This article contains a discussion of sexual assault.
A lot of people die on “Game of Thrones.” No, really; the Washington Post actually tracked all of the show’s deaths and figured out that 6,887 characters, both named and unnamed, perish throughout the HBO series (which is based on George R.R. Martin’s equally bloody novel series “A Song of Ice and Fire”). Apparently, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss played favorites just a bit when it came to their 8-season series that massacred heroes and villains in equal measure (and, true to the saying, some of those heroes lived long enough to see themselves become the villain and whatnot). In a March 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter to promote their Netflix series “3 Body Problem,” Benioff and Weiss said there were two characters they just loved killing: Jack Gleeson’s King Joffrey Baratheon and Iwan Rheon’s dastardly bastard-turned-heir Ramsay Bolton.
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“With Thrones, there was so much killing of good guys,” Weiss said when asked about his favorite on-screen kills, “and we finally got to really kill both Joffrey in season four and Ramsay Bolton in season six. It was fun to go back to the old-fashioned joys of just killing off a really bad guy. … It felt like it was balancing the scales a little.”
Benioff then took up the mantle and honed in on Ramsay’s death, which takes place at the end of the season 6 showstopper the Battle of the Bastards (more on that shortly). “For me, at the end of Battle of Bastards, when Sophie [Turner, who plays Ramsay’s captive wife Sansa Stark] sticks the hounds on the Bastard, she doesn’t walk away,” Benioff clarified. “You don’t really see the death. You see some of it in the background, but you don’t really see the death. But what you do see is Sophie or Sansa’s smile. It was just that feeling of — that’s so epic. Sophie was so good. When she got that shot, I felt like I can now die happy.”
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Joffrey Baratheon got murdered at his own wedding – and it was super-satisfying
It’s an understatement to say that King Joffrey Baratheon, first of his name, was an abominable and abhorrent little twerp who absolutely deserved a gruesome and vicious death (which he got). Introduced in the show’s very first season and played to perfection by Jack Gleeson, Joffrey is just an irredeemable jerk, a quality that goes overlooked by Sansa as she fantasizes about marrying the prince (she even calls him “handsome,” which is, no offense to Gleeson at the time, a stretch). That all changes when, at the end of season 1, Joffrey honors his bride-to-be by chopping off her father Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) head for treason — and Ned’s crime was correctly pointing out that Joffrey isn’t the biological son of the late King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), but is the love child of Robert’s queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and her twin brother Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Joffrey ultimately decides that Sansa is a traitor by blood and breaks off their engagement in season 2, choosing the shrewd and diplomatic Lady Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) from Highgarden as his new future queen.
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Aside from Sansa, Joffrey delights in torturing his uncle Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), so when his wedding day comes in the season 4 episode “The Lion and the Rose,” he takes that up a notch by bullying Tyrion throughout the entire reception. From platforming a show performed by dwarves — Tyrion is referred to as the “Imp” and the “Half-man,” and neither is a compliment — to yelling at his uncle to pour wine, Joffrey is behaving terribly … until he starts choking to death on a bite of pigeon pie and dies with blood streaming out of his nose (and in his mother’s lap). Joffrey points the finger at Tyrion in his final moments, but unbeknownst to everybody, Margaery’s grandmother Lady Olenna Tyrell (the late, great Diana Rigg) was behind Joffrey’s murder, aided and abetted by Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aiden Gillen), who spirits Sansa away as the dust settles.
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Ramsay Bolton gets the horrifically brutal death he deserves in season 6 of Game of Thrones
Poor Sansa (another understatement). After Littlefinger gets her out of King’s Landing in the wake of Joffrey’s death — which is good, because she’s a suspect along with her new husband Tyrion, having been married off to him after Joffrey disposed of her — she thinks she can settle at the Eyrie with her aunt Lysa Arryn (Kate Dickie). She’s wrong! Littlefinger has another idea, and before she can get comfortable, he arranges a marriage between Sansa and Ramsay Bolton, the recently legitimized bastard of House Bolton, in the show’s fifth season. Ramsay, as it happens, has recently claimed Winterfell — Sansa’s childhood home! — for House Bolton, so she returns back to the castle where she was raised, albeit under deeply horrifying circumstances.
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Ramsay sexually assaults Sansa on their wedding night (while Alfie Allen’s Theon Greyjoy, House Stark ward turned Ramsay’s prisoner, watches from a corner), and things do not improve from there, to put it lightly. Sansa continues suffering rampant abuse at Ramsay’s hands until, in the season 5 finale, she and Theon escape Winterfell. They’re both rescued by Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), who swore to Sansa’s late mother that she would protect Sansa and her sister Arya (Maisie Williams), and they all go to Castle Black to reunite with Sansa’s (assumed) half-brother Jon Snow (Kit Harington).
The Battle of the Bastards earns its name because Jon leads one army and Ramsay leads the other; ultimately, Jon triumphs (with the help of Littlefinger’s army, summoned by Sansa). Jon beats Ramsay senseless but leaves him for Sansa, who chains him up in the bowels of the castle and feeds him to his hungry hounds. It’s a fitting ending for such a horrible villain, so it makes sense that Ramsey — and Joffrey, for that matter — are David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ favorite “Game of Thrones” deaths.
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“Game of Thrones” is streaming on Max now.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).