Unfortunately, Game of Thrones left a lot of loose ends and poor storylines in its final season. The way the HBO Original ended just did not leave a good taste in a lot of fan’s mouths. However, if things had gone more in the showrunners’ way, there might have been another loose end. And that was of Rickon Stark.
How the showrunners almost wrote off Rickon Stark
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, George RR Martin the author of Game of Thrones gave some insight as to how the HBO ran the show. One of the major changes revolves around Rickon Stark, played by Art Parkinson. Rickon was Ned Stark’s youngest child with Catelyn. Too young, in fact. In season 3, Rickon escaped Winterfell with the willing girl Osha, who protected him from the grim Ramsay Snow. However, he was not heard of again on the show until season 6. If things had gone David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s way, we may never have heard from him again.
In the interview, Martin told James Hibberd that David and Dan were ready to write out Rickon from the show. He said:
“The biggest thing was Dan and David called me up and had the idea of eliminating Rickon, the youngest of the Stark children, because he didn’t do much in the first book. I said I had important plans for him, so they kept him.”
And so, David and Dan were forced to bring Rickon Stark back on the show. However, the way he was brought back did seem very half-hearted.
Parkinson did not get a single line of dialogue, even though Rickon was much older now. Instead, they opted for Ramsay Bolton to use a Stark child as a simple bait to make a fool out of Jon Snow in the Battle of the Bastards. It was more of a cameo instead of a performance by Rickon.
Where is he in the books?
In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, however, Rickon is rumored to still be with Osha on the Island of Skagos. What’s interesting is that Skagos is famous for it’s inhabitants being canibals. And even though he has his direwolf Shaggydog with him, it’ll be more worthwhile to see how George R.R. Martin handles Rickon Stark’s storyline. But for that, we’ll have to wait for te holy grail itself – Winds of Winter.
