By Petr Navovy | Game of Thrones | February 7, 2017 |
By Petr Navovy | Game of Thrones | February 7, 2017 |
In the oh-so-expansive character gallery of Game Of Thrones, everyone will have their favorite, or six. Whether it’s the more obvious choices like Dany and her conqueror’s arc; Tyrion and his wit wisdom and wine; Cersei with her strangely relatable malevolence; or the slightly more niche personas like Margaery and her mastery of the political chessboard; Varys’ unfathomably methodical scheming; or Brienne and her—well, Brienne-ness.
Or, you know, this:
We can just take that as read, I think.
But aside from that, I’ve often held that it’s Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane who may be my personal favorite. And not just because of that chicken scene. From the moment he first appeared I knew there was something special about him. Ostensibly not much more than a wall of terrifying muscle, you could nevertheless still sense the subtle, deeply buried layers of nuance underneath that gruff, flame-scarred exterior. And sure enough as the show went on this would expanded upon and explored to a wonderful degree. There is something about The Hound’s journey thus far that makes him perhaps the single most compelling character in the entire Game Of Thrones universe. His is a path of redemption, but not the hackneyed one that we have seen a thousand times over; it does not feel the need to hit all of the required beats at the specified pace to fulfill the trope, rather it moves exactly in accordance with the character, providing no easy answers or obviously discernible lines between black and white. I’ve long struggled to put into words for myself why exactly The Hound has been so damn enthralling to watch, but luckily things like this video exist, which—well, which are pretty much perfect, and that do the job that words sometimes can’t. Check it out:
Game Of Thrones—and The Hound—returns to us sometime in the summer months.
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Petr Knava lives in London and plays music