HBO cut a lot from George R.R. Martin’s final Game of Thrones script

MELISANDRE’S LIGHTSHOW

In “The Lion and the Wolf,” we see Melisandre burn a few of Stannis’ bannermen on the beach at Dragonstone, purportedly for the crime of not adhering to her nutso beliefs. The scene is disturbing but simple, but once again, Martin wanted something more elaborate:

"The flames CHANGE COLOR: one burns purple, one green, one silver-white. Then a GASP rises from the onlookers, for above the fires, just for an instant, we SEE the three victims rising from their pyres, made young and strong and beautiful again, smiling as they ascend to the sky."

Why was it cut?

Once again, this wouldn’t really fit in with the shows more grounded take on the magic of the world, and once again, it may have cost money the show didn’t have. Also, it sounds kind of silly. I’m okay with this one being cut.

It makes perfect sense that Martin would write things beyond the capacity of HBO to realize. By his own admission, he originally got out of the television game because his scripts kept overreaching and getting shot down. He went back to books books so he could “write something just as big as my imagination, I’m going to have all the characters I want, and gigantic castles, and dragons, and direwolves, and hundreds of years of history, and a really complex plot, and it’s fine because it’s a book.” Now he was writing for TV again, and having the same problems he had when he was in Los Angeles in the mid-’90s.

There are a couple other examples like this in Robinson’s write-up. Naturally, Martin wanted Joffrey’s wedding feast to be bigger. In fact, he wanted two of them, and spent a lot of time describing all the food that would be included, something that will come as no surprise to fans of his books. That stuff was likely cut for the same reason Bran’s vision and Melisandre’s pyro party were cut back: just too expensive.

But speaking of Joffrey’s wedding, some of the most interesting changes happen in King’s Landing…