Conleth Hill (Varys) has strong feelings about “The Bells”

Warning: You know the drill by now, folks. Game of Thrones just aired a new episode, and until you know what happened, it’s best to stay far, far away from this post.

And here we thought that the Spider would keep spinning his webs until he died of old age. It seems that actor Conleth Hill, who plays Varys on Game of Thrones, thought the same way. In response to Varys’ death in “The Bells,” Hill had a chance to sit down with Entertainment Weekly, and the man did not hold back.

Bless him. Let’s get to it below.

Basically, Hill has felt for a while that his character has been sidelined while they focused on other characters more, specifically the last two seasons. “That’s fine,” he said. “It’s the nature of a multi-character show. It was kind of frustrating. As a whole it’s been overwhelmingly positive and brilliant but I suppose the last couple seasons weren’t my favorite.”

"It would have been great to have had one more meeting with Littlefinger. I think they tried to make that work and couldn’t. It just felt like after season 6, I kind of dropped off the edge. I can’t complain because it’s six great seasons and I had some great scenes these last two seasons. But that’s when It changed for me a little. There was that Magnificent Seven trek up north to bring a white walker back. It makes total sense that Varys wouldn’t go. But the human in you is like, “I want to go.” It made perfect sense. He’s not a hero, he’s not a fighter. And even when they went back to King’s Landing a couple times they sneaked him in there. They had set it up that he knew the city like the back of his hand so I guess he was just … I dunno. I’m not dissatisfied on the whole. It sounds like I am. But it’s been brilliant."

Hill also was miffed by the impression that Varys seemed to be “losing his knowledge.”

"If he was such an intelligent man and he had such resources, how come he didn’t know about things? That added to my dismay. It’s now being rectified with getting a great and noble ending. But that was frustrating for a couple seasons."

On top of all that, Hill was bummed not to get a personal call from showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss telling him he’d died, although for season 8 they didn’t call anybody, it being the final year and all.

"I took it very personally. I took it as a person, not as an actor or an artist. I understood the reactions of previous actors who had been in same position a lot more than I did at the time. You can’t help feeling that you failed in some way, that you haven’t lived up to some expectation that you didn’t know about. The only thing that consoles you is people who worked a lot harder than you are in the same boat. So that helps. I don’t think anybody who hasn’t been through it can identify with it. They think, “What’s all the fuss about? You’re all finishing anyway.” But you take it personally, you can’t help it."

So Hill sounds a little dissatisfied, although he’s now made peace with how his character went out:

"All brilliant. All noble. He was absolutely true to his word the whole way through. All he wanted was the right person on the throne and a fair person on the throne. He said it so many times in the scripts. I don’t have the distraction of love or desire or any of those things. And the people he needed to see clearly were both in love. So that makes perfect sense. And now with hindsight, I’m okay, but I really was inconsolable."

But did he have to go about it that way? Fans are mixed on Twitter:

And this might be the most fitting tribute of all:

As Hill himself said, Varys tries to the very end to do his best. It’s a shame that the rulers who vie for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms really have some exceedingly poor judgment in some way or another, and that includes Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow at this point.

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