14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re one of the millions of fans who took it to heart that the season 4 finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” didn’t include at least a short cameo from Lady Stoneheart, you’re bound to receive even more sad news just now: the character won’t be included on season 5 or on any other after it.
Confirmation of it comes from Michelle Fairley in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly so, unless she’s deliberately lying to throw fans off the story or because she’s not at liberty to say, she probably knows best.
*Please be advised that this article contains major spoilers.*
Lady Catelyn Stark was killed with the other Starks at the Red Wedding, but readers of George R.R. Martin’s original novels know that this isn’t the last time we see her. Three days after she’s buried into the river, she’s brought back to life by Lord Beric Dondarrion as Lady Stoneheart, a dreadful looking zombie whose sole goal in life is that of seeking revenge.
In the books, Lady Stoneheart is almost as frightening as the White Walkers, being described as having skin like curdled milk (from the days she floated in the water) and a terrible gash on her neck which she must cover whenever she wants to speak.
Fans of the HBO series who had read the books expected season 4 finale to follow the events in the novels and thus include at least a look at Lady Stoneheart. They would have settled for a cameo of just a few seconds.
Alex Graves, who directed the episode, called “The Children,” said that this was never the plan because there was simply no more “room” for that too. He had no idea how talk of this cameo even got started online, let alone of how it turned into such a huge fail for HBO when it didn’t happen.
As Fairley says, there will never be any room for that. The actress played Lady Catelyn and she tells EW that her character is “dead”: as in, dead-dead, gone for good. She will not return to the series neither as Lady Catelyn nor as the zombified version of Lady Stoneheart, because producers have decided to cut out that story arc altogether.
“The character’s dead. She’s dead,” Fairley says. She’s made peace with the idea and believes that fans should do the same. They should also get used to the idea that you can’t really make the novels happen on the small screen without weeding out some of the stories.
“You respect the writers’ decision. I knew the arc, and that was it. They can’t stick to the books 100 percent. It’s impossible – they only have 10 hours per season. They have got to keep it dramatic and exciting, and extraneous stuff along the way gets lost in order to maintain the quality of brilliant show,” Fairley says.
Here’s to hoping she’s not being entirely honest here because, if you read the books, you know that Lady Stoneheart isn’t just one of those characters that you can easily leave out.
