Curtain Call: Kristian Nairn

“Hodor” – Hodor

It is with a heavy heart that I write this curtain call today. Hodor was a character beloved across cultures, across countries, across fandoms. The mononymed oversized innocent, who may or may not have been distantly related to giants, Hodor represented something rare in Westeros: a character with no self interested motivation. One might say he and Littlefinger are exact opposites. While Littlefinger charms with words, all the while only concerned with his own rise, Hodor charmed with only a single word, and his utter loyalty and devotion was unmatched in the show.

Kristian Nairn did more with Hodor than any actor probably had any right to. He admitted up front that when he originally went to audition he was slightly appalled to realize wheat he was reading for–the exact stereotype he had spent his career fighting against. (Much like Peter Dinklage, in fact.) He might have turned it down too, but his mother, who was a fan of the books, and new what a beloved character this was on the page, and would be on the screen, convinced him to go for it. The result was a performance that was quite remarkable. Over the course of five years, Nairn made an entire vocabulary out of a single two syllable word. You know that character in fantasy who seems to be talking gibberish, but his friends understand him perfectly every time? That was Hodor for every one of us sitting at home. We always knew what he meant.

Nairn didn’t just make Hodor, Hodor made Nairn. Last year, while Bran and Co were sitting the year out, waiting for the rest of the show to catch up, Nairn took his other passion in life–music–and went on a world tour DJing across the globe under the banner “Rave of Thrones.” He released three singles over the course of last year on Radikal Records, and will leave the show with a second career already underway.

But Nairn’s portrayal of Hodor’s death wasn’t just a heartbreaker this week, it was a milestone. For years, we book readers have always known the shock!deaths before they occur, the heartbreaks before they bring down the hammer. When Ned Stark died and show only watchers sobbed in shock and screamed and cried and demanded to know why, us book readers nodded to ourselves, and perhaps sighed with relief internally. We had worried the show would not have the nerve to go there, that they would let Ned live, and ruin everything. Now we knew–the show had the stones, and it would all be ok. When the Red Wedding came we were even worse. Those of us who knew it was coming turned our cameras on the show watcher innocents and then posted their shock and horror to YouTube for our own grotesque enjoyment, and turned them into memes.

But this time, now one knew ahead. Even with the episode leaking 24 hours early, most never even saw that it had until after the 9pm airing. And for the first time we the book readers got to learn what it was like to live through a Red Wedding for ourselves.

Nairn gave us that moment. His performance allowed us to open our hearts to him and forget for a moment that he was as vulnerable as everyone else. One of the tricks that Game of Thrones pulls on the viewers, over and over again, is to lull us into a sense of complacency about certain characters, to make us forget once again that our favorite could die. Hodor’s survival was so ingrained that I actually read a spoiler the morning of the leak that said “Meera and Bran get away in a last minute down to the wire battle”….and I STILL didn’t realize that Hodor wouldn’t survive.

But that’s the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Narin’s two current EPs are available on iTunes for all of $7 for the pair. I highly recommend picking them up if you’re a fan of EDM, and I look forward to hitting the club the next time he tours the states.

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/05/25/curtain-call-kristian-nairn/