SPOILERS
If you stay in touch with things related to HBO’s amazing show, Game of Thrones, you may have heard that last night was the fourth season’s finale, which mainly concludes the events from the third book of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, A Storm of Swords. ASOS is by far the most entertaining and rollercoaster-y of the books thus far of the five published, and because of that, the two seasons of GOT that were based on it have been phenomenal. I sincerely wish the HBO producers, Benioff & Weiss, the best of luck in adapting the 2 next books in the series, as they are bleak and have nothing like the Red Wedding or the Purple Wedding or Tyrion’s Trial in them. At all. They’ve already had to dig into those later books for things to give Dany to do over in Meereen, which does not bode well as what the hell else are they going to do with her? OH YEAH, SPOILER ALERT!
The last book in the series thus far, A Dance with Dragons, was a giant cock-tease of a book. Pretty much every character returned to the narrative after some, like Tyrion, Dany, and Jon, weren’t heard from at all in A Feast for Crows. But then, the pieces get moved around and you really think all these things/events are coming to a head, and then boom, the end of Book 5 happens. A whole lot is left up in the air and you just know there’s going to be some amazing setpiece events…but not in book 5. Nope, gonna have to wait for Book 6, The Winds of Winter, and who knows when that’s coming out? I’m ranting about this predicament as it does help inform what my primary question is, which is, WHERE MY LADY STONEHEART BE, YO?
At the end of ASOS (book 3), we get this crazay epilogue of some Freys (that’s the family that betrayed the Starks at the Red Wedding) wandering around the countryside and getting captured by the Brotherhood without Banners. We don’t know why Freys are targeted until we meet the leader – a horrificly mangled woman with injuries very much like what Catelyn Stark suffered at the Red Wedding. In fact, it IS Catelyn Stark, having been “restored to life” by Thoros of Myr in place of Beric Dondarrion and now going by the title of Lady Stoneheart. She’s got the appearance of a zombie and the focus of one who only has one thing on her mind: revenge. It’s an epic way to end the book and kind of cathartic after all the blood spilled in ASOS.
But did she show up last night? Nope. Pretty much every book reader anticipated that of any scene, the Lady Stoneheart reveal was of course going to be the last scene. It wasn’t. Instead, we got Arya sailing somewhat hopefully to Braavos. When the screen went to black for a long period of time, I held out hope that was a fakeout and there’d be the reveal. Nope; credits! After what had been a pretty kick-ass finale (minor quibbles still over other things there, but I’m focused on this for now), I was left disappointed. I couldn’t tell Larry since he’s a non-book reader and I don’t want to ruin it. But I couldn’t hide my feelings as it was like, REALLY, HBO?
There have been plenty of articles today from the major pop culture sites I read solely about this topic, and it seems the party line being reported is that Lady Stoneheart was never ever planned to be part of this season. A lot of good reasons are being bandied about and some I think make sense – one in particular, I think from io9, is that there should be some buildup throughout season 5 in which we see random Freys here and there getting taken out, with us left to wonder what the hell is happening. In the books, Brienne and Pod do eventually run into Lady Stoneheart in a particularly dramatic fashion, which could be the reveal we do get after all in the show. I think that would work and probably from a showrunner’s point of view, will be even more satisfying for viewers in the long run. Also, as I was mentioning earlier, there’s not a whole lot of truly momentous events in the next two books, and the next season is looking to be taking on both of them at the same time since they are set concurrently. So they really may need to hold out and save Lady Stoneheart as something to work with next season as otherwise, there’s going to be a lot more made-up stuff, which can be hit or miss.
But damn, there’s still a piece of me that just really REALLY wanted to see Michelle Fairley (the actress who played Catelyn Stark) all revenged-out and getting some vengeance on a Frey or two last night.
Too many plot elements for the season? Probably. Especially one with things like the Battle of Castle Black, Bran and the Bloodraven, Tyrion’s Vengeful Escape, Arya and Brienne and the Hound (now THAT battle was a happy surprise addition I can get behind), and Dany locking up her dragons. And I can be rational about it, yet if again in Season 5 we get nothing….time to write some strongly-worded letters, bitches!