Game of Thrones: Here's Why Lady Stoneheart Never Showed Up
If you’re a fan of HBO’s Game of Thrones who hasn’t read the George R.R. Martin novels on which the show is based, you probably never expected to see Catelyn Stark appear onscreen again after her shocking death in Season 3.
But if you have devoured Martin’s books, you likely wondered why Lady Stoneheart — a silent, revenge-driven version of Catelyn who is brought back from the dead and first appears in A Storm of Swords — never showed up in any of the TV show’s eight seasons.
Now, more than a year after Thrones‘ series finale, co-creators/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are finally revealing why they chose not to incorporate Lady Stoneheart into the popular drama.
In Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, the upcoming book about the series, written by Entertainment Weekly‘s James Hibberd, Benioff says. “There was never really much debate” about bringing Lady Stoneheart into the mix.
He and Weiss outline their decision to skip the character, for whom many fans clamored, citing: discussions with Martin about what he has planned for her in future novels (in A Feast for Crows, she is heavily involved in Jaime and Brienne’s storyline), an unwillingness to pack too many back-from-the-dead moments into the narrative (“Too many resurrections start to diminish the impact of characters dying,” Benioff points out) and a desire to let the Red Wedding stand as the gut-punch that it was.
“Catelyn’s last moment was so fantastic, and Michelle [Fairley] is such a great actress, to bring her back as a zombie who doesn’t speak felt like diminishing returns,” Benioff says.
Are you mad that Lady Stoneheart never showed her angry face during the HBO series’ run? Log your vote in the poll below, then sound off in the comments!
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