Curtain Call: Eugene Simon

"Please kill me if anything should happen to Lord Tyrion. —Lancel Lannister"

We were first introduced to Lancel Lannister in “Lord Snow,” the third episode of Season 1. As King Robert regaled Barristan Selmy and Jaime Lannister with war stories, Lancel, twitchy and chagrinned, fetched the wine. Eugene Simon, who was cast in the part at age 19 following a career as a child actor, played Lancel as a hapless fool for all of Season 1 and well into Season 2. The youngest and least important member of the Lannister clan, Lancel had almost no hope to flourish when surrounded by larger-than-life figures like his uncle Jaime the Kingslayer, his Aunt Cersei and Queen, and the rest of the royal family. Insecurity came naturally to him, and Simon sold it well.

And yet Lancel plays a crucial part in Season 1, supplying King Robert with an endless supply of strong wine on his hunt. Robert became so drunk that he foolishly tried to kill a wild boar, and died. Lancel was more dangerous than he knew.

Lancel enjoyed an expanded role in Season 2, and Simon got to stretch his acting muscles. Newly elevated to knighthood, Lancel acted as a go-between for Tyrion and Cersei as the siblings vied for power. Lancel was still a hapless fool at heart, but Simon layered some unearned confidence over the stammers and pratfalls.

Simon earned his spurs during the Battle of the Blackwater. Lancel was one of the few Lannisters of any use during the battle, and though it ended with him crumpled on the ground in pain, the moment where he stands up to Cersei in the Maidenvault was a high-water mark for the character. Still, after his many humiliations, Lancel could be forgiven for wanting to rehabilitate his image.

When Simon showed up again in Season 5, he was a bumbling idiot no more. Gone was the lean, wispy-haired teen with an overinflated opinion of his own importance. In his place was a calm man with a shorn head and a faraway look in his eye. When he confronted his Aunt Cersei about their plan to kill Robert, attentive viewers quickly realized that he could be trouble. However, the Queen Regent missed that lesson. Or was it Dowager Queen?

"I tempted you into our…unnatural relations. And of course…there was the king…his boar hunt…his wine…"

Although we didn’t see it on screen, Lancel had been radicalized, and he quickly took as place beside the High Sparrow as a member of the new Faith Militant. Throughout Season 5, Simon marched around King’s Landing with a steely eyed determination we hadn’t seen before. It was Simon’s best year with the character.

Lancel didn’t have a ton to do in Season 6, although he was crucial during the finale, “The Winds of Winter.” Lancel followed a child under the Sept of Baelor and found a candle, burned almost completely away, standing in a pool of wildfire. The child stabbed him in the back, and Lancel crawled on his hands and elbows toward the candle in an attempt to put it out, a final chance to to do something heroic. He was our eyes and ears during this scene, and Simon sold his terror and resolve well.

Of course, he failed, and Lancel went up in flames along with the rest of the Sept. In the end, Lancel was a hapless fool after all, but Eugene Simon proved his mettle. We wish him good fortune in the roles to come.