Winter is Coming has rustled up some set pics from the currently-filming fifth season of Game of Thrones, and they include our first long, long, maybe a little too long, look at Alexander “Dr. Bashir” Siddig as Prince Doran, along with other Dorne characters and set pieces.
The pics also include a VERY surprising character showing up in Dorne, in a marked departure from the A Feast For Crows storyline. Spoilers at the bottom of the post. (Don’t worry, we’ll mark it again so you’re not accidentally spoiled.)
Here’s the full shot of Siddig as Doran.
Annnnd basically there’s next year’s cosplay hit.
We also get a full shot of Indira Varma as Ellaria Sand on the super comfortable-looking Dorne set.
And here she is talking to DeObia Oparei as Areo Hotah.
MAJOR SEASON 5 SPOILERS AHEAD.
Let’s just give folks a little spoiler space.
Almost there.
Okay!
Hey there, Jaime Lannister. What are you doing here? This isn’t really the kingdom you were supposed to be heading towards, is it? (For those unaware, in the book Jaime is sent to the riverlands to mop up the chaos caused by Robb’s armies and eventual defeat.) Dorne is a loooong way away from that.
What makes this all the more intriguing is that these set pictures are from episode 9, typically the episode that features the climax for the Westeros-based plots for the season. Additional reports from this filming also show that Jaime arrives with Bronn and both are unnannounced, catching Princess Myrcella and Prince Trystane during a moment of intimacy.
Jaime’s presence offers up a bunch of new questions for the Dorne-based events coming up. Will Jaime have a hand (wonh wonh) in thwarting the Dorne-ish plot to make Myrcella queen? Or is it his presence that reveals the plots in the first place? And did Cersei send him to Myrcella or does he go there of his own accord?
WTF, Jaime in Dorne??????
Indira Varma is doing her best DrunkCersei impression in that shot.
Nice flip flops Doran.
Jaime in Dorne, HHHHHHMMMMMMM
@1, I imagine Cersei sends him on that boat she was showing to Oberyn.
Hmm, so he goes to Dorn to attempt to get Myrcella back then you think?
It doesnt seem a leap actually as the Riverlands are pretty much done for in the TV series and they do like to merge stories with main characters but maybe it’s something else.
I don’t mind Jaime going to Dorne to go after Myrcella, but it makes me wonder how they’re going to change Brienne’s arc from the second half of AFFC.
First those flip flops Siddig are wearing TOTALLY appropriate for Dorne cosplay right? Right.
Second, gosh I forgot how much I missed him on TV
(no one is to ever mention that show Atlantis are we clear?).Third, Jamie looks great in Dorne wear! Of course he looks pretty good in pretty much anything sooo…
@5, It seems as if we are eliding the entire Lady Stoneheart plot, so perhaps Brienne will roam a bit more, meet Septon Meribald, and then start moving towards where the book has her go(my guess is to meet Howland Reed in the Neck, then the Wall)
Hah, wasn’t expecting Jamie! Dang that man is too handsome for his own good.
The casting is amazing. I think Siddig looks like a good Doran, though I always pictured him slightly more plump. Not fat, just… he sits around all day and has gout, so I just pictured him more swollen than thin.
Unlike some others I don’t think that straying from the books is in and of itself a bad thing, and I don’t think it’s going into fan-fic territory either. Sure a lot of the new/updated plots probably feel that way just because they’re more action- or drama-laden, but that’s natural for a TV show.
This does make me wonder what in the heck Jamie will be getting up to though. Myrcella sounds like a reasonable guess, though I think it will change Jamie a lot if he’s still running errands for Cersei, instead of trying to prove himself keeping to his word to Catelyn. Though I understand the show would have a hard time articulating(showing) the inner struggles that Jamie goes through, so *shrug*.
All I can hope is that this isn’t as disappointing as Jon and the NW storyline was last season. So much epic fail on that one.
It’s the law of conservvation of characters in action, and it could be a great chioce depending on how it plays out. It’s better to have a familiar character introduce you to a new setting instead of throwing the viewer into an alien environment with characters you don’t care about yet.
I’ve actually made this exact criticism about FFC – our introduction to Dorne came first from a character renowned for his dullness, followed by a redshirt – neither of whom we’d ever met before.
Of course, a similar decision in S3 (replacing Edric Storm with Gendry to save on characters) started out extremely promising, but ended up kind of silly because the writers didn’t think through the implications of the change.
I just hope we don’t get Arianne seducing Jaime. That would just make no sense whatsoever.
I just hope we don’t get Arianne seducing Jaime. That would just make no sense whatsoever.
I agree, but so far, it doesn’t seem like there is going to BE an Arrianne.
10. IndependentGeorge
I agree with you about Dorne. I still think it’s one of the few errors that Martin has made, was how he handled the introduction. I know there are others who don’t feel that way (including you, Aeryl), but I’m pretty much okay with anything that spices up the Dornish side of the story to make it more interesting.
Maybe Jaime’s going to get killed in S5.
@11 True I don’t think there’s been mention of her – but it seems like excluding her would screw up the ending? I mean, she was sort of getting important by the end of book 5, no? There have been mention of some of the sand snakes already, so I just really don’t see how they could replace Arianne with anyone and have it make sense, seeing as she’s the heir and all.
I’m going to go with, they’re holding back on revealing her.
Also please please please don’t let Jamie be the one seduced. But now that you mention it, I have a strong feeling that’s where it’ll be going…
I read about Jaime going to Dorne on the TV show months ago on the Westeros website so the first thing I did after seeing this picture was to text my brother and say “I told you so”, lol.
This is just one more reason that makes me unsure of whether or not I will watch the show next season. I already cancelled my subscription to HBO shortly after GoT ended last season.
IMO the show does feel like it has gone off into fanfic territory. GoT is at its worst, again IMO, when it diverges from the books. Well that and when it inserts sex into a scene just to have sex in the scene.
So Jaime will be taking Arys’ role, perhaps?
#14: Arianne is cut, that’s clear at this point. Not only have all other Dornish characters (minus Quentyn, who is also obviously cut) been cast, were announced at the Comic Con together, and have been present at the shooting locations, but Trystane was described in the HBO press material as Doran’s heir.
As to why – the explanation that seems most obvious to me, if not the only logical one (since I don’t think that Arianne is going to be killed off early in TWOW and play no important role, despite all the setup), is this: the show is cutting fAegon and his entire subplot (to simplify the storyline, since they want to finish the show in 7 seasons, don’t want complicated backstories such as the Blackfyres, and may be wary of the audience getting fed up with characters being revealed, falsely o rightly, as lost Targaryen descendants); and since Arianne seems poised to have an arc closely tied to fAegon, she’s getting cut, too.
#16: There will be no Arys’ role, since there’s no Arianne. (And even if there were, Jaime as Arys would make no sense at all.)
@7 There is a Resurrected Cat but she is on an ABC show called Resurrection.
Alexander Siddig is looking even more fabulous than he did as Bashir, and that’s saying something!
@17, That makes the most sense. Of course they could be holding her back for later, and her plot is to usurp the Dornish throne instead of claiming her right. Who the hell knows.
It’s been awhile since I saw the ep where Mycella left, but she did take a KG with her, IIRC, so there would be no need. I can think of lots of other interesting things for Jaime to do in Dorne(like Ellaria Sand?), in addition, Tyrion momentarily thinks of going to Dorne to use Myrcella, so it’s not completely unlikely that rumor or inuendo of Tyrion’s whereabouts send him there.
These pics are apparently from the 9th episode, so it looks like events in Dorne will be important to the climax.
This makes me fear for the life of Bronn… as Areo Hotah has to kill someone of worth, and it certainly won’t be Jamie, and it doesn’t seem like Bronn is going to have too much of a role in the later books aside from a few mentions. Thus he seems expendable and is now in a storyline where someone rescuing Mycella needs to die. Unless they do away with the whole Mycella plotline and change it completely but I’d still think Areo Hotah needs to kill someone of worth to build his character up to it’s proper level.
Why do you say it certainly won’t be Jaime? That’s exactly what I’m starting to suspect. In lieu of Arys, Jaime is going to try to get Myrcella back, and will get killed by Areo.
I said this on Tor’s FB page, but it bears repeating here too. We, as book readers, have to now accept that the show and books are two different stories. They are creating two different cannons and parallel stories. So we should stop being surprised when the show goes off in its own direction. When GRRM finally gets around to releasing WoW and ADoS, we can see the alternative ending. Then debate who did it better. Because they are different stories now, and only intersect at key points. Have any of you seen the story about the flashback for season 5? What I find the most interesting / enlightening part of the article is a translated quote:
Why did they want to remove half the magic from this story filed with magic? It also explains a number of items that have been left out over the last four years.
@23, Well that bums me, because that tells me what happens in WoW with Lady S.
Sorry everyone for the formatting issues in @23. Tor.com is trying to fix these issues for me, but it takes time.
I did not mean to make it one long run on paragraph.
@25, why? No reason show-Jaime can’t die in S5, and still live a long and happy life in the books.
You know nothing, Aeryl Snow. : )
Siddig’s costume is great (and @6 you can see him grinding his teeth through some of his scenes in Atlantis, I swear), but Hotah is dressed completely the wrong way for a captain of the guard. He looks like Varys, how does anyone take him seriously.
I think the entire TV version is an abomination, personally, and don’t give it air time in my house. From the often baffling casting (ie, Jorah Mormont played by a 60 yr old ginger is a good example,) to the near endless plot and character trimmings, I find myself too repulsed to watch. The worst cutting done though, IMO, is to the dialogue. I laughed often and heartily reading the books, and only derisively at the TV show. Where are all the stinging lines from Littlefinger? Where has the brutal learning curve for Sansa gone? Eliminating Dontos really crushed that humourous plot twist.
Never mind Jaime in Dorne; ask instead, why me, on my couch, watching this crap?
#29: Iain Glen is 53. I agree that he was miscast, but not because of his hair color or age (he was just a few years older than his character, as opposed to some other cast members who are 15 or even 20 years older than their book characters), but because he is a very handsome man – which Jorah is notably not supposed to be in the book – and because he doesn’t look anything like a “bear”, a big, strong, hairy and uncouth-looking man. But an even bigger problem for me is the way they portray his personality on the show, they whitewashed him almost as much as Tyrion. Jorah, Renly, Asha/Yara and Tyrion are the characters whose looks fit their book counterparts the least.
I also hated that they cut out almost all of the Dontos storyline, which meant that Sansa was doing nothing for two seasons instead of planning to escape the Lannisters, but I would hardly describe it as “humorous”.
@27: Yes, there is. There’s no way in hell they would randomly kill off a major, popular and important character like Jaime if he’s still alive in the books. There is no sane reason to do that. They kill characters to reduce the cast and up the odds, but they only do it with minor characters who have no important role in further books and who aren’t especially popular with the fans.
@31, except for this: In book fandom, seems to me the biggest complaint I’ve seen is what a let down aFFC is after aSoS, because there weren’t any shocking plot twists .. in other words, nobody important died. Now if the show-producers wanted to remedy that, they’d have to kill off a pretty major character, and yet it would have to be someone that they could do without in their plan for the overall plot. And how much more shocking would it be if even book readers didn’t see it coming because that character is still alive in the books? Jaime’s got a great redemption arc in the books, but the show runners might be thinking they might be better off trading it in for a big S5E9 shocker. Hey all I’m saying at this point is, I won’t be too surprised. And if it happens, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, BABY! : )
#32: Nah. No way does Jaime not have major things to do in the future books. And no way would they randomly kill off a major and popular character. There’s tons of characters they could kill just to have something happen.
And, if anything, the Unsullied are complaining about GoT killing off to many people they like, rather than not killing them.
Plus, I’m pretty sure that season 5 will kill off a few important characters while sticking to the books and including the climaxes to ADWD that were moved to TWOW.
Not to mention one very major character who is ambiguously “killed” at the end of ADWD. I’m really curious how they handle that. It’s difficult to have as a cliffhanger, and I don’t think they want to alienate the viewers with too much of “ugh, they’re killing off everyone I like!” There’s a danger of the audience really believing in the myth that GRRM kills off every likable/good character (which is actually not true), at which point, it could cause indifference similar to the belief that nobody can be killed. On the other hand, you don’t want to pull a Heroes situation with the audience growing weary of fake deaths and resurrections and starting to believe that no one really dies.
I had a BRILL thought about this season’s storyline.
Myrcella’s been recast, and we now know Jaime goes to Dorne. Trystan becomes more prominent than the books.
Arianne has not been cast.
What if the crown Myrcella plot isn’t Arianne’s but Myrcella’s?
Ooooh, tantalizing.
I’m doing the DS9 rewatch right now, and probably by the time we finish it, we’ll be ready for the next season of GoT :) Although, yes, he is a lot thinner than I pictured him.
As for Jaime…no real thoughts, exceept that it is interesting, and I’ve definitely already started treating the show and books as different entities in my head, and figure, hey, now I have TWO interesting stories to follow.
Edited to add: Ellaria is the best…I love that picture, haha (and LOL @@@@@ Aeryl’s comment at 2)
It seems to me that Trystane’s role has been expanded to replace both of his siblings. My thought is that crowning Myrcella will be Trystane’s idea (just like it’s Arianne’s idea in the books). The plan will go array, leading to at least one major death. I don’t think Jaime will die, like Arys does in AFFC. Instead, I think Myrcella (and possibly Bronn) will die in the escape attempt. Myrcella’s death will tie in to Maggy The Frog’s prophecy which will be featured in Season 5, and will increase Cersei’s paranoia and overprotection of Tommen. Myrcella’s death will also free up Trystane, as he will then take up Quentyn’s role and get sent by Doran to seek out Dany in Meereen. He will obviously arrive too late and get roasted by Rhaegal for his troubles, just like his older brother in ADWD. This is just speculation on my part, but it would be a good way to fit the Dornish plotline from AFFC/ADWD with the Dorne plotline on the show. Of course, I’m not taking into account Aegon’s role in this speculative post because I’m not even sure he will be featured on the show.
I just had a flash-idea of a GOT “Dead Pool”. It made me chuckle evilly.
Awesome costume. I especially love the mismatched flip-flops.