14 DAY TRIAL // HBO’s “Game of Thrones” delivered a painful blow to fans of the series with episode 9 of season 3, the aptly titled “The Rains of Castamere.” Just as suitable a name would be The Red Wedding episode.
Starting with this episode, nothing will ever be the same again.
*Fans who have not seen the episode yet are encouraged not to read any further than this – major spoilers ahead.
As readers of the original George R.R. Martin novels must already know, The Red Wedding is where Robb Stark, the King of the North, and his mother Catelyn meet a very violent and totally unexpected end at the hands of Roose Bolton.
They’re not the only ones to die but, as it happens, it’s their loss that most affected fans.
Even Richard Madden, who played Robb on the show, tells The Huffington Post that he was so upset that, after he was done shooting the scene, he boarded a plane for London and hardly said goodbye to anyone.
“And I cried the whole way. I was the crazy boy on the plane crying,” he says.
The show’s fans must have felt the same way when they saw what was happening on the screen to some of their favorite characters.
However, as Martin himself once said, such a twist in the plot was essential. Also then, he said he hoped heartbroken fans would still find it in them to come back to the story even though disappointed.
“I am told by the people that participated in it that it is awful. So I’m, like the fans, I’m looking forward to it with anticipation and a certain amount of dread. And also I’m living in terror of the reaction. When that book came out, I got some amazing letters from people telling how they threw the book into the fireplace and they would never read me again and they hated me,” Martin said before the episode aired, as cited by BuzzFeed.
“But then they went out the next week and bought another copy of the book, and they love me now. We may get some similar reactions. I don’t recommend anyone throw their television set into the fireplace. It could be very dangerous,” he added.
