Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss recently went on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss their work on the new Netflix sci-fi series 3 Body Problem, which is really good and you should watch it. They also reflected back on their work on Thrones, prompted by that age-old question: What was your favorite character death?
On Game of Thrones, there are no shortage of deaths to choose from. The show was famous for killing off characters we loved like Ned, Robb and Catelyn Stark, and when the story finally got around to killing the villainous characters, it was all the more satisfying for the wait. "With Thrones, there was so much killing of good guys, that when we finally got to really kill both Joffrey in season 4 and Ramsay Bolton in season 6, it was fun to go back to the old-fashioned joys of just killing off really bad guys," Weiss mused. "It felt like it was maybe balancing the scales a little bit."
Benioff singled out the death of the sadistic Ramsay Bolton as especially satisfying. If you don't remember, Ramsay died after losing the Battle of the Bastards to Jon Snow and Sansa Stark. Afterwards, Sansa — who Ramsay had married and then tortured the season before — has him tied to a chair and fed to his own dogs, whom he had kept starved for days in anticipation of feeding his enemies to them. There's a spine-tingling moment when the dogs begin to eat Ramsay's face and Sansa — played by Sophie Turner — starts to look away, only to decide to stay and watch. Afterwards, she finally leaves with a small smile on her lips. It's hard to imagine this is the same innocent, frivolous girl from the start of the show. It's a great, brutal leap forward in character development.
It's no surprise Benioff names this as his favorite death scene. “At the end of Battle of the Bastards, when Sophie...does a walk away. You don’t actually see the death; you see some of it in the background. You don’t really see the death, but what you do see is Sansa's smile. And it was all in one shot,” he said.
"We did it, you know, seven times. I remember standing there with Dan [Weiss]. When she finally...nailed it on the seventh or eighth time, it was just that feeling of, ‘That’s so epic.’ Sophie was so good, and when she got that shot, I felt like, ‘I can now die happy.' Maybe I should have died happy right then."
I can't argue with that being one of the best death scenes on Game of Thrones, if not the best.
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