Excitement for Game of Thrones Season 6 is building—just this week we were gifted with three mini-teasers focusing on the Houses of Stark, Lannister, and Targaryen. Last week, we caught ourselves up on the comings and goings of the members of House Lannister at the end of Season 5. This week, we’ll point our gaze north to…
House Stark
When last we laid eyes on the wolves of House Stark, the pack was scattered to the four winds of Westeros…and beyond. Like the members of House Lannister, the members of this great House find themselves spread across the continents of Westeros and Essos, and like the Lannisters, they’ve had to deal with loss.
To say that House Stark had fallen since Season 1 would be a bit of an understatement. After Lord Eddard died, his heir and rightful King in the North, Robb Stark, followed, as did Lady Catelyn. Winterfell has fallen to the hands of the Ironborn, and then House Bolton. Lord and Lady Stark’s remaining living children—Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, and the bastard Jon—are spread over the map, and several of them don’t know that the other ones are alive. Here’s where each of the Stark children stood at the end of Game of Thrones Season 5:
Sansa Stark began her Season 5 journey in the Vale, but Lord Petyr Baelish hatched a plan to bring her to Winterfell. En route, Sansa came into contact with Brienne of Tarth, who dispatched several of Littlefinger’s guards and began to follow Sansa, intending to keep the promise she made to Lady Catelyn about protecting her daughters.
Baelish hurried Sansa along and next stopped at Moat Cailin, where he gave her a choice: continue to Winterfell and marry the recently legitimized son of Roose Bolton, who betrayed her brother and mother at the Red Wedding, or turn back toward the Vale. Sansa, thinking she was up to getting revenge for her decimated family, chose to go on to Winterfell.
At Winterfell, the situation quickly turned dire. Baelish, of course, was not to be trusted, and he left Sansa with Ramsay Bolton, Roose’s son. On her wedding night, Ramsay raped Sansa while Theon Greyjoy, now going by Reek, was forced to watch. Later, Sansa learned that Theon did not in fact kill her younger brothers Bran and Rickon during his brief tenure as lord of Winterfell. This gave her a ray of hope in a very dark time.
Sansa was also approached by an elderly woman and told to light a candle in the broken tower if she was ever in trouble. Ramsay eventually found out what the woman was up to and had her flayed, but never looked further into it, so he didn’t find out that it was Brienne’s idea. Brienne had followed Sansa to Winterfell, and watched for that candle for days on end.
During this time, Ramsay’s bed warmer Myranda became extremely jealous of Sansa. This culminated when Myranda confronted Sansa in the confusion following Stannis’ defeat outside the castle. Theon, who was nearby, had an awakening and threw Myranda from Winterfell’s battlements before she could harm Sansa, and then he and Sansa jumped from the walls themselves, presumably into a pile of cushy snow.
Sansa’s status at the end of Season 5: Most likely escaped Winterfell, and hopefully runs into Brienne.
Let’s move on to Rickon and Bran. We saw neither of them in Season 5, but we know that Bran will return for Season 6, and odds seem good that Rickon will be there as well. When last we saw Rickon, he and his guardian—the wildling woman Osha—were leaving taking their leave of Bran, Hodor, and the Reed siblings before the latter three went north of the Wall. As the last surviving Stark male not currently learning to be a magic tree, Rickon is technically next in line to rule Winterfell and the North, so expect him to play a very important role in the year to come.
Bran’s story is slightly more convoluted. The last time we saw him, he had finally made his way to the cave of the Three-Eyed Raven, who will teach him to harness his latent magical powers. Here’s what he’ll look like in Season 6, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, which published this neat little photo.
Rickon and Bran’s status: Alive, but past that, we don’t know much.
Arya had a very active Season 5. The girl who is now no one learned the art of sweeping floors, cleaning the bodies of the dead, selling seafood, and feeding poison water to little girls. Then, in what may have been the most gratifying of the Stark-focused storylines last year, Arya finally got revenge on one of the many men on her death list: Ser Meryn Trant, the man who killed her dancing master Syrio Forel and, unbeknownst to her, beat her sister Sansa during the latter’s stay in King’s Landing. It one of the most gruesome deaths I’ve seen on Game of Thrones, and not entirely unsatisfying. Valar Morghulis.
However, Arya’s bosses, the Faceless Men, were displeased that she wandered outside of her jurisdiction to kill Trant. As punishment, Arya was blinded, and her future is hazy.
Arya’s status at the end of Season 5: Blind…still no one.
Now we come to Jon Snow. If you had asked me on Wednesday how certain I was about Jon Snow showing up in Season 6, I would have puffed out my chest and told you it was all but certain he would play a prominent role…then I read a recent interview with Kit Harington, and now I’m less confident.
Anyway, Season 5 was a great year for Kit Harington and Jon Snow alike—the character went through a lot of changes and Harington got to show off his acting skills. Episode 8, “Hardhome,” was a high point for both of them.
After being made Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch early in the season, Jon and a small contingent of wildlings and loyal Night’s Watchmen sailed to Hardhome, a frozen fishing village where the wildlings had been massing following their defeat by Stannis and his army at the end of Season 4. Jon’s intention was to bring the wildlings there back to Castle Black. His reasoning was sound: the more living he saved, the less dead the Night’s King would have for his army.
Once Jon returned to the Wall, his days were numbered. It seems like, in Jon’s absence, Ser Alliser Thorne had been rallying Night’s Watchmen opposed to Jon’s pro-wildling stance. Once Jon returned to the Wall with several (but by no means all) of the wildlings he’d hope to save in tow, thins went into overdrive. Thorne and his cronies lured Jon out of the Lord Commander’s tower, and murdered him under the weeping eyes of the Wall.
Dead and Not Dead. Schrödinger’s Crow, Jon Snow.
Jon’s status at the end of Season 5: DEAD…
Game of Thrones Season 6 could see House Stark rise from the ashes where it’s been mired for the past four seasons. If Jon does indeed rise and do battle with the likes of Ramsay Bolton, and if Rickon returns to rule Winterfell, and if Sansa is there to help as regent, and if Arya can return to Westeros to dispatch more names on her list, then House Stark could be great once again.