Alfie Allen teases a “darker” Season 6, talks Theon’s state of mind

The Alfie Allen Show continues apace across several narrow seas and around the the underside of the planet. Speaking to Yahoo Australia, the very chatty actor talks about Theon’s chances of survival (he’s ‘hanging by a thread”) and gets philosophical about his character’s relationship with his master and torturer, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon).

Allen says he sees a lot of similarities between his own character and Ramsay. “They’re both just looking for the approval of their fathers basically and they’ve had very, very hard upbringings.”

The difference, of course, is that Theon’s choices have lead to much more dire circumstances than Ramsay’s…at least, so far. Allen says he began to read the A Song of Ice and Fire books after being cast, but stopped halfway through A Storm of Swords.

“I didn’t want to pre-empt or make any pre-emptive decisions on the character and also I think George — without putting words into his mouth — he wrote these characters 20-25 years ago, so I think he’d like to see new life breathed into them. I think the Theon that was portrayed in the books was more of an out-and-out traitor.”

He’s not wrong. The show has been far more sympathetic to Theon than the books, partly because, since the show doesn’t take us inside Theon’s head, we are not exposed to the ugly, angry thoughts that drive some of his actions. Also, however you feel about the show’s choice to depict Theon’s torture onscreen in Season 3, it did have the perverse effect of making the audience more sympathetic to him. (Martin simply leaves Theon out for an entire novel, and then reintroduces him as Reek later. What Ramsay did to Theon to inspire that transition is left to the imagination.)

For his own part, Allen is very sympathetic to Theon. “I think he’s one of the most human characters on the show in the fact that he makes mistakes all the time and that’s a universal theme in anyone’s life. We all make mistakes. I personally don’t see the choices that he makes as evil, I just see them as seriously misguided.”

Allen pointed to Theon’s betrayal of Robb Stark as the character’s biggest regret, and says that part of him is still loyal to his adoptive family. We saw some of that loyalty when he helped Sansa escape Winterfell at the end of Season 5. “He’s worried about her being in danger as much as himself, Allen said of Theon’s relationship with Sansa. “He definitely has some sort of link there still in his mind, some sort of connection there, and I think obviously that part of him that is Theon feels he needs to make good on the bad things that he’s done. Going forward, I’ll be honest, it might get darker but it will still be just as interesting, without a doubt.”

Let’s just hope that, now that he’s thrown his lot in with Sansa, his choices become a little wiser.