Note from the author: doing a second, bonus scene from the dramatically loaded “Mother’s Mercy” was always on the drawing board, to help make up for the fact that only eight episodes would have been tackled otherwise (nine being the standard), but its existence is made all the more meaningful given the large amount of time that has transpired between the fifth season finale’s airing and now. All that can be said is that both articles, individually, are the longest Anatomy of a Throne to date, and I hope this certainly helps to make amends for the long delay – and the possibility that this column may not be returning for Game of Thrones’s final seasons.
Please to enjoy.
HBO’s Game of Thrones (typically, and before this current season) brandishes a consistent and high degree of fidelity to the nearly 5,000-page-long source material of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, but there still, of course, are differences. While most of these gaps from the page to the screen are small and detail-oriented, it is nonetheless the case that the most subtle discrepancies often hold the biggest insight into the adaptation process, into the demands of filmmaking, and into the rigors of the literary narrative.
This, then, is the anatomy of a key scene of Thrones – not because of its dramatic importance or visual effects whizbangery, but because of the telling nature of its realization.
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