Thrones fans scheme of ways to kill a villain,
Game of Thrones fans dream up ways to dispatch the show’s uber-villain and be warned, they’re as bloodthirsty as the character
“I would quite like a dragon-related death.” IWAN RHEON WHO PLAYS RAMSAY BOLTON
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for Game of Thrones. The litany of crimes of Ramsay Bolton, the undisputed heavyweight champion of Game of Thrones’ uber-villain derby — and with such stinkers as Joffrey Baratheon also in the field, that’s saying something — reads like a shopping list of human depravity: rape, check; murder, check; torture (endless, gleeful torture), check; feeding a newborn to his dogs, check; dismemberment of a particular member of Theon Greyjoy’s anatomy, double check.
As much as a good villain gives viewers a target for their frustrations — desperately needed with a show that consistently denies them even meagre redemption, tormenting and murdering virtuous favourites with ruthless consistency — enough, finally, is enough.
For Ramsay, at last, the end appears nigh.
“That day is definitely coming, no mistake about it,” Iwan Rheon, the actor who brings Ramsay’s snivelling, wild-eyed wickedness to life, said in a TV interview last week.
There is, of course, no way to know when, with Game of Thrones plot details being guarded as closely as nuclear launch codes. But one question fans appear all too eager to answer for themselves is: How?
The standard reply would be an orgy of pain and violence, with misery stretched out over days and weeks. And even with a show that sadistically tortures viewers as much as the characters they love, there is precedent for the satisfaction of ghastly death for the wicked.
The show, knowing, perhaps, it had pushed too far with King Joffrey’s various offences, treated viewers to a spectacle of grisly, prolonged suffering when it offed him, via poison, on his wedding day.
But wouldn’t it be just like Game of
Thrones to have Ramsay die quickly and painlessly, maintaining the status-quo abusive relationship it has with its fans? (We come back every week, hoping it will be different; it’s not).
Rheon, of course, wouldn’t divulge any specifics, but he agreed he’d love to see his character meet a fittingly horrible end.
“I would quite like a dragon-related death,” he said.
(As for life after Thrones, Rheon is set: he’ll play a young Adolf Hitler in Adolf the
Artist, an apparently satirical British TV movie. “I’m typecast already!” he told the New York Times.)
Readers of the books will point out that no death has been crafted for Ramsay as of the most recent in the series, A Dance With Dragons.
The show, of course, drifted into uncharted waters this year, having exhausted all of George R.R. Martin’s novels, and is now making it up as it goes along.
That clears the path for an end to Ramsay and, among various fan sites, speculation has emerged in earnest. Here, a sampling of the blood lust from Ramsay’s legions of loathers. 1. E! Online has gone so far as to create a poll, asking readers to cast votes amid an array of gruesome deaths, such as “pounded into the ground by a giant” or “remember Viserys (Targaryen’s) golden crown?” (in which Daenerys’s big brother was killed by molten metal poured over his head) and “Golden codpiece!”
The results are scattershot, but the leading candidate is “Stabbed by Sansa/Jon as they say, ‘The Starks send their regards,’ ” with 17.6 per cent. 2. On Twitter, a user calling himself Jon Snow (not the actor, Kit Harington, but a fan) is holding an ongoing poll with some less-than-creative options.
The results, so far, are: flayed and burned alive (14 per cent); eaten by his own dogs (25 per cent); throat torn out by Ghost, Jon Snow’s direwolf (25 per cent); stabbed by Sansa/Jon (36 per cent). 3. There are predictables, with turnabout being fair play.
Ayear ago, Bustle.com began hoping for an end to Ramsay with a list of off-therack ends, including Theon, whom Ramsay mutilated and tortured into submission and renamed “Reek,” returning to Winterfell to torture Ramsay for weeks. Or Sansa Stark, seeking redemption for the rapes and beatings she endured, being given the chance to perform Theonlike surgery on Ramsay before doing him in. 4. The online forum A Song of Ice and Fire, established before the show was a fan hub for Martin’s books, began hoping for Ramsay’s end as long ago as 2012 (viewers are often reminded that these stories long predate the show itself, which means Ramsay’s reign of terror has been years longer for readers than for fans of the show). Many elaborate ends are described here, but the recurring motif seems to be “eaten alive by his girls,” which are his pack of bloodthirsty hounds.