Rickon had to die, because he was a trueborn male Stark. It showed him to be a formidable and smart foe. The death of Rickon was actually a great piece of character building from Ramsay, because it made sense. Let's look at two scenes from last week's episode. Ramsay was never, ever able to walk past a puppy without kicking it Many of this season's best episodes took place without mentioning the little shit once, and they were better for it. If another scene where Tyrion repeats that he's good at talking and drinking is annoying, another scene where Ramsay delights in his own sadism is hard to stomach at this point. In the case of Ramsay Bolton that meant we needed to be told, and then shown, over and over, that he is a villain. I've spoken before about how neither the show nor the books have any need for brevity, and in fact both are richly rewarded for dragging things out as long as possible. It rubbed our noses in every terrible deed. But Roose's inability to instill the same restraint in his son led to his own death.Īnd the show was complicit in the one-note nature of the character.

His father, Roose Bolton, seemed to have more ambition than honor, but he was always a man who seemed to understand how fear and dread could be used as scalpels instead of hammers. Sure, he was born a bastard into a family whose sigil is a flayed man, and he may have been raised in a place called the Dreadfort. His need to be as vile as possible in every situation hurt him in many ways through the show's run.

He was a man who took an ungodly amount of pleasure in torture, both physical and psychological. He wasn't just someone who enjoyed hurting others. I've spent the past few hours digging through the history of Ramsay as a character, focusing on how he was portrayed on the show, and I have yet to find anything that really justifies his existence. I went with Jaime in this case because, while he's still alive, his existence is part of what I'd like to talk about. But that runs the risk of making your story seem old and out of date. Or perhaps you choose an image of a character who has been dead a long time, as I doubt anyone would call Joffrey's death a spoiler at this point. You want to pick someone who isn't actually dead, in order to avoid the appearance of a spoiler. It can be tricky to pick the top image for a Game of Thrones story with the word 'killing' or 'death' in the headline. Check out all of Polygon's Game of Thrones coverage. This article is intended for folks who are caught up with Game of Thrones, and will include a description of its events up to and including the most recent episode.

Game of thrones flayed man