Curtain Call: Iwan Rheon

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” —Ramsay Bolton

If only Ramsay had taken his own words to heart, then perhaps one of the greatest villains to ever grace the small screen would still be alive and well.

I know, I know, Ramsay was a despicable rapist who brutalized his wife, killed his father, fed his half-brother and stepmother to hounds, and tortured Theon Greyjoy to the point where he didn’t even know his own name. But Iwan Rheon played all these despicable acts perfectly, and made Ramsay Bolton a villain we loved to hate.

While Joffrey was a spoiled child who really just needed a good spanking to set him right, and Walder Frey a bitter old man who just needs to die of old age, Ramsay was a many-layered onion. He could have deep feelings for a person one moment, and then turn those feelings off and become the monster that everyone feared.

Case in point: in the Season 6 premiere, Ramsay stands over the body of his former lover Myranda. He laments days gone by, and for one moment the audience thinks Ramsay may have a heart…but then he commands that Myranda’s body be fed to his hounds. Winter is coming, and her body is good meat.

As an actor, Iwan Rheon’s best asset was his face. It was a playful, impish face that contrasted with Ramsay’s dark deeds, and worked to infuriate characters and audience members alike. Take the moment in “Battle of the Bastards” after Ramsay fires the arrow that kills Rickon. Ramsay smirk at Jon Snow, and we almost understand Jon’s desire to run him down. And when Littlefinger and Sansa arrive later with the Knights of the Vale, the look of defeat and disgust on Ramsay’s face is incredibly satisfying.

Iwan Rheon first joined the Game of Thrones cast in Season 3, Episode 2, “Dark Wings, Dark Words.” We didn’t know who he was then, and learned along with Theon what kind of psycho we were dealing with. Ever since then, it’s been a wild ride. When we first met him, Ramsay was torturing a character who betrayed the Starks, so we could make a kind of peace with him. But then he began hunting girls, and killing soldiers who had willingly surrendered, and it was apparent that he would soon go after someone we cared about.

When Littlefinger delivered Sansa Stark into Ramsay’s evil clutches in Season 5, many book fans knew exactly what dire fate awaited her. Sansa suffered at Ramsay’s hands, and by the time she escaped in early Season 6, we were more ready than ever for someone to take this guy down. Happily, we got our wish, courtesy of Sansa and Jon Snow.

In “Battle of the Bastards,” everything Ramsay fit him to a T.

• He taunted Jon at the parlay by repeatedly calling him a bastard.
• He taunts both Jon and Sansa by throwing Shaggydog’s head at their feet.
• He flippantly threatened the lives of the lords supporting Jon by telling them his hounds hadn’t eaten in seven days, like he was a James Bond villain.
• At the actual battle, Ramsay used Jon’s own tactics against him by letting Rickon taste freedom before killing him with an arrow to the heart. He knew Jon had enough Stark-style rage and honor in him to charge headlong into his army, thus killing himself and his men and ending the battle before it began.
• He fired arrows at his own men to build a wall of bodies so that he could pin Jon’s army against it. It was sheer evil genius.

To his dying moments, Ramsay Bolton was a proud bastard, taunting Sansa by telling her that she could not kill him and that his hounds would never attack him. If he’d bothered to feed them, he might have survived to the Season 6 finale.

Iwan Rheon currently has a film called Daisy Winters in post-production, as well as a science fiction movie called Sum 1. He’ll also be playing a young Adolf Hitler in Adolf the Artist. In a way, he’s been preparing for that role during the length of his time on Game of Thrones.