There was big casting news for one of our Game of Thrones alumni who hasn’t even appeared on screen yet. Ian McShane, whose casting as a still-yet-unnamed character was one of the highest profile additions for Season 6 apparently won’t be on the show for long. He’s accepted a leading role in STARZ upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, playing the man known as “Mr. Wednesday.” (American Gods fans known that “Mr. Wednesday” is actually an alias. His true identity will be revealed down the line.)
Fans suspected that McShanes role was a one-off, and this is probably a good sign of that. But we still don’t know exactly who he’s playing. Or do we? On BBC Breakfast this morning, McShane was doing to rounds to promote his role as Sir Roger Scatcherd on Doctor Thorne, the ITV adaptation of the third installment from Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire.
Up next: Actor Ian McShane on his new period drama Doctor Thorne pic.twitter.com/MvaxguZVlL
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) March 3, 2016
In the middle of it, he accidentally mentions Game of Thrones, and though he immediately claims he can’t tell us anything, he then proceeded to drop big circular hints about who his character is and what he’ll be up to this coming season.
A tight end became from underground like an Oiler
Here like I never left, back like a spoiler
————————————————————————
“My character is an ex-warrior who’s become a peacenik. So I have this group of peaceful…it’s like a cult, peaceful tribe… who have brought back… I bring back this beloved character that everyone thinks is dead. So, I’ll leave it at that.”
An “ex warrior who has become a peacenik.” I can see where McShane thinks he’s being vague, and for those who haven’t read the books (a smaller and smaller group everyday!) this would be a nice vague description that might lead them to wonder if he’s referring to the Stoneheart character everyone always seems to get excited over.
For everyone else, this is telling us who he is in large flashing neon letters. The Elder Brother, who is in charge of an place called The Quiet Isle that Brienne visits in her wanderings as she searches for Sansa, is a former knight, who fought in the Battle of the Trident. He was knocked out to the point that his comrades thought him dead, so they did to him what all soldiers do to the dead–stole his armor, his clothes and his weapons. (After all, as The Hound points out to Arya once, the dead don’t need things like money.) His body floated downstream, and when he woke, he found himself at The Quiet Isle, stripped of all his worldly possessions. He saw this as a sign, joined their order, took a vow of silence, which he maintained for ten years.
As we discussed in our spoiler round up, The Hound has been rumored to be returning this season, even though the show insisted he was dead, and (unlike some characters we could mention) managed to make the story stick for a while. In the books, many believe The Hound is still alive and well and living as a Gravedigger on the Quiet Isle, with his face covered and under a vow of silence. Others think that, like his Mountainous brother in King’s Landing, he did die, but he has been somehow resurrected by the Elder Brother, and is one of the many “Undead” characters who at this point populate the series on the page. I personally ascribed to the former–I think the Elder Brother’s story of “The Hound” dying in his arms was metaphorical, and that what died was his rage and need to fight, and that now he is , much like the Elder Brother, living a repentant quiet life, atoning for his sins.
But it’s interesting that McShane phrases it that he brought the character “back to life.” Does that mean that in fact the other theory is true and both the Hound and The Mountain live as Undead Brothers, who could one day meet again?
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/03/03/ian-mcshane-talks-about-his-character-for-game-of-thrones-season-6/
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