Game of Thrones season 7: ‘The end of’ Melisandre’s ‘journey’ might just be upon us
Carice van Houten may have hinted to Game of Thrones fans that it might be time to prepare to say goodbye to Melisandre, but is it just a tease?
Our sister site, Winter is Coming, has found a fresh interview with Carice van Houten in the Los Angeles Times. It’s pretty short and sweet (she’s currently filming a movie with none other than Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, so she’s keeping busy).
WiC breaks down some of the other quotes, but in our read-through of both pieces, one quote stood out to us.
Here’s what it is. Like the rest of the interview, it isn’t long:
"“As you know, I don’t know anything [about what will happen to Melisandre]. I wish I did. But I, personally, think she is a little bit going towards the end of her journey.”"
This workaround comes right out of the Coster-Waldau playbook. During the off-season, we noted he had said something quite similar, albeit not in relation to Jaime Lannister dying. Maybe she’s getting notes on set?
As the Times notes both in the introduction and the interview itself, Melisandre has two key problems standing between her and living through the series, though the article doesn’t state outright that this is a case for her to die so much as it’s just re-summarizing the key parts of her character arc throughout the series.
First, she’s actually quite old. Second, and perhaps more important, she has a long list of things she’s done that could likely qualify her for a death sentence, and people who can testify to at least some of those things to, say, Daenerys Targaryen.
Davos Seaworth, for one, would have a lot to say about her. She might have brought Jon Snow back because of his urging, but Davos hasn’t forgiven her for Shireen. Additionally, he and Brienne of Tarth could build a very nice circumstantial case for Renly Baratheon’s death as well. He saw her bring the shadow into the world; Brienne saw the results.
Perhaps the deepest irony would be for Melisandre to die via dragon fire. (It’s probably too cruel for Daenerys to do right now, but we’ll see how Westeros changes her.) It’s actually doubly fitting, story-wise. On the basic level, we all know about how Melisandre uses fire to kill. On a second level, dragons are perhaps even more magical than the red woman herself.
Right now, we’ll stand firm in our prediction that Melisandre will help mediate the episode 3 meeting, because she’s not in the North and so Jon Snow really can’t execute her based on his season 6 actions. But he can tell Daenerys about some of the things she’s done and back up Davos.
Next: GoT season 7: 5 predictions for episode 3
Admittedly, van Houten does not answer the Times‘ question about whether or not she remains at Dragonstone. That’s not tantamount to a yes, but it is a somewhat telling non-answer, just like the above quote about approaching the end of her “journey”.