The Dead Casting Rumor That Will Not Die

It feels like clockwork at this point. Once a month, someone, somewhere, decides, yet again, to dredge up a certain debunked rumor about a certain character whom everyone is the production insists is not happening. And yet, the more they insist, the more a certain segment of fans believe.

We’ve discussed the need to believe before, and how it springs from the need for the things we read in A Feast For Crows to have mattered. But no matter how much the producers are tired of the subject, it still keeps coming up. And then, almost like it were trying to troll us, we get a screenshot from Dish network describing next week’s episode, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” and a cast list that begins thusly:

ALL THE WARNINGS AND ALL THE SPOILERS AND SO FORTH.

Oh dear. That is….a misprint? A typo? Sitting next to a picture from Season 1, it could easily be a mistake, an import from an earlier season.

Or it could be that rumors about Michelle Fairley filming a “secret scene” in Ireland are in fact true. It could mean that those images of a Catelyn Stark head tweeted at us last fall are correct. It could mean that the IMDb casting list (which, we should all note, disappeared about a week after the hysteria it caused) wasn’t kidding. Lena Headey might have meant something with this picture. It could mean that Lady Stoneheart is coming.

Or is she? There’s another explanation, you know. One that might explain why Michelle Fairley filmed a secret scene this season. I’m talking about Fairley appearing as Lady Catelyn Stark. Sansa is in Winterfell, after all. She’s in a stressful situation. She could dream of her mother. She could have a flashback to her childhood. She could stand in a doorway that once led to Bran’s room, and see her mother sitting by the fire, sewing. She could herself be sewing a gown, look up, and see her mother’s face smiling down, remembering her in the way Myranda suggested remembering her.

Or Brienne could step outside the Inn next week, and have a random run-in with Stoneheart. One of these is plausible and makes sense given the way the season is going—the other would be massively left field.

What I’m saying is there are other explanations. And right now, with the way the story is going, and with Brienne needing to rescue Sansa when she lights that candle in the highest window of the broken tower in a few week’s time, we won’t have time for zombie revenge. It would be highly inconvenient for Lady Stoneheart to punish Brienne for her failings right now, especially since it would put her daughter’s safety in jeopardy.

• Published on 05/11/2015 at 1:25 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT