Bloody good fun
Expect chilling climax in ‘Game of Thrones’ season finale
EVEN “GAME OF THRONES” star Alfie Allen, who plays the despicable Theon Greyjoy, has no idea how Sunday’s season finale of the HBO hit series will turn out. After all, it’s a show where the main hero was beheaded in the first season. And to play a trick on its young star, show-runners David Bienoff and D.B. Weiss sent Allen a fake script for the finale. “They kind of added a scene where Bran jumps out and stabs me in the chest and says, ‘This is my Winterfell, not yours,’ ” says Allen. “And [the instruction] goes, ‘Theon lies on the floor dead.’
“I think after about two or three weeks the guys I was shooting with said, ‘Guys, you should call him up and tell him it’s a joke because he might be sitting there torturing himself, pulling his hair out.’”
Spoiler alert — that particular death scene doesn’t happen.
But fans of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” saga — on which “Game of Thrones” is based — know no one is safe in the fantasy series.
Expect instead to see Jon Snow (Kit Harington) get in deeper with the wildings, Theon struggle to hold on to Winterfell, Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage) fate after getting struck in the face with a sword and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) wade into the evil sorcerers’ House of the Undying to free her stolen baby dragons.
If that means nothing to you, where have you been for the past two seasons?
The show has averaged 10.4 million viewers a week and has been strong enough on Sundays to drive Don Draper to drink. It has consistently beaten AMC’s critical darling “Mad Men” in the ratings every one of its 10 weeks this season.
That’s because, despite the dragons, the show is more Shakespeare than Tolkien.
“People love a good story and the minute you start bringing in orcs and ogres and mythical animals into the mix that’s going to turn off a lot of mainstream viewers,” says Pete Dougherty, 50, a die-hard fan from West Caldwell, N.J. “But if it’s normal people, even in period clothes, beating the crap out of each other and battling for power, that’s very relatable.”
Also expect at least one graphic death — or one even more graphic love scene. Allen says he works out hard to keep in shape for his nude scenes, but that he tries not to think about his proud mother watching her son on television every week.
“There was a graphic lesbian scene in season 1 and I had to get out of the room because my mom was there,” says Allen. “I was like, ‘Oh God, I can’t watch this while you’re here.’
“I haven’t talked to her about my scenes, and I never will.”