14 DAY TRIAL // “Game of Thrones,” which will be getting its fifth season on HBO this spring, is perhaps the boldest and most shocking series on TV right now. However, as shocking as it’s been for the past 4 seasons, it’s time we braced ourselves for even more of the same.
Based on the novels from the “Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R.R. Martin, “Game of Thrones” manages to stay at the top of the game through, among other things, a complete disregard for the wellbeing of the characters populating it, including major ones.
More surprising deaths than before
The only ones who have not yet been taken by surprise are the readers of Martin’s books, because they already know in general lines where the story is heading to, and most importantly, who will die on the way there.
That’s about to change with this new season, Martin tells Showbiz411 in a new interview, because for the time in the series, characters will die who don’t die in the books. This basically means that everyone’s fair game, starting from Sansa Stark to Cersei Lannister and even Arya Stark, to name just 3 of the strongest and most popular female characters.
“People are going to die who don’t die in the books, so even the book readers will be unhappy. Everybody better be on their toes,” Martin says.
Obviously, he wouldn’t even offer a hint as to the identity of these characters, most likely because he must know that fans on social media and dedicated forums would solve his riddle in a matter of hours, thirsty for something new about their favorite story - one that is yet to reach a conclusion on paper even, because the final book in the series hasn’t been written yet.
A sign of the future
If Martin is agreeing to have certain characters who survive in the books be killed off on the show (to this day, he remains very involved in the show, so it’s not like this could be done without him), that can mean only one thing: he and HBO producers are preparing for the inevitable day when the show goes on a different path than the books.
At the rate Martin is writing and with 2 more novels still to come out, this was bound to happen, especially since HBO wants the final and seventh season to air in 2017.
Producers on the show already know in general lines how Martin plans to finish his books, but at the same time, they’re also prepared for the possibility of delivering a different ending than the books, if only because the final season would air before their publication and that would mean ruining it.
So season 5 could be the crossroads where the series and the books say goodbye. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented move, if you think about it: it was also done with “Dexter,” whose first season only stuck to the story in the novels, and then went on to become something else.
“Game of Thrones” is definitely a project that stands on its own, so it no longer needs to rely on the books, assuming it ever did.
The worst part of this is that Sophie Turner, who plays the aforementioned Sansa Stark, said just recently that Sansa would have a “super traumatic” scene in the upcoming season that would be even more shocking than the infamous Red Wedding.
The only thing more traumatic than that would be Sansa’s death, which, in all fairness, would be in keeping with the motto “Valar Morghulis,” “All men must die.”