You Win Or You Die: Ranking the 99 Game of Thrones Deaths

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Alliser Thorne and Olly

From the start, Alliser Thorne and Jon didn’t get off on the right foot. Their relationship didn’t improve the slightest bit, either. In Season 1,Thorne’s mocking comments go a step too far and Jon draws his sword on him. “You’ll hang for this, bastard,” Thorne promises. Five years later, Thorne is the one hanging after drawing his sword on Jon and stabbing him to death. To be fair, you never expect that your boss is going to pull a Jesus after you’ve killed him. That’s something straight out of Horrible Bosses.

Thorne was too much of an obstacle to continue on to the end of the series. And with Jon leaving the Night’s Watch, there was no sense in keeping Thorne alive, especially after he committed such a heinous mutiny.

Olly, however, was a bit more surprising. A large subset of the fandom jumped aboard the “F*ck Olly” train. But we have to acknowledge that Olly was a child who had watched his parents and village brutally murdered by wildlings. He couldn’t understand Jon’s alliance with the wildlings, and he was vulnerable enough that Thorne managed to sink his claws in him. If anything, Olly was the product of some intense emotional manipulation. “F*ck Alliser” would have been a far more appropriate slogan.

Still, Olly’s treason couldn’t go unpunished any more than Thorne’s. It further demonstrates that Jon is a different man following his resurrection. He is jaded, less likely to believe in honor and altruism. Now, he has to roll with the punches, whatever they may be, even if that means hanging a boy. Olly’s prevailing stinkeye goes to show that he didn’t regret Jon’s murder any more than Thorne did. All the same, I for one could have done without the lingering camera shot on the kid’s lifeless face.