Razor’s Rant: The Stark in Winterfell

Warning: This is an article written from the perspective of a book reader. Unsullied, considered yourself warned.

We’ve reached the halfway point of Season 5 of Game of Thrones, and the one issue that has stuck out like a giant’s sore thumb is that the show has all but left behind the source material from A Song of Ice and Fire. Sure, the events unfolding this season have a smattering of book material sprinkled over each episode, but it would seem that loads of book characters, plotlines, and locations have been discarded for the sake of streamlining the season for its 10-episode run.

This week’s rant, unlike last week’s (and the week before that, and the week before that), is not a complaint about these diverging storylines, but rather a compliment on how well showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have renegotiated some of the meandering plotlines from A Dance With Dragons. The best example of their success is Sansa’s story, because as we all know, there must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

As Episode 5 began, I must admit that I was watching with trepidation. I was not happy with how Ser Barristan’s story ended in “Sons of the Harpy,” and I did not think that “Kill the Boy” would be any better…I was wrong. From the outset, “Kill the Boy” brought the heat (pardon my intentionally terrible pun), with Dany feeding her dragons, and the episode continued to gain steam with that awkward Bolton family dinner and Jon and Maester Aemon’s heart-to-heart talk, before ending with an awe-inspiring scene featuring Drogon and the stone men.

But this isn’t a recap, so let’s get into the divergences that I liked. In A Dance with Dragons, the Lannisters pass off Sansa’s friend Jeyne Poole as Arya and marry her off to Ramsay Snow in a bid to consolidate the North. On the show, Jeyne has only been seen once, in the very first episode. For Benioff and Weiss to re-introduce her now would have been ludicrous. It makes perfect sense to sub in Sansa.

Think for a moment: where is Sansa in Dance? In the Vale doing nothing, that’s where. Why not do away with a character who has little to no value as a plot device and raise the stakes at Winterfell by having Sansa, who has been trained by Littlefinger as a master manipulator, cause a little chaos in the Bolton’s stronghold? Jeyne Poole was a simpering ninny who had to be saved by Reek, of all people, while Sansa is much stronger. I can easily see Sansa, in her new dark persona, pitting Roose against Ramsay in a fight that may very well see the end of one or both characters, all while baking baking up some tasty Fat Walda Frey pies in the meantime…oh come on, you know you want to see that.

Sansa makes perfect sense as the Stark in Winterfell, and if Littlefinger has his way, she could become the Wardeness of the North, a title that she cannot hope to achieve in the books, at least not yet. In that regard, the show has gone to acceptable lengths to set up Sansa’s rise to power by having the little old lady constantly remind her that “The North remembers” and to “Light a candle in the tallest tower,” as well as by introducing the inn-keeper who interacted with Brienne and Pod—that guy’s clearly still a Stark loyalist.

Also, it pays to remember that Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is not about the good guys winning. On the show, the villains who engineered the Red Wedding have had ZERO comeuppance…there’s not even a Lady Stoneheart around to hang Freys. It seems like every time the show endears us to a character or a group of characters, they are yanked away from us and we are denied retribution. Look at what happened to Oberyn Martell. His death scene was adapted almost exactly as it was written in the books, yet his daughters the Sand Snakes have done nothing to exact revenge (yet), and no skull supposedly belonging to Gregor Clegane has been delivered to Doran Martell. To loosely quote the Stones, we just can’t get no satisfaction.

This is why bringing a Stark back to Winterfell could be so rewarding. I firmly believe that we are on track to see Sansa exact some tasty revenge, and I think we will see it soon. Instead of a castle full of Freys and Boltons, we’ve only got Boltons plus one Frey…but we do have a particularly nasty piece of work in Myranda. Episode 5 seemed to perfectly set up a rivalry of sorts between Sansa and the kennel master’s daughter. It would be a fitting end for Myranda and Ramsay/Roose/Walda Frey if Sansa took revenge for House Stark’s demise by taking them down. And if it all ended with Sansa being named Wardeness of the North, the revenge would be all the sweeter.

You see, this is the type of streamlining that I can get behind, and as a book purist, support. As was mentioned in Episode 5, the road to King’s Landing and by extension the Iron Throne goes straight through Winterfell, and between Stannis, Sansa, and Brienne, it appears as though we may finally see the good guys win. And that, my friends, would be extremely satisfactory.

Hi, my name is Razor, and I’m a happy book purist.

• Published on 05/15/2015 at 4:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 05/15/2015 at 4:30 PM CDT