Game of Thrones directors reveal the one time they changed their mind about killing a character

Not that he lasted for too long afterwards, mind.

The death of major characters is normally a massive deal in most TV shows, but it’s such a common occurrence in Game of Thrones that you can barely walk down the street in Westeros without the fear of meeting your maker, more often than not in a pretty gruesome manner too. So high is the death count in Game of Thrones that we imagine it doesn’t cost show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff much thought when they have to wield the axe on another of the show’s stars, but they have changed their minds on the mortality of a character in the past. According to Business Insider, speaking at SXSW in Austin, Texas over the weekend, Weiss and Benioff revealed that they decided to spare the life of one character back in the third season of the show. Locke, played by Noah Taylor, Ramsay Bolton’s best hunter and the man who chopped off the sword hand of Jaime Lannister, was supposed to have been thrown into a bear pit at Harrenhal by the Kingslayer to meet what would have been a pretty messy death. So impressed were Weiss and Benioff by Taylor’s performances as Locke, however, that they decided to keep him on the show for a little while longer, with Jaime rescuing Brienne of Tarth from the bear pit rather than chucking Locke into it. "He (Locke) had a death scene in season three," Weiss told an audience at SXSW. "Nikolaj (Coster-Waldau, the actor who plays Jamie Lannister) was going to throw Noah Taylor's character into the bear pit." Describing Taylor as “too good” in the role of Locke, Weiss it was decided that he should remain alive. "We decided after working with Noah, he should stay on," he added. Taylor did remain in the role until Season Four, when he was brutally (is there any other way in Game of Thrones?) killed off by Bran Stark, who had warged into Hodor, who broke Locke’s neck. Proof that in Game of Thrones, mercy, if it exists at all, is fleeting at best, something Ed Sheeran will have to bear in mind ahead of his upcoming cameo appearance.