Normally, when a character dies on Game of Thrones, we write up a Curtain Call summarizing their time on the show, and giving credit to the actor who played them. At the end of “The Dragon and the Wolf,” the Game of Thrones season 7 finale, a couple of characters looked like they might have died: Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) and Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju). They were on top of the Wall when the Night King, riding Zombie Viserion, took out a huge chunk of it. Do we need to memorialize them?
Probably not. As dire as Beric and Tormund’s situation was, we didn’t see either of them actually die onscreen, which is a giveaway that they’re probably okay, improbable as that seems. Also, both Dormer and Hivju have danced around the question in interviews. You’d think that, if the characters were really dead, the actors wouldn’t have trouble saying so.
But on the off-chance that these characters really are gone, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give them and the actors who play them their due. Call it an intermission.
Richard Dormer
Although Richard Dormer didn’t appear on Game of Thrones until season 3, we actually first saw Beric in season 1’s “A Golden Crown,” when Ned Stark ordered the young knight to ride to Gregor Clegane’s keep and arrest the Mountain for treason and murder. Beric, then played by David Michael Scott, rode off to do his duty. The next time we saw him, he’d been killed (and brought back to life) several times, and was now played by Dormer.
Hailing from Northern Ireland, Dormer is a self-made actor. In addition to performing, he’s also a playwright and screenwriter, and generated buzz for himself in 2003 when he wrote and starred in Hurricane, a play about Northern Irish snooker player Alex Higgins. (For those who have no idea what that is, snooker is like pool…but it’s not pool.) He chased with several more self-penned plays, as well as prominent roles in plays not Much Ado About Nothing and Private Lives. From there, he started getting roles in TV and films, including in a little show called Game of Thrones.
Like Dormer, Beric is a self-starter. Rather than be cowed by death, he decided to use it as a learning opportunity, and put together a group of well-meaning outlaws who looked out for the little people of the Riverlands while the high lords fought their wars. But his multiple resurrections (courtesy of his friend Thoros of Myr, who calls on the power of the Lord of Light to bring his friend back from the dead) come at a price: each time Beric dies, he loses some of his memories, and another piece of himself. All he knows now is that he’s been given multiple chances at life for a reason, and he’s getting a pretty good idea of what that reason might be.
Dormer is excellent in the role: study, wistful, and robust. Beric is a haunted man, and Dormer brings that to bear with his rich voice, easy demeanor, and resigned stare. Once you’ve been to the other side and back six times, the day-to-day worries of the living mean less than they used to, so Beric is not easily flappable.
That said, Beric seemed to gain confidence in this most recent year of Game of Thrones, after it became to him clear that death, in the form of the Night King and his army, is the real enemy he has to face and the reason he’s been brought back from the edge so many times. A lot of this soul-searching happens beneath the surface, and comes out only in Dormer’s half-smiles and wizened looks. (The makeup and prop people help a lot, too, by outfitting Beric with grim souvenirs from his many deaths.) Beric is a man with a mission, and Dormer is just the kind of dependable actor to see his journey through to the end. But did the end already come?
We’ll find out for sure in season 8. In the meantime, fans can see Dormer in the lead role of as Detective Chief Inspector Gabriel Markham in Rellick on BBC One, where he once again plays a man with a disfigured face. That’s the thing about appearing on Game of Thrones: it’ll make it easier for you to nab roles, but there’s a good chance they’ll bear at least some superficial similarity to the one everyone knows you for.
Kristofer Hivju
Like Dormer, Norwegian actor Kristofer first appeared in season 3. As the rough-and-tumble wildling leader Tormund Giantsbane, Hivju was instantly imposing, so much so that Jon Snow mistook Tormund for the King Beyond the Wall at their first meeting, and knelt like an idiot.
Tormund spent a lot of time with Jon over the next season and change, alternating between feats of badassery (climbing the Wall) and buffoonery (demonstrating proper love-making technique on a satchel). It was a winning combination, and fans warmed to Tormund as a likable character who was also dangerous, as when he and his wildling band massacred Olly’s village south of the Wall in season 4. Tormund’s stock really began to rise when, after his wildling force was defeated at the Battle of Castle Black, he begrudgingly joined Jon on a mission to Hardhome to convince the surviving wildlings to come south. Suddenly, Tormund and Jon Snow were on the same side, and when the army of the dead attacked the settlement, fans realized how scared they were to lose him.
And when Tormund started making moon eyes at Brienne of Tarth in season 6, he officially went from entertaining tertiary character to fan favorite.
Before Thrones, Hivju got gigs here and there in movies like After Earth and the 2010 version of The Thing, not to mention parts in Norwegian productions. After Thrones, he was able to book a lot more work, including as a villain in The Fate of the Furious and a starring role in the Norwegian drama The Last King, However, as with Dormer, some of those roles bore a lot of resemblance to his part on Thrones. In The Last King, for example, he plays a warrior tasked with protecting the infant king of Norway from usurpers who want the throne for themselves. It’s like Game of Thrones, but with fewer dragons and more skiing.
But Hivju is nothing if not a good sport, and always looks like he’s enjoying himself, on Thrones and elsewhere. As Tormund, he gets to show off his comedic chops, his dramatic range, and his athleticism, as Tormund is often in the thick of the show’s biggest fight scenes. At this point, he looms pretty large in the imagination of the fans, so it’s hard to believe that Game of Thrones would kill him off with so little fanfare.
My personal opinion: Tormund and Beric survived. The last time we see them, they’re running atop the Wall and staring, open-mouthed, as a section of it falls out in front of them, taking several Night’s Watchmen with it. But we don’t see them go down. Smart money has them having made it to the section of the Wall that didn’t collapse.
But at the end of the day, nothing is certain. Until Game of Thrones season 8 begins, we hope Hivju and Dormer enjoy their intermission.
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