Interview: Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson on the Mountain’s potential death

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, aka Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane on Game of Thrones, is a fan favorite, both for his onscreen performance and for his antics off-camera. On screen, the Mountain has morphed over the years—he’s been played by three different actors over the course of six seasons. When the show finally settled on Björnsson in Season 4, it found a strong, silent type, cast less for his ability to deliver complex dialogue and more for his ability to fight gracefully on screen despite his size.

But although Björnsson may not do much more than grunt nowadays, as his character shuffles zombie-like after Queen Cersei, the strongman turned actor is actually a pretty articulate guy with a fantastic sense of humor, as we have learned from those aforementioned off-screen antics, which include a series of hilarious commercials for (what else?) Mountain Spring water, and now a new set for SodaStream.

Talking to The Express, Björnsson hinted at how his undead character will eventually die. As he sees it, his character will have to be put down for good “at some point.”

"I think I’m going to get killed at some point. How, I don’t know. Maybe I get killed by a dragon, I’m not sure. I guess it’s going to be quite brutal, I guess I’m going to be in a big war against dragons or something like that but who knows? They don’t tell us anything. I really don’t know."

Like many of his compatriots on the show, when considering the best death to be had, he would like to go out by dragon. “It’s a good way to go. If the dragon is going to eat my head or something.”

As to playing an undead character, he admitted that last season’s finale was a rough experience, especially since much of his screen time is limited. Most of the time, he’s just bundled into the gold armor, and the makeup only has to be applied around the eye slit. But for the finale, he was finally shown in all his Undead glory…for all of a shot.

"I thought I was locked in a jail and I could not move at all because it’s like you’re locked in your body. You feel very bad but it’s all worth it for 10 seconds of the show."

As for Season 7, he’s not giving anything away. Instead, he pivots to hawk the new SodaStream campaign, which he’s working on with another co-star from last season: Hannah Waddingham, who played the unlucky Septa Unella. If this means we might get a “The Mountain and Unella” spin off, I’m all for it.