New Season 6 role: “a son…unable to live up to the demands of his savage father”
By Dan Selcke
A casting call for an as-yet-unrevealed role for Game of Thrones Season 6 has surfaced online. Apparently, HBO is looking for a “really good actor” to play an important role next season. Here’s the full description.
"This is a very good part in this season who appears in three episodes.We need a characterful-looking guy – long nose and skeletal features and perhaps a bit sly – to play a son who is unable to live up to the demands of his savage father. We need a really good actor for this part – he has good scenes with lots of the leading cast. The character has a great storyline. There are no options and this is a one-off opportunity for a good clever actor to come and make his mark on this major hit show."
The mystery character is summarized as a “hapless sly son to cruel father.” He’s in his late 30s.
BEGIN SPECULATION AND SPOILERS
Okay, so who could this be? The folks over at Watchers on the Wall, who broke this story, guess that it’s Merrett Frey, the perennially unlucky son of Lord Walder Frey, the jagweed who planned the Red Wedding together with Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton. There’s certainly something to this theory. The long nose, skeletal features, and slyness make this sound like Walder Frey’s son, and Merrett could certainly be described as hapless.
However, the description of the character as “sly” raises some questions. In A Storm of Swords, Merrett is stupid and lumbering, a sad sack and a drunk. Also, casting Merrett is asking for trouble, as his biggest role in the story is being executed by Lady Stoneheart and her crew, an unlucky end to an unlucky life. I thought it’d been established that Stoneheart wasn’t going to show up—are David Benioff and Dan Weiss prepared to open that Pandora’s Box back up?
Still, this character sounds like he dies by the end of the season—note that the role is described as “a one-off opportunity”—which does line up with Merrett’s story. Step lightly: there could be danger ahead.
Of course, it’s possible that the character is just an amalgamation of Walder Frey’s sons, of which he has plenty. If this is indeed a Frey, it means that we’ll be returning to the Riverlands, an exciting prospect, as it’s long past time we explored the fallout from the Red Wedding in detail. Having seen Season 5, I would much rather have had Jaime Lannister head back to the Riverlands, as he does in A Feast for Crows, than go to Dorne. Maybe Season 6 will get his story back on track—after all, the description for the mystery character says that he will interact with “the leading cast.” Jaime definitely qualifies.
I skipped my plotline in the Riverlands for this?
It’s also possible that the character isn’t a Frey at all, as Westeros doesn’t lack for savage fathers. For example, it’s pretty much a given at this point that Randyll Tarly, Sam’s savage father, will show up next year, so maybe this is another one of his sons. The Frey theory sounds more likely, but anything’s possible.
Stay tuned for more, and feel free to speculate in the meantime.