho Nestoris of the Iron Bank) not returning for Season 6

Mark Gatiss is mostly known for his writing on shows like Doctor Who and Sherlock (the latter of which he also co-created), but he’s also a prolific actor with roles on a lot of television series, including on Game of Thrones, where he plays Tycho Nestoris. Tycho, you may recall, is the official from the Iron Bank who met with Stannis in Season 4 and with Mace Tyrell in Season 5. With Stannis dead and Mace’s request for a loan modification probably turned down, there doesn’t look to be much for the character to do in Season 6, and Gatiss confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that he won’t be on the show in 2016.

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That doesn’t necessarily mean that Tycho couldn’t return at some point. After all, Season 6 will see the return of characters like Bran Stark, who skipped Season 5, and Osha and Rickon, who haven’t been seen since Season 3. Unless a character died before our eyes, there’s always a chance they can come back, and sometimes not even death stops them.

Unfortunately, Gatiss has no idea whether his character will return, although he does have a vision for how it might go down if it happens.

"I have hopes. I had dinner with [executive producers] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] when we were in Croatia filming last year and I made what I thought was a very cogent pitch to be the last character alive in the whole saga. There should be a crane shot, everybody’s dead except me. Because, clearly, the only person who can survive is the bank."

Gatiss also described Benioff and Weiss’ reaction. “They smiled knowingly and probably made a note to organize my imminent death.” An optimist, this one.

If Tycho ever does come back, it’ll be in a way that we can’t predict, both because the show has moved beyond the books and because the character behaves differently on the page than on the screen. On the show, Tycho never leaves his seat in Braavos—would-be monarchs in need of funds came to him. In A Dance of Dragons, however, Tycho Nestoris travels to Stannis in Westeros (during a furious blizzard, no less) to see if Stannis would assume the Iron Throne’s debt in exchange for a loan. That plotline is still alive in the books, but moot on the screen.

Arya is still in Braavos, but I’m not sure her work would put her in contact with a man like Tycho. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Gatiss back in action at some point. The show has made a lot of the Iron Bank’s power over the past two seasons, and one assumes that the Crown is still heavily in debt. The Lannisters may always pay their debts, but the Iron Bank always collects theirs.