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

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Osha, Rickon Stark, and Shaggydog

I didn’t expect to see any of these ones go. For how famously loyal the North is supposed to be, the Umbers sure spit in the face of their sworn oath when they handed Osha and Rickon off to Ramsay. At the time, my own naivete had me convinced that this all some plot to to undermine the Boltons. That wasn’t really Shaggydog’s head, but rather a decoy. And there was no way that Osha would die at Ramsay’s hand. She was too wild, too fierce, and too protective to let Rickon down without a fight.

Alas, my hopefulness came to nothing. Osha’s cleverness worked on Theon back in Season 2, but couldn’t save her from Ramsay. He got his thrills from the kill more than any sexual conquest. And even Sansa knew Rickon was lost to them when she and Jon are presented with Shaggydog’s head.

For all that talk about how Rickon should have run serpentine, by that point I’d accepted the inevitable as well. Ramsay wouldn’t have let Rickon go if he didn’t know he could make the shot. He was never so careless with his toys, and that’s all Rickon was to him. But watching that boy fall—no matter how little we’d seen of him before—was like that arrow hit me right in my own heart.

The Starks have suffered enough. But now they’re home—or heading there—and winter is here. Time to shine, my little snowflakes.