ElizaD

Etiquette question: would it be possible to discuss information freely in this thread without spoiler tags? I thought the Spoiler speculations thread was for posting confirmed spoilers, and this for general discussion of the adaptation including unconfirmed hints/guesses and spoilers. The conversation could get very choppy if set/cast reports and even unaired things from this season that have already been confirmed are in tags. I admit that I loved how the TWOP TV vs. Books thread worked, it was easy to read and everything could be posted and openly taken into consideration when talking about possible decisions (Character X is shown in Location A, could he be taking the place of Character Y) and confirmed stuff (Character Z is listed as appearing in episode 10, what does that say about the pacing of that plot). IIRC, before S3 a Tyrell cousin audition video used dialogue set after Margaery's arrest. The plot change in that new audition video is just so odd that I think it's possible the name has been changed and the character who goes to Dorne will be different on the show.

Roose is played by a good actor, but Ramsay is such a disappointment. He's just a cartoon villain and always an actor making faces, not a character who'd be genuinely unsettling in his sadism. It's disappointing after three seasons of watching Jack Gleeson make Joffrey's vicious glee look so natural. There's going to be such an unfortunate contrast between Tyrion parting with Bronn on friendly terms because his bro shouldn't be expected to risk his life fighting the Mountain and Tyrion killing Shae because she was captured and did what was necessary to save her own life (lied at the trial, had sex with Tywin). Book Tyrion wasn't even thinking of the lie, it was his sexual humiliation that made him kill her. When Show Tyrion does that, it's going to come out of nowhere because GOT has completely removed the capacity for cruelty and issues with women that made Shae's murder in character for Tyrion; I'm afraid it could come across even worse on TV than in the books where Tyrion wasn't expected to be a saint who automatically does the right thing, ending up as "of course the good guy snapped and killed his cheating ex, she deserved it."

GRRM: Those other HBO shows don't have GOT's huge cast, sets, props, battles and CGI. The showrunners have repeatedly said that 10 is all they have time for because GOT is such a complex production and they're working on stuff until an episode airs. If they did more episodes, they couldn't start airing a new season in the April slot. GRRM can think 10-episode seasons are unfortunate, but he doesn't need to wonder why that's the number. The season 5 scripts have now been written; the showrunners have decided whether they're currently aiming for 7 or 8 seasons. And GRRM is still talking about the movie idea that would give him more time to finish. Yeah, with TWOW taking 3 years and counting, they're going to put everything on hold to wait for ADOS. Now's the time to face facts, quit spinning and start working extra hard.

I would be happy if some combination of Arianne's and Cersei's Myrcella plots happened in the first half of S5 and then the Sand Snakes borrowed Littlefinger's teleporter so that Tyene could be there for Cersei's walk and Nymeria could join the council before Kevan's death. Manderly is so amazing that I'm going to be crushed if he's cut. Finally, someone does proper Shakespearean vengeance in style. If he dies in TWOW, he'll go out in a blaze of glory having dined on Freys. For GOT, that's shockingly uplifting. ... dammit, GRRM. I've yet to run into anyone who thought words are wind was deep or memorable in a non-Darkstar way. And it's an especially stupid phrase in a world where oaths are so important: they can be broken, but they still matter.

I love the contrast between the S2 finale and what might have been Sansa's final appearance in S4: in S2 Littlefinger tells her she's the worst liar in King's Landing, in S4 he looks proud in a creepy sort of way that she's become such a good actress. Speculation:

IMO, a lot of those positives are maybes (Dany meeting Tyrion hasn't happened yet, Stoneheart will threaten woobie Jaime and not just Freys), and even when something bad happens to the antagonists it tends to be the result of them being screwed over by a newbie rather than a former victim (I find Cersei's stupidity regarding the High Septon hilarious, but she hadn't done anything to him and continues to get away with the worst of her crimes). GOT will continue to be terribly depressing, even if seasons 3-4 have probably been the lowest points. This might happen. Rather like Mago dying to give Drogo his one and only chance to show how he earned his badass reputation, Grey Worm could die to show that Dany is finally facing tougher enemies. And it would really hurt since the Missandei scenes have established him as a sweetheart and her as someone who'd be crushed by his death.

I'd also say that Sansa has been like Odette, the sweet white swan, but now she's working with Littlefinger like Odile the black swan works with the evil sorcerer in Swan Lake. She's not doing it entirely of her own free will though, so the necklace looks like a heavy chain. But at least she gets to make her own dresses again, like at Winterfell. I really hope we get to hear the costume designer's thoughts about this new look.

Well, Sansa has certainly escaped King's Landing now. That look was quite Katniss + Sith Lord.

Sansa had a good but also unintentionally hilarious episode. Though there could be a S5 filler arc about visiting the lords of the Vale that includes character interactions and plot elements from her AFFC content, the revelation of her identity felt like a TWOW spoiler. They could easily have made the moon door her 4x10 scene, but instead they're moving terribly fast. Missandei/Grey Worm have sweet chemistry, but this episode's plot felt like it was inspired by the fact that Missandei hadn't been naked yet. Loved Indira Varma. That's love and horror (Lena Headey was such an unexpected disappointment during the PW).

I hate the Ironborn, but if I could choose I'd rather have all of them on the show than Aegon for these meta reasons: Dany is wasting her time with Essosi strawmen instead of proving her worth against formidable Westerosi enemies, while a disposable pretender gets to break the Lannister/Tyrell hold on King's Landing. Then Dany will probably roast this newbie "nephew" (no real kinslaying required) in Dance 2.0 and win the throne by more roasting of zombie masses, which is the kind of politics/moral problems-free epic fantasy that ASOIAF isn't supposed to be. I love epic, but not when it's done as dully as Dany's plot and suffers from a comparison with better-handled gritty fantasy in the same series.

Well, it is another opportunity for Lannister screentime and the demonstration of their "core family" status, of course the showrunners wouldn't say no to that. More seriously, if they are allowing flashbacks, they'd better start giving Bran visions: viewers don't need Maggy the Frog to believe that Cersei hates Margaery or that Jaime/Tyrion/whoever else the valonqar is could hate Cersei enough to kill her, but Bran needs some impressive, freaky stuff to do after two years of traveling. The Iron Bank is one of the plots where, IMO, a lot depends on what happens in TWOW: will it be easy to dismiss with "remember how Tycho gave Stannis the Bank's money and support in S4" or will it end up involving Arya somehow? They're including more Dorne than I expected. There might be more Ironborn than I expected (noooo!), if that comment floating around about Yara's escape from Ramsay coming back to haunt her is true. I really wonder how they could include a largely book-accurate version of Dorne/Ironborn/Aegon and finish with 7 seasons.

Katheryn Winnick's Instagram has a shot of Lagertha on the first day of filming S3, plus a look at her new armor and a fancy dress.

Thanks, this forum has more threads than TWOP used to. So in addition to casting, this will be the thread to post location news and S5 set reports once filming starts, then.

Is there any chance that the thread could be renamed to just Casting News and Speculation or something like that? It's already been confirmed that the show is getting a season 6 and some of the S5 stuff will hint at plans for the future, so I think a general thread would be more interesting than one that lasts this summer.

They can't take a hiatus because that would mean losing the huge cast and crew to other jobs and never finishing the series (IIRC, it's what killed Rome and Deadwood reunions; Spartacus did one prequel season with the same cast, crew and sets to give the lead actor a chance to recover from cancer but when his cancer returned they had to recast because they couldn't wait any longer, and that was a much smaller production). Even if HBO considered it, there's no guarantee that GRRM would keep whatever TWOW deadline they originally agreed to (and they'd still have to finish without ADOS). But 7 seasons of GOT, which is what the showrunners are talking about now, would mean finishing the rest of AFFC/ADWD in S5; if they later decide on 8 seasons, it's easier to stretch out the presumably eventful ending based on GRRM's outline than to spend season 5 and half of 6 on ADWD and then face having to finish it all in 1 1/2 seasons if something happens that means they can't go beyond 7 after all.

If they're mentioning it in the recap, maybe the reveal does happen in an earlier episode (if Jon Arryn is in the recap and Lysa refers to "the things I've done for you", that could be enough for the Unsullied to figure it out before the finale even if it isn't made explicit yet). But if it's only discussed in 4x05 and not repeated before Lysa's fall when Sansa is listening, that suggests that what Sansa heard about Jon in ASOS will not become relevant in the future. We didn't. Whether they include Val or a Val replacement could depend on how fast they want to get through ADWD (and that depends on whether they want to aim for seven or eight seasons right now as they're writing the S5 scripts); if Jon's assassination is the S5 cliffhanger, they could keep him busy enough with Stannis/Locke/pro- and anti-wildling NW men. I'm going to be very surprised if the little archer doesn't kill Ygritte.

Sansa with a braid in 4x05. It reminds me of Catelyn's braid when she threatened Littlefinger with a knife - very nice. It's been such a long time since the show has been to the Vale, I look forward to seeing the style of that setting now that GOT has a bigger budget and more experience with what it wants to do with its costumes.

Before the S4 premiere I was hoping that they would show some of Shae's perspective, the injustice and danger of her situation and not only Tyrion's, but after they had Tyrion send her away in a non-book addition that makes him look squeaky clean and sets things up for Shae to blamed for staying/being captured and bitterly testifying against the man who broke up with her, I don't think it's going to happen. The show removed all of Sansa's role in her escape, making her look more passive and ignorant than in the books, presumably so that Littlefinger can make a shock reappearance in 4x03 (IMO, Joffrey's death would have been enough of a shock twist and Sansa's escape plan would have added tension to the mostly comic wedding feast): that makes me think they might not show Shae until she testifies in 4x06 or 4x07 and then she's next seen in Tywin's bed (there was a trailer shot that must be from that scene). Overall, after three seasons I have the impression that the show isn't very interested in moral complexity beyond the basic idea of "it's alright if good people do bad things, they have to, and actually it's not that bad but cool, mature and edgy." So Arya killing a man in 4x01 was a badass moment rather than something more complicated (though he got the death sentence he deserved for murdering a child, Arya's pleasure in the act was a sign of her trauma and not a purely uplifting counter to Tywin's destruction of the Stark sword). In the same way I expect Tyrion's killing of Shae and Tywin to be triumphant, with some "poor Tyrion, he's suffering (but he made them pay and life goes on)" rather than "damn, this is awful, Tyrion is heading down a dark path." I feel that the show is less of a drama or a character study than the books and more of a comic book movie or soap opera that delivers excitement, twists and larger than life heroes doing big things, and sometimes that really frustrates me, no matter how much I love the soap elements when they're done well (Cersei and Margaery's different orders about the food, for example).

And her hair too. When Sansa was friendly with Margaery she had a more casual hairstyle. For her forced marriage to Tyrion and the Lannister triumph of Joffrey's wedding she had the big Cersei hairdo with braids. When she was mourning her family in 4x01, her hair resembled Catelyn's. Now that she's escaped and hopefully has more control over her wardrobe, my guess is that she might have a general style like Catelyn's: simple hairdos with some practical touches, blues/grays but perhaps in darker shades than in Sansa's season 1 Stark-style clothes when she was an innocent child. As great as the costume porn is, I think I prefer the hairstyles. I've seen stills of the embroidery and costume articles discussing the details etc. but much of that work is so small that it never shows up onscreen. Until I saw a comparison post, I never picked up on the differences in most of Margaery's blue dresses because they were so minor (her astronaut dress in season 2, as ridiculous as it was, at least had a look that didn't get lost on the small screen). The same goes for most of Cersei's red and Sansa's purple dresses; Sansa's Purple Wedding dress didn't stand out as more expensive/elaborate than her usual look, at least Cersei had the big necklace, in both cases it was the hairdos and extra braids that showed the most effort and glamor for the special occasion. And I had no idea the pattern on Dany's season 3 blue dresses was meant to be dragonscales that get bigger because the second dress looked so much like the first, simpler version. So I agree with the opinion that the costumes can sometimes be too detailed for TV and that different cuts and outlines would add more immediately recognizable variety. That's why I really liked Ellaria's wedding dress: the fabric moved so freely, instantly setting her apart from Margaery in her similarly cleavage-baring but tighter dresses, and the chain hairnet stood out. It's going to be so strange when Arya finally gets to change her outfit.

IMO, all the changes to Shae have been so that Tyrion will look better. In the books, it's a sad relationship because it should be pretty obvious to the reader that Shae is a shallow, petty person (her indifference to Lollys' rape and the planned marriage to Sansa, for example) and that Tyrion is deluding himself about her nature; he also mistreats her, wanting sex and affection but ultimately taking away the nice things Shae had received as her payment for doing her job and making her work in the keep despite the risk. On the show, Shae hasn't been universally beloved by fans but she's still been portrayed as being genuinely in love with Tyrion and as a compassionate person who wants to protect Sansa. So Tyrion being in love with a woman like that is understandable and not a sign of his issues and character flaws at all. But now they've come to the season in which he needs to kill Shae, so they must undo Shae's previous character development (I expect all her scenes with Sansa will turn out to have been completely meaningless and her testimony will be all "a woman scorned"). Unlike the selfish Book Tyrion, Show Tyrion nobly sacrifices his happiness by trying to send Shae away for her own good. Which will lead to her transformation into a jealous bitch who lies about him at the trial for plain cruel revenge (unlike Book Shae, who was always just Tyrion's prostitute with no more obligation than fan favorite Bronn to sacrifice herself for her employer once the money and the prospects stopped looking good). TV Shae will look like she deserved her death for not appreciating what this perfect gentleman did to protect her. She will get even more of the blame than Book Shae did (I've already seen "why was she stupid enough to want to stay?" in various places, and expect it to be joined by "how could she be so vindictive?" after she testifies) and when Tyrion murders her for hurting his feelings the majority of the audience will cheer. On TV, it'll be about poor Tyrion and how the bitch had it coming. In the books, it was about how Tyrion had been screwed up by Tywin and the Tysha lie to the point where he wanted love but couldn't deal with a real woman with a mind of her own (on one occasion Tyrion actually hit Shae when he didn't like her sass and questions, and he gets terribly bitter when Sansa keeps on not wanting him - for all his own smarts he wants his women to be merry dolls, not intellectual challenges), so that Shae's murder was the tragic but logical conclusion to his misogyny and increasing anger at his powerlessness and sense of not being appreciated.

Yes, the preview shows them escaping (Sansa has the same cloak as in a couple of trailer shots). Turner and Gillen also filmed in Iceland so I think they'll visit the Fingers before arriving in Vale for the wedding in Mockingbird.

Guide: "E (as ea in Tea) v (as v in victory) ah (as are). This is the best English language pronunciation that still comes close to the scandinavian. The I should never be pronounced Ay, as the scandinavian I is pronounced ee or ea as in Tee or Tea." I think I read an interview with Katheryn Winnick where she said she wanted her name to be Laa-gertha instead of La-gertha so that it wouldn't sound like Bertha.

Rhaegar + Elia led to one Dornish (Rhaenys) and one Targaryen-looking child (Aegon). Prince Baelor also had a Dornish mother and dark hair; IIRC, his brother (Egg's father) and Egg had Targaryen coloring but I only read the first Dunk and Egg short story and can't remember the old Targaryens that well. I've seen it mentioned in Aegon Blackfyre speculation that Lys, where Illyrio's wife was from, is supposed to have people with pale hair and purple eyes. I doubt I'd remember it otherwise, the non-Braavos Free Cities are a blur to me.

Does anyone know if there's a list somewhere about which actors have read the books? I hope it will at least be revealed that

Based on released information Hizdahr appears in episode 3 (perhaps as the person who arranges the duel with the Meereenese warrior that Daario will fight as her champion?), Dany crucifies Meereenese in episode 4, and the father of the child Drogon eats appears in either episode 8 or 10 (my personal guess is 8 so that Dany is absent for 9, the Wall episode, and locks up her dragons and banishes Jorah in 10 after she's had offscreen time to seriously consider what to do). If they move fast and ruthlessly in establishing her problems with her dragons and the Sons of the Harpy this season and speed up Tyrion's journey from Illyrio to Meereen, it just might be possible to have the Battle of Meereen in season 5.