The biggest news out of the Game of Thrones Comic-Con panel? Khal Drogo came back from the dead! Well, not really, but actor Jason Momoa, who played the departed Dothraki warlord, made a surprise appearance, striding out from backstage after the cast was already seated to give Emilia Clarke – who plays his widow, mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen – a kiss before disappearing as quickly as he came.
“My sun and stars!” exclaimed Clarke. And the crowd went wild.
There wasn’t much in the way of announcements at the panel, but there were plenty of wonderful moments with the cast and creators, including discussion of potential novel prequels, deleted scenes, and of course, the Red Wedding. Spoilers for the Game of Thrones television show follow.
The panel opened with a supercut of deaths from the throughout the series, with Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye” playing in the background (see below). It was a rather emotional experience, and the crowd had the saddest reaction to the death of Ros, a character created specifically for the show who was unceremoniously killed off in Season 3, but cheered when it came time for the loathsome Viserys to receive his “golden crown.”
“I have many characters, so killing a few–there’s always more,” joked George R. R. Martin, the author of the original novels. “And I should say in my defense that [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] have turned everything up to eleven and killed many characters who are still alive in the books. So I’ll only take some of the bloodthirsty blame here.”
The infamous Red Wedding scene, which claimed the lives of several beloved characters, including Catelyn and Robb Stark, was a primary topic of discussion.
“When we wrapped the Red Wedding [episode] I remember hugging Michelle [Fairley] and Richard [Madden],” said showrunner D.B. Weiss. “They’re playing fictional characters, but it was the last time we were going to work with them. We have a tough crew of [Irish men], and they were crying, the crew was crying on set. I’d never seen that at before.”
And the people in the crew weren’t the only ones. “I sat and cried all the way home, and rows of people were looking at me,” said Madden about his plane ride after shooting the episode.
Michelle Fairley described the way she approached the emotional devastation of the scene as “like a piece of music; you have to work your way through it.” She mentioned the subtle, ominous moment where the festive wedding takes a turn, as the musicians begin to play the vengeful Lannister song “The Rains of Castamere.” “There was a key change in the music and it was like somebody walked over your grave.”
Benioff also praised “the incredible self-policing” of fans who had read the novels, noting that with the exception of occasional “douches on message boards,” the fandom takes great care to protect the uninitiated from spoilers and the Red Wedding remained a surprise to most of the television audience. “That millions of people knew about the Red Wedding before it aired and so much of the audience was in the dark makes us so grateful.”
Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion, discussed the fraught and occasionally cruel scenes between Tywin Lannister and his son. “Every time we have one of those scenes Charles [Dance] gives me a nice little shoulder rub after each take to make sure we still love one another,” said Tyrion actor Peter Dinklage. “I find the scenes fascinating because [Tywin] is so frustrated with Tyrion, because his three children–Jaime, Cersei and myself–are three different parts of a whole, and they’re not in the right person. They each lack what the other has.”
They also screened a deleted scene from Season 3, where Pycelle approaches Tywin after the Lannister pater familias returns to Kings Landing, and asks to be restored to the Small Council after being stripped of his position by Tyrion. After reducing Pycelle to stuttering and mumbling, Tywin calls him out on his facade of incompetence: “Am I the only one to see through this performance?”
It’s something we’ve seen hinted at before, but never spelled out so explicitly, and when actor Julian Glover draws himself up and shifts into Pycelle’s true form, it’s like watching a completely different character appear. Pycelle explains that he maintains his bumbling exterior because in the political circles of King’s Landing there are “so many flowers, each wanting to grow the tallest, bloom the brightest. Then sooner or later they all get plucked. I don’t want to be the tallest or the brightest, I simply want to remain in the garden until I return to the dirt.”
At the very end of the panel, a fan asked if Martin would consider writing any Game of Thrones prequels, and the author wisely noted that he still has a great deal to write simply to complete the Song of Ice and Fire novel series, particularly given the infamous waits between books and how quickly the HBO show is catching up to the novels. “The locomotive is coming down the tracks behind me, and I haven’t yet laid down the tracks.”
Still, Martin said he’d consider writing more stories in Westeros at some point, though not about Robert’s Rebellion, since that period in time has already been covered so frequently in flashbacks.
“I might go back further and write something about Aegon [I] and his sisters, or Aegon [IV] the Unworthy–a true scumbag of a king with his nine mistresses.”
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