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

A WHOLE BUNCH OF SECONDARY CHARACTERS FROM THE NOVELS ARE CUT

Game of Thrones has a lot of characters for a TV show, but it has nothing on the Song of Ice and Fire novels. Here’s a list of book characters Martin wrote into his script for “The Lion and the Rose” that didn’t appear onscreen:

• Lady Olenna’s huge twin guards, whom she calls “Left” and “Right”
• Penny, the female dwarf performer who accompanies Tyrion on his journey to Meereen in A Dance with Dragons
• Ser Osmund Kettleblack, a knigone of the Kettleblack brothers Cersei sleeps with in the books, causing an irreversible rift between herself and Jaime; and Ser Arys Oakheart, a major player in the Dornish Arianne Martell plot that the show decided not to use.
• Ser Arys Oakheart, a knight of the Kingsguard who gets swept up in Arianne Martell’s plot to crown Myrcella Baratheon Queen of the Seven Kingdoms in A Feast for Crows

Why were they cut?

Probably because Benioff and Weiss weren’t planning to adapt their stories. Arianne Martell isn’t in the show, so Arys Oakheart wouldn’t have had much of a role. They adapt Cersei’s conflict with the sparrows without Osmund Kettleblack’s supporting role, and Penny…well, I’m okay with her being cut, although mileage will vary. It would have been fun to see Left and Right, though.

I’ve argued that including Osmund Kettleblack could have helped with Cersei’s sparrow plotline in season 5, but whether you think these were good cuts will probably depend on your opinions of their corresponding stories from the books.