14 DAY TRIAL // Season 5 of “Game of Thrones” doesn’t premiere on HBO until spring, but since the season 4 finale there’s been a lot of talk online about certain omissions that producers seem to have made and which, according to fans, are quite unpardonable.
We’re talking about Lady Stoneheart who, as per George R.R. Martin’s books, on which the show is based, should have made an appearance by now.
*Spoiler, stop here if you haven’t read the novels in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series.*
Lady Stoneheart is Catelyn Stark brought back to life. She’s a zombie but she’s a different breed of zombie because she has only revenge on her agenda. She also seems to have retained her human abilities, including that of speech, though she does have a hard time with it because of the gash in her neck, which killed her in the “Red Wedding” episode.
The final episode of season 4 didn’t include even a few-second cameo with her and the actress playing Catelyn, Michelle Fairley, said that she was not coming back for season 5, stressing that the Lady Stoneheart plotline was removed from the script because you can’t possibly fit everything that’s in a book into a TV show.
Fans were outraged, but only those who had read the novels. To them, Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark, has one message: stop being snobs who ruin the TV experience for fans who didn’t read the books!
“[The Lady Stoneheart controversy] was a massive deal, but honestly, I really like it,” she tells TV Line in a new interview. “I’m so sick of going on the internet and seeing all the book readers being snobby, spoiling it for other people, then saying, ‘Well, it’s not a spoiler. The books have been out for years.’ Like, couldn’t you just stop being mad for a second and let other people enjoy the show?”
“They feel they have a claim on the series because they read the books first, and I understand that, but they don’t need to be mean about it. That’s why I liked moments like this, because book readers think they know what’s coming, then we change it and it’s really funny to watch their reactions. They’re always like, ‘That’s not what happened in the books, so the show’s really bad now.’ But really, they just feel insecure because they’re used to knowing what’s coming next,” she continues.
She’s right: the TV show and the books are two different beasts and should be regarded as such. Just because producers choose to ignore one plotline (for whatever reason or however awesome fans consider it to be), that doesn’t mean that the TV show is all bad now. It just means it’s going into a slightly different direction.
This is what will happen eventually, especially if Martin doesn’t hurry up to release the final books. The show will catch up to the novels that are already out and will then proceed into unknown territory. Martin spoke to the producers and told them how he planned to end the story in general lines, so all they have to do is get the writers to put pen to paper.
“Snob” readers of the books won’t be in a position to complain then, because they will no longer have the books to compare the show to. They might as well start practicing on that with season 5.