A lot of people died on HBO’s Game of Thrones, but which deaths were the favorite of creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via EW), Weiss said it was the death of villainous characters that he was particularly fond of.
He said the show killed so many good guys early on, with Sean Bean’s Ned Stark famously getting his head lopped off before the end of the first season. Later on, though, came Weiss’ favorite deaths: Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and Ramsay (Iwan Rheon).
“We finally got to really kill both Joffrey in season 4 and Ramsay Bolton in season 6. It was fun to go back to the old-fashioned joys of just killing off a really bad guy,” he said. His death felt like it was “balancing the scales a little,” Weiss said as it relates to good guys vs. bad guys getting whacked.
Benioff said the scene is particularly powerful because instead of showing the hounds mauling Ramsay up close, the viewer sees the reaction of Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner)–which is a smile. As viewers no doubt recall, Ramsay rapes Sansa on their wedding night.
“It was all in one shot, and we did it seven times or something… She nailed it on the seventh or eighth time, and it was just that feeling of–that’s so epic. Sophie was so good. When she got that shot, I felt like I can now die happy,” Benioff said of Ramsay’s death.
Joffrey, meanwhile, was a similarly awful person and many viewers were eagerly awaiting his comeuppance. It finally came in Season 4, with Joffrey being poisoned.
Weiss and Benioff are now working with Netflix on a variety of projects, including the recently released 3 Body Problem. As for the Game of Thrones series, the main show is over, but the spinoff House of the Dragon comes back this June.