Helen Sloan/HBO(LOS ANGELES) — SPOILER ALERT: Game of Thrones took it to a new level Sunday night with one of the most shocking episodes to date.
Stannis Baratheon, who is fighting to take the Iron Throne, actually allowed his daughter, Shireen, to be burned alive at the urging of Melisandre, while he and his wife watched in horror. The goal was to sacrifice Royal Blood and turn the tide on his struggling military campaign.
Showrunner Dan Weiss spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the unsettling episode.
“Horrible things happening to people in this show, and this is one that we thought was entirely [narratively] justified,” Weiss said. “It was set up by the predicament that Stannis was in. It will be awful to see, but it’s supposed to be awful.”
Weiss said he understands how viewers could be horrified.
“If a superhero knocks over a building and there are 5,000 people in the building that we can presume are now dead, does it matter? Because they’re not people we know. But if one dog we like gets run over by a car, it’s the worst thing we’ve ever seen. I totally understand where that visceral reaction comes from. I have that same reaction,” he explained. “There’s also something sh***y about that. So instead of saying, ‘How could you do this to somebody you know and care about?’ maybe when it’s happening to somebody we don’t know so well, maybe then it should hit us all a bit harder.”
Weiss added that to Stannis, magic works and this episode gives the audience a peek into the mindset of why a father would do this to his child.
“I can’t really get my head around how those people operate in our world, as they’re so completely disconnected from the way I process the world,” he said. “So in a strange way, fantasy is a cockeyed window into the heads of people who would do something terrible for an irrational reason.”
Game of Thrones airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern on HBO.
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