Christopher Nolan just dropped one of the biggest films of the year. His IMAX epic adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey has us wanting to talk about the characters for days after we've seen it.
And if you're anything like us (people who've spent an embarrassing amount of time in both ancient Greece and Westeros) you'll have noticed something. The characters in The Odyssey are deeply human, defined by their values, their flaws and the way they handle power. Which sounds a lot like another fictional universe we know and love.
So here's the question we couldn't stop asking after the credits rolled: if these characters existed in Westeros, which house would they belong to? Based not just on vibes, but on how they actually think, act, lead and survive, let's sort them.
Odysseus: House Lannister
Might have taken you off guard with that. Odysseus is the hero, yes, but Nolan's film leans hard into his identity as a trickster hero. He bends the rules of honor when it suits him and then preaches about honor to everyone else. Sound familiar?
House Lannister, at their best, are the most politically intelligent house in Westeros. They are known for orchestrating, manipulating and always thinking three moves ahead. Odysseus operates the same way. He's brilliant, compelling, a little self-righteous and occasionally monstrous, and he knows it. The film even raises the unsettling idea that he may have delayed his journey home because he felt unworthy after everything he did in Troy. Very Tyrion, very Jaime. Very Lannister.
The motto "Hear Me Roar" might seem a bit too off brand for a man of Odysseus' subtlety, but remember the Lannisters' real words: A Lannister always pays his debts. Odysseus pays every debt, in blood if he has to.
Penelope: House Stark
While everyone around her is trying to grab power, Penelope just wants to hold things together. She's loyal, patient and carries an almost impossible burden with dignity. The suitors eat her food, drink her wine, disrespect her home and presume her husband is dead, and she endures it all without giving an inch of ground.
That is Stark to its core. They survive through sheer steadfastness and a bone-deep commitment to what's right. Penelope's famous trick of weaving a burial shroud by day and unraveling it by night to stall her suitors remind us so much of the Stark ethos.
The Stark words are "Winter Is Coming" (woop! That would also be us!) which is really just a poetic way of saying we see the hard times ahead and we're prepared. Penelope spent 20 years prepared. She waited and kept Ithaca from collapsing. She'd fit right in at Winterfell.
Telemachus: House Stark
If Penelope is Ned Stark, then Telemachus is Robb, a young man defined by his father's absence and his need to prove himself in a world that keeps testing him.
Tom Holland plays Telemachus as a young man chasing two things simultaneously. One is his missing father and the other his own identity. He's idealistic, earnest and slightly reckless. He sets off on his own journey partly out of duty and partly because he doesn't know who he is without Odysseus to measure himself against. That wrestling with inherited identity, the son of a legend, trying to step out from their shadow, sounds so much like Robb Stark's whole arc.
Both characters are loyal to a fault, both rush toward danger with more heart than strategy and both are ultimately trying to live up to something. The difference is Telemachus makes it home. But the Northern soul is unmistakable.
Antinous: House Lannister (the Cersei wing)
If Odysseus is the Lannister who earns your respect, Antinous is the one who makes your skin crawl. Robert Pattinson plays the lead suitor as a man of immaculate arrogance and very dangerous. He wears his charm like armor and underneath it is pure calculation and contempt.
This is Cersei Lannister at her worst. The Lannister house has always had this duality. They have this brilliant operator and the entitled schemer who mistakes cruelty for power. Antinous is the kind of suitor who'd love the Red Keep. He'd thrive there, right up until someone with a bow and arrow put an end to it, which is exactly what happens.
Melantho: House Lannister
If Antinous is Cersei, then Melantho could be Littlefinger. Mia Goth plays Melantho as a woman who starts the film as Penelope's most trusted maidservant raised in the household. And then she betrays her out of a calculated bet on the winning side. She's Antinous's lover in Nolan's version and we see her feed him intelligence from inside the household and most damningly, she's the one who tells him about Penelope's weaving trick, blowing the whole cover wide open.
She's been in the inner circle the whole time, gathering information and using it and its villainous in the insidious Littlefinger way. Petyr Baelish similarly made himself indispensable, collected secrets and waited for the right moment to turn them into power. Melantho operates pretty much like that, right up until Penelope figures it out and shoves her into the suitor battle as punishment. The ending is fittingly ambiguous. We don't see her die on screen which is, if you think about it, very Littlefinger of her.
Athena: House Targaryen
Athena is a god who intervenes in mortal affairs for her own reasons, choosing favorites and occasionally descending from on high to set things right. She's the divine patron of Odysseus, the only one who can see her, and she operates on a level that mere humans simply can't access.
If that's not Targaryen energy, we don't know what is. House Targaryen has always occupied a different tier of existence. They have dragons, prophetic dreams, a history of madness and greatness in equal measure, and an ancient bloodline that sets them apart from every other house. Daenerys, in particular, saw herself as a liberator, a protector of specific people, divinely appointed to restore order. Athena moves through The Odyssey the same way, above the fray, choosing who she helps and who she abandons with a certainty that can feel either comforting or terrifying depending on which side you're on.
The Targaryen words are "Fire and Blood." Athena's version might be "Wisdom and War." Close enough.
Circe: House Targaryen
Speaking of Targaryens, Circe belongs on the same tree, just a far darker branch.
If Athena is Daenerys, then Circe is closer to the Mad King. In Nolan's film, Samantha Morton plays her as the most terrifying presence in the movie through an almost clinical cruelty.
The Targaryens have always had this within them. The dragonfire-and-madness gene is never far away. Circe is the magical wild card, utterly singular and operating by rules no one else understands. She'd be right at home in Old Valyria back when the Targaryens were something to be greatly feared.
Calypso: House Tyrell
Calypso traps Odysseus with comfort and the promise of immortality. She keeps him on her island for years and the film suggests he stays partly because he doesn't feel worthy of going home.
That is a Tyrell move if we've ever seen one. House Tyrell is the richest house in Westeros; members are masters of soft power and their weapon of choice is abundance. Highgarden is seductive. Margaery Tyrell climbed toward the Iron Throne through grace, generosity and making whoever she was with feel loved. Calypso does somewhat the same thing.
"Growing Strong" are the Tyrell words, and Calypso's power over Odysseus grows precisely in that quiet and almost invisible way.
Menelaus: House Baratheon
Jon Bernthal's Menelaus is exactly what you'd expect from Jon Bernthal. He's Odysseus' closest ally, a man defined by his physical presence and his loyalty. He fights because that's what he knows and loves.
House Baratheon to the bone.
The Baratheons were never the most politically gifted house, they were the most formidable fighters. Robert Baratheon was a legendary warrior who made a very average king. His power came from his physicality and the sheer force of his personality. Menelaus carries that same energy. His mercurial, muscle-first, feelings-later approach is the Baratheon way.
"Ours Is the Fury." Menelaus would easily have the motto tattooed on his forearm.
Eumaeus: House Mormont
The loyal swineherd. The man who has kept faith with his absent king for 20 years while everyone else has written Odysseus off.
Eumaeus might be the most honourable character in the whole film and that's a House Mormont profile. Bear Island is small and easy to overlook. The Mormonts don't have Lannister gold or Targaryen dragons. What they have is an almost stubborn loyalty that doesn't bend regardless of political circumstances. Lyanna Mormont, all 11 years of her, looked a room full of lords in the eye and pledged her house to Jon Snow without blinking. Eumaeus kept Odysseus' farm running, kept faith in a man the entire world assumed was dead, and when the moment came, he stood and fought.
The Mormont words are "Here We Stand." Eumaeus never went anywhere. Here he stood, the whole time.
Eurylochus: House Stark
Eurylochus is our man standing next to the hero watching him make increasingly questionable decisions and being the only one brave enough to say something about it. Himesh Patel was among the most talked-about performances in the film and it's not hard to see why.
Eurylochus is Odysseus's brother-in-law and his whole arc is built around the idea of, what does one do when you love your king, but your king is losing himself? His faith erodes slowly and painfully, and when he finally acts against Odysseus's orders, it's because he believes he has no other choice. And it destroys him.
That is a Stark story through and through. The Starks have always been the house that does the right thing at exactly the wrong time and pays for it completely. They're not the cleverest or the most powerful, but they have a moral compass that doesn't bend even when bending it would save their lives. Ned Stark would have understood Eurylochus immediately. He probably would have made the same call.
Agamemnon: House Baratheon
Agamemnon is the cautionary tale in The Odyssey. He's the great king who came home from Troy and was murdered by his own wife. His story hangs over Odysseus' journey as a warning that even the mightiest men fall when they forget what's waiting for them at home.
In Westeros terms, Agamemnon is a Baratheon who flew too close to the sun, specifically Robert Baratheon, whose obsession with war and glory left his home life in ruins. Robert won his war and came back to find his kingdom already beginning to rot from inside his own court. He didn't have a wife who killed him with a knife, but Cersei might as well have been sharpening one for years. Both men were legendary in the field and tragically blind at home. Agamemnon is what happens when House Baratheon's fury has no wisdom to temper it.
Clytemnestra: House Lannister (the Cersei they deserved)
We already gave Antinous the Cersei comparison, and we stand by it. But Clytemnestra gets her own Lannister badge for completely different reasons, and I think we can say she wears it better.
Lupita Nyong'o plays both Helen and her sister Clytemnestra in the film, and the dual casting is inspired. Where Helen is passive in the story acted upon by everyone around her, Clytemnestra is the opposite. She waited for Agamemnon to come home from 10 years of war and then killed him with planning and with what the film frames as a complicated kind of justice. Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter for fair winds to sail to Troy and Clytemnestra never forgot that.
That is Cersei Lannister's whole DNA. The Lannister who acts and plans and refuses to be the passive piece in someone else's game. The difference is Clytemnestra had a very legit grievance that the audience can actually understand. She's the Cersei you root for right up until you remember what she did.
Helen: House Martell
Helen is the most contested woman in the ancient world. She was blamed for wars that weren't her fault and turned into a symbol when she was always just a person. In Nolan's film, Lupita Nyong'o plays her with a dignity that cuts through all the noise around her.
We think House Martell fits her perfectly. The Martells were the only great house to successfully resist Targaryen conquest. They don't play by the same rules as everyone else. They're in a different culture and climate, and they've always sat slightly outside the game while still being very much in it. Dornish women, Ellaria, Arianne, even Oberyn in his own way have a freedom and fire that the rest of Westeros doesn't quite know how to handle. Helen is the same.
The Martell words are "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken." Helen never broke, even when the entire world decided her face was the reason for a decade of war.
Sinon: House Stark
Right, Sinon. Elliot Page plays the Greek soldier who opened the gates of Troy, and the film wastes no time being honest about what that ended up costing him. Sinon was a boy conscripted into the war after Antinous secretly switched places with him to avoid service. He was handed someone else's sacrifice and made to bear it.
In Nolan's version he also isn't the famous liar from Virgil's telling but closer to a tragic hero. He is this young man who does what is asked of him with full knowledge of what it will cost, and dies in the war without anyone back home even knowing his name. When Odysseus encounters him in the Underworld, he calls Sinon 'the greatest soldier' he ever knew.
There are very few Stark sentences in the English language like that. The Starks are full of people who did the honourable thing and got nothing for it but an early grave and a line in someone else's story. Sinon didn't get recognition or a statue or a song either. And the man whose war he helped win only truly understood his worth after it was too late to tell him.
"Winter Is Coming." Sinon knew. He just went anyway.
The Cyclops Polyphemus: not a house but the Night King?
A massive, singular, terrifying creature who exists outside the political structures of the story, lives in isolation, and becomes the victim of a clever man's trickery while also being, if you squint, kind of pitiable?
That's your Night King. A force of nature. Ancient and operating on different terms than everyone else in the story. And just like the Night King, once Odysseus deals with the Cyclops, you weirdly feel a little bad about how it went down. I guess some characters are too big for houses. They just are what they are.
Whether you've just walked out of the cinema or you've been a Homer fan since forever, there's something about these ancient characters that refuses to stay ancient. They want power, they lose people they love, they make terrible decisions for understandable reasons. Sounds like Westeros.
Sounds like everywhere, really.
The Odyssey is playing now in theaters and IMAX. Game of Thrones is available to stream on HBO Max.
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