Warning: This article contains spoilers.
Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) exacts a terrible revenge in the season finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
His murder of his father, Lannister patriarch Tywin (Charles Dance) — with Joffrey’s (Jack Gleeson) crossbow — literally casts the family adrift.
“People may be devastated” over the loss of Tywin, Lena Headey, the actress who plays the cunning Cersei, Tyrion’s older sister, tells The Post. Tywin’s departure is bound to have a seismic impact on the show. “He’s so formidable, Charles. I think he’ll be severely missed,” Headey says.
“It’s a turning point,” agrees Alex Graves, who directed the episode. “You go into the finale somewhat recovered from the death of Joffrey. Cersei has almost absolute power. Tywin’s standing on top of the mountain. Everything that happens in the finale is a tectonic shift.”
Tyrion’s bold move came just weeks after he stood trial for Joffrey’s murder, was found guilty and was sentenced to death following a trial by combat between Prince Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) and the Mountain (Hafthor Julius Bjornsson). Although Tyrion appeared doomed following Oberyn’s death, he makes a stunning prison escape with help from his older brother, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).
Once Tyrion is a free man, Jaime leads him through the tunnels under King’s Landing and directs him to a path that leads to a boat that will take him away.
“He has the chance to escape without hurting anybody,” says Graves. But when Jaime leaves, Tyrion goes in the opposite direction — and comes up through a trapdoor into Tywin’s bedchamber. Instead of finding him there, he discovers Shae (Sibel Kekilli), the lover who testified during the trial that Tyrion killed Joffrey.
“The Shae testimony is what pushes him over the edge into immoderate behavior,” executive producer D.B. Weiss has said.
Wounded by her betrayal, Tyrion, who is the heart and soul of this “Game,” feels nothing but rage when he sees Shae. He attacks her.
“What happened in the rehearsal was, I asked Peter if he could fall off the bed,” says Graves. “As he does, he pulls the necklace Shae is wearing so hard that he strangles her. We did one take where he didn’t react. He didn’t have to look at her to know she’s gone. She’s upside down in the bed and he says, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
After finishing off the duplicitous vixen, Tyrion next goes looking for his daddy. In a bit of cruel irony, he is on a different throne — the privy. When Tywin grasps Tyrion’s intent, he pleads for mercy. “I never would have let them execute you,” he says.
“Tywin’s very vulnerable,” Graves says. “When we rehearsed the scene and Peter opened the door and Charles was there, it was really dramatic. To see Tywin stuck there and exposed like that, it worked really well.”
Tyrion shoots his father twice. “Peter had to shoot and crank the bolt into the crossbow to reload. It’s a long process,” Graves says. “He didn’t hurry. He methodically reloaded it.”Her focus is really on Tyrion. She looks [at him] and she sees all the bad s–t there. If she hurts him, she feels better. It’s childish, brutal and sadistic.
- Lena Headley, on Cersei's enduring hatred of her brother Tyrion
Shortly thereafter, Varys (Conleth Hill) helps Tyrion escape, boxing him in a crate and sailing away with him. Obviously, neither man can stay in Westeros.
Headey, for one, says Cersei would be floored that Tyrion was able to pull off such a brazen act of murder. “We don’t see her reaction [in the finale]. That’s yet to come. I think it’s incredibly shocking for her.”
Though readers of the George R.R. Martin novels knew what was coming, fans of the HBO series are blown away by the ending (even if producers have hinted that a big death was in store). Tyrion has taken a lot of abuse this season, and not only from his father, who has despised him since birth for being deformed and for causing the death of his beloved wife, Joanna.
Tyrion had no illusions about his standing in the family and, ever defiant, he proclaimed at his own trial, “I’m guilty of being a dwarf. I’ve been on trial for that my entire life.”
“I think if Tyrion has a tragic flaw it’s maybe [that] he sometimes lets his distaste for hypocrisy get in the way of his good sense,” Weiss has said.
The finale then concludes one of the most significant Season 4 story lines: the festering hatred among the Lannisters, and in particular the lifelong enmity felt by Cersei towards Tyrion. She has long believed that he fulfills a prophecy she was given as a child — that he will be her downfall.
“She has the prophecy given to her and it’s about her children dying as well,” Headey says. “She’s a creature of absolute denial and paranoia. She’s about to really crumble. That’s why her focus is really on Tyrion. She looks [at him] and she sees all the bad s–t there. If she hurts him, she feels better. It’s childish, brutal and sadistic.”
Cersei was “awful to him when they were children,” Headey adds. “She holds him responsible for the death of her mother. He’s just her point of hatred.”
With Tywin out of the picture and Tyrion en route to somewhere else, the future of the Lannisters is very iffy. “The kind of dark gloom that held them together is now gone,” says Headey.
“Cersei is going to have a life with her son, Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman), and she will try to get Margaery (Natalie Dormer) on her side.”
Season 5 begins production next month and Headey is Belfast-bound, though she has yet to receive any scripts. “I look forward to seeing if I’m alive,” she says. “Who knows how long I’ll last? Nobody is safe.”
She fully expects that next season Cersei is going to crack up. “She has had a slight descent into madness,” Headey says.
We know from the books that Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) faces a new life on the island of Braavos, where she sells seashells under another identity, and that Tyrion mingles with the White Walkers, who are in disguise as ordinary human beings. And one character who appeared in Book 3, Lady Stoneheart, a zombie Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), hasn’t shown up. Perhaps she will when the show returns to HBO in 2015.
“Game of Thrones” producers have a way of mingling events from the five books, making the television show seem out-of-sequence. But they do it so they can have a story that’s all their own. Graves knows what happens next season, and the two scheduled seasons after that, but he’s not talking. After directing some of the most intense episodes of this season, he’s going on sabbatical. All he’ll say is “the show keeps getting better and better.”