Five seasons into Game of Thrones, a lot of characters have been cut from the source material, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Which one(s) are we still hoping might turn up in Season 6? Warning: potential SPOILERS ahead.
A note on the poll: it doesn’t include characters we know we’ll be seeing based on the Season 6 spoilers (for example, Euron Greyjoy), or characters the show seems to have definitively done away with (for example, Jeyne Westerling, whose stand-in has already died).
DAN: I think there’s a chance this one could actually happen: I’d love to see an appearance from Galazza Galare, the Green Grace of the Temple of the Graces in Meereen. True, we haven’t heard anything about an actress who matches the description for Galare being cast during the off-season, but it’s possible HBO managed to keep at least one secret. With Tyrion and Varys now in control of Meereen, they’re going to need support from the city’s establishment. As an important religious leader, Galare could fill that role.
I enjoyed Galare’s character in A Dance with Dragons. She was level-headed, wise, and still savvy enough to be a player in the game despite her advanced age. Plus, I think it would be good for the show to get a closer look at Meereenese culture. Right now, it exists as an abstraction, a scary mass that threatens to swallow Daenerys up or carry her to victory depending on which way the winds are blowing. I’m sure that’s at least party intentional—Daenerys may have spent most of her life in Essos, but she’s Westerosi at heart, so the culture of Slaver’s Bay will always be partly inscrutable to her. Putting a semi-friendly face on the culture could help bridge the gap.
Also, rumors persist among book-readers that Galare may the one pulling the strings of the Sons of the Harpy. Hizdahr zo Loraq was another popular candidate for that position, but his death in “The Dance of Dragons” at the hands of the Sons put that idea to bed. Is Galare behind the Harpy attacks? Is anyone? I don’t know, but introducing this character could give the show an opportunity to explore those questions, and give some actress a chance to bite into a juicy role while it’s at it.
LEXI: I’m STILL holding out hope for Lady Stoneheart. With the Riverlands storylines coming into play this season, it seems like now would be the perfect time for her to appear. If she does, I think it would go down as one of the big jaw-dropping moments for the show, especially if Michelle Fairley reprises her role.
Last summer, we featured an interview with members of the special effects team. I’ve always been intrigued by a quote from prosthetics supervisor Barrie Gower. He says, “For the last two years, we got to this one point and we read this one gag and thought ‘Oh my God, how the hell are we going to do that? But this is going to be incredible!’ And then it got pulled and we didn’t do it in Season 4. And then, lo and behold, in Season 5 there it was again. And it’s pulled again! But now, in Season 6, it looks like we’re going to do it. Fingers crossed they won’t chicken out.” Stoneheart would certainly need a lot of prosthetics help after her time in the river. Of course, he could be referring to someone or something else entirely. But it’s difficult to think of any other individual scenes that could organically fit into season 4, 5, or 6. A girl can dream!
CAMERON: At this point, if the casting news didn’t blow up the internet, it’s safe to assume we won’t be seeing them in Season 6—or if they are in the show, it’s in a far smaller capacity than the books. I’ve slowly adjusted to the way the show combines or deletes characters as befits its nefarious narrative ends, and we’ve already overshot the books in basically every major character’s story at this point. I guess since Bran is entering uncharted territory, we have a shot at Coldhands? But I plant that question mark firmly in the ground (uh, sentence) because I have little faith in any genuine surprises showing up this year or for the rest of the show’s run.
ANI: The continuing absence of “the Griffs” from the show concerns many book fans, I know. There’s a fear that the show’s leaving them out means that the entire detour we’ve been stuck on with Tyrion these many moons is all for naught, and they will be cut like so much Stoneheart. But I am not here to shill for Dragons, false or otherwise. Instead I am here to mourn the continuing absence of the other character on that journey: Penny.
I know, I hear everyone groaning. “But she’s so annoying!” Yes, but hear me out. Because though Penny is not the most sympathetic or likable character, she’s really important for Tyrion’s growth as a person.
Let’s rewind back to mid-Storm of Swords, or in the case of the show, Season 4, Episode 2, specifically the scene where a troupe of dwarf performers mock the War of the Five Kings. When the production was originally approached about doing that scene, Benioff and Weiss wanted to do it just like in the books—that is, they wanted to have the dwarves riding pigs. And though the scene is clearly supposed to distress everyone, from the Tyrells to Sansa, the person who feels the shock and horror the deepest is Tyrion. After all, he knows no dwarves in real life. His name, his family’s influence has kept him alive and living better than most dwarves of the day, but it’s also kept him isolated. He doesn’t actually know what it is to be a dwarf in the world of Westeros. He is horrified by these dwarves forced to ride pigs and perform for the laughter of others—to him it is an anathema. So it is only fitting in the ironic view of Martin’s world, that when Tyrion leaves all of that behind—the family, the name, the titles, the money, and the protection that all afforded—one of the companions he finds himself with is Penny, a dwarf who works as a comedic performer (she was actually one of the dwarves who performed at the wedding), and her pet pig.
For the first time, Tyrion is confronted with someone who is like him, and he discovers that all of those prejudices he’s had have been wrong. Working as a performer is actually the best life a dwarf can hope for in some ways. She teaches him to ride the pig so they can joust for the crowd’s amusement. Tyrion doesn’t have romantic feelings for Penny, at least as far as we can see. Instead, for the first time, he’s made friends with a women, something he’s never done before. All of this is very important for him to experience and learn before reaching Dany in Meereen.
But of course, the show cut all that and sent Tyrion directly to Dany, without passing go, seeing people die of the Pale Mare, entertaining people in the Meereenese fighting pits, or collecting membership in the Second Sons. But in doing so, they also cut Tyrion discovering what is it to be a dwarf in this world. And Dinklage’s Emmy winning-performance is the poorer for it.
Art by kethryn
RAZOR: I’m going to go a little outside the box and go with Big Bucket Wull. Hugo Wull is the clan chief of House Wull, from the mountain clans in the North that recognize the Starks as their liege lords. Some would say we’ve already lost our chance at seeing Big Bucket Wull, what with the death of Stannis at the end of Season 5. In the books, Wull and his clan follow Stannis as he marches on Winterfell, under the impression he will be saving the daughter of Ned Stark. In fact, he refers to her as “Ned’s little girl” and refers to R’hllor as “Red Rahloo.”
One of my absolute favorite lines from A Song of Ice and Fire is spoken by Big Bucket Wull:
I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter. Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned’s little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue.
That last part gives me hope that Big Bucket Wull and his fellow mountain clansmen will be part of Jon’s army, as they face Ramsay Bolton on the field of battle in what I am now calling Bastard Bowl 16′.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/01/15/small-council-what-as-yet-unseen-characters-from-the-books-do-you-hope-turn-up-in-season-6/
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