Goat wrote:
Whatever you think about Stannis the character, Stephen Dillane puts in some of the best work I've ever seen from him. Remarkable actor. Watching Mother's Mercy right now.
Dillane is tremendous in everything he is in, which makes me all the sadder that D&D decided to butcher Stannis and (probably) kill him off, when the most likely course for him in book 6 is to win the battle of Winterfell and die heroically late in the book against the White Walker invasion after sacrificing his daughter (and not fulfilling the Azor Azhai prophecy) to stop them from destroying the North.
That is how Stannis would sacrifice his heir, to stop the Others from destroying the world, not to make the snows melt a little.
It is either that, or the Boltons win the battle and he dies hundreds of miles away from his family, thus
not sacrificing his daughter. Mel thus burns Shireen to raise Jon at the Wall. It can't be both.
Back to his performance, I loved Stephen's menacing movements towards Mel after the bad news starts rolling in (you knew if she didn't hightail it out of camp then she was a dead woman), his 'fuck it' reaction to the massive army coming his way, just his general acceptance of the worst day possible. One thing the show has gotten right has been some excellent casting decisions, and Dillane might be my favorite of all.
It was a good thing that Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, and Stannis Baratheon all never met on screen, because the sheer combined gravitas of the actors might have generated a black hole.