It’s somehow been more than seven years since Game of Thrones aired its polarizing series finale. Most fans have long since moved on to other obsessions, such as not sincerely waiting for George R.R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter to come out, or griping about the latest spinoff finale. But for Bella Ramsey, who portrayed the ever-confident Lyanna Mormont, 2026 was apparently the right time to actually start watching the HBO fantasy epic. Better late than never, I suppose.
Plenty of actors have spoken out about not feeling comfortable watching projects they’ve starred in, but Game of Thrones focused on so many different characters that it seems like a good choice for such actors. Whether or not that’s the case for Ramsey is unclear, but the actress certainly did not enjoy watching her Last of Us co-star Pedro Pascal’s final scene as the Red Viper, Oberyn Martell. Not so much out of awkwardness, but out of terror at watching the character’s skull get thumbed and squished like a grape in Season 4’s eighth episode.
Speaking with Hits Radio UK in a video shared to TikTok, the actress makes it sound like they’ve been on a pretty steady binge that took a whiplash-inducing turn for Pascal’s vengeful protagonist. As they put it:
You know, I’ve just started watching Game of Thrones. So I’m like, up to Season 5, and I’ve just seen Pedro’s head get that…that made me feel slightly nauseous. I don’t know whether it was worse because I know him. It actually gave me a physical reaction.
I wonder how Bella Ramsey would feel if they knew that battle's eye-gouging, face-collapsing climax was supposed to be even more brutal. In rewatching the scene myself, the visuals are obviously nasty, but it's absolutely Pascal's tortured screams and wails that still make me fidget in my seat. No matter how much gnarlier and bloodier it'd get, that still wouldn't top the desperate fear in the audio.
The performance was such that Ramsey had to reaffirm that fiction and reality are separate things, and that what happened to the Viper did not carry over into the actor's real life. They continued:
And I know it’s not real. I worked with [him], I know him, but it felt like… Yeah, that was pretty awful. . . . It’s horrendous.
Was it more or less horrendous than what happened to Pedro Pascal's character on The Last of Us? That is a debate for another time. And maybe not even a debate. And now I'm thinking about what it would look like if Westeros was overrun by the Cordyceps outbreak, and it looks kinda fun. Is there a comic book crossover to get out of this?
As gruesome as it was, Oberyn’s death was necessary for Pedro Pascal’s career to thrive, otherwise we might not have properly gotten him in Narcos, The Fantastic Four, or even The Last of Us. So I guess we should all send thank you notes to The Mountain's head-smooshing hands, no?
The entirety of Game of Thrones can be streamed via HBO Max subscription.
