Ranking The 20 Deaths of Game of Thrones Season 5

8. Karsi

Karsi, we hardly knew ye. It’s a rare character that arrives part way into an episodes only to be killed off within the hour, and yet leave such a mark. So it was with Karsi. “Hardhome” was an amazing episode for many reasons, from the first vision of man’s oncoming battle with the White Walkers, to the understanding that THIS is what the Starks meant when they said “Winter Is Coming.”

But Karsi gave it heart. She was a single wildling mother with two children. She got her kids on the boat, because she’d be damned if she would risk their lives, yet she was willing to stay behind and ensure that they would escape from the oncoming wight hoards. She had no idea how bad the battle would be. Her shock and horror as she saw those White Walker children coming for her was as terrible as it was heartbreaking—almost as heartbreaking as seeing her eyes reopen, now blue, now dead, now coming for her own.