Season five of Game Of Thrones was arguably the most shocking to date. Jon Snow was stabbed in the back (and the front, and the side) by the traitorous oiks of the Night’s Watch. The ghoulish Night’s King at last took centre stage, raising an army of undead wildlings with a single gesture. Cersei received her comeuppance and Arya was blinded after ignoring her Faceless Man training and taking revenge against an old foe. And that was just the last several episodes.
If the preceding sentences make absolutely no sense then you probably belong to that ever-shrinking minority of television viewers yet to discover the addictive properties of HBO’s swords and sorcery juggernaut. Openly derided by “professional” critics when it debuted in 2011, the series quickly swept aside the haters and demonstrated to the world that fantasy fiction could be as thrilling, nuanced and, yes, rude as any other grown-up entertainment.
Half a decade on, fans are holding their collective breaths as they countdown to the series’ return on April 24 (yet again Thrones will be simulcast on Sky Atlantic, which means devotees can stay up until 2am Sunday night/Monday morning to watch it in “real time”). The anticipation comes with a double edge as there is speculation that last year’s shock dispatch of Jon Snow may have been a double feint on the part of show runners David Benioff and DB Weiss (who met as postgraduate students in Trinity College).
That was certainly the considered opinion of the internet as actor Kit Harington was spotted around Belfast, where Game Of Thrones is largely shot, several weeks after his character’s supposed death. Moreover, he continues to sport his contractually obligatory shoulder-length hair – a tonsorial ball and chain he would surely have dispensed with immediately were Jon Snow truly gone for good (a medieval mullet being a distinct disadvantage when chasing juicy acting gigs).
We don’t know Snow’s fate because, for the first time, Game Of Thrones (GoT) is stepping into virgin territory. The series is adopted from George RR Martin’s sprawling A Song of Ice and Fire saga, but Martin’s writing schedule has not kept pace with HBO and the show is to eclipse the novels. All along book readers were smugly forewarned of major plot twists. Now they, like the rest of us, are scrabbling in the dark.
What we do know is that this year’s Thrones is set to the most spectacular yet. An incredible $6 million (€5.37 million) is lavished on each episode – an unprecedented sum for a TV series. And that money has apparently been put to extravagant use, with Benioff and Weiss promising the loudest, biggest, bloodiest pitch battle to date.
“We wondered, ‘Why don’t you see more fully fleshed-out battles in movies and TV?’” said Weiss “Then you get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to actually shoot these things in a way that isn’t just helter-skelter chaos but actually gives you a sense of battle geography and the ebb and flow. In terms of numbers – number of extras, number of stuntmen, number of shooting days – it’s the biggest we’ve done.”
However, HBO has vowed that in other aspects GoT will be less over the top. In particular, it is to be more careful in its handling of sexual violence. There was a justified outcry last season as plucky Sansa Stark was raped by sadistic loon Ramsay Bolton in front of her adopted brother Theon Greyjoy. The scene was widely agreed to be gratuitous and to have trivialised rape. At best it was cheap and exploitive, at worst it demonstrated a chilling indifference towards the real-life suffering of sexual abuse victims.
In response to the charge that GoT is fundamentally anti-women, the producers have declared that this year female characters will be in control more than ever. Humiliated by her “shame walk” through King’s Landing, Queen mother Cersei is plotting her revenge and this time she’s got the cyborg-esque Ser Robert Strong riding shotgun.
Sansa herself has escaped Ramsay, accompanied by the broken Theon (who now goes as Reek). And, across the Narrow Sea in Essos, Mother of Dragons Daenerys has reconnected with the Dothraki barbarians, though it is not clear whether this has been a friendly reunion (on the other hand she does have pet firebreather Drogon watching her back).
“When George R Martin crafted the books he wanted to make it a very real human story,” producer Brian Cogman told me when I visited the Game Of Thrones set several years ago. “Sex is part of the human experience. Sexual politics is very much part of the ‘game’. It sets us apart from other fantasy shows. I almost hesitate to call it a fantasy show. It’s a human story. That’s the reason who people who might not normally watch this sort of thing keep coming back to it.”
In the latest trailer for the season, it is also hinted that Game Of Thrones is to make its fullest use yet of flashback. There is speculation that we will join a young Ned Stark (beheaded in series one) as he hunts down the kidnapper of his sister Lyanna Stark. According to family legend, Lyanna was abducted by the cruel and rapacious Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and died at his hands. But a fan theory is that Lyanna is the mother of “Bastard of Winterfell” Jon Snow, whom Ned raised as his own. Will the mystery be solved this season? It seems Game of Thrones is certainly going to make an attempt at deepening our understanding of Snow’s background and of the tragedy that has defined the Starks’ relationship with the other great houses in Westeros.
One of the few cast members to say anything of substance about the series this year is Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lanniser. She has stated that her icky romance with twin Jaime will go to even stranger places.
“Her relationship with Jaime is at an all-time weird level,” she said. “It’s juicy, and it’s so fucking dark.” Juicy and fucking dark. She could have been talking about Game of Thrones itself.
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Game f Thrones returns to Sky Atlantic on April 24