LOS ANGELES, CALIF. -- The pool of would-be rulers of Westeros got a little smaller on Sunday night’s “Game of Thrones.”
(SPOILER: This story contains plot details from “Game of Thrones,” Season 2, Episode 5.)
Continuing to prove that the only thing predictable in “GOT” is that no one is safe, Renly Baratheon became the show’s latest casualty after he was stabbed and murdered in his tent by a shadow in the shape of his older brother, Stannis Baratheon.
The incident was the conclusion to last week’s creepy cliffhanger where, the night before the two Baratheon brothers and their armies were to meet for battle in a field, Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) rowed Melisandre (Carice van Houten) to a cave, where she gave birth to a shadow.
British actor Gethin Anthony, who played Renly, knew his kingly character’s end was coming long before it was filmed, but he told Access he was “excited” when he first got the script. “I obviously knew through reading the books that it was gonna happen at some point, but I think when I first read it as an event, I was just kind of like ‘Wow! That’s kind of cool,’ ‘cause it kind of happens in such a way that you’re not really expecting it,” Gethin told AccessHollywood.com.
“Even if you’re a reader of the books, I feel like you don’t think it’s necessarily going to happen right at that moment. As a reader — I was just like ‘Ooh, wow!’ and excited and [I] was glad it was going to happen in a kind of cool way.” Filming the scene, which sees Renly cut down by the shadow, was a multi-day process, involving Gethin, Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark) and Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth).
