Game of Thrones' finale: No Spoiler! (and why that's a good thing) 

\'Game of Thrones\' finale: No Lady Stoneheart! (and why that\'s a good thing)

Note: This contains spoilers from Sunday’s Game of Thrones finale AND a spoiler about a storyline in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels which could conceivably still be appear on the show…

Sorry George R.R. Martin super-fans, but Catelyn Stark is still dead on

Fans were positive that Lady Stoneheart — the vengeful zombified resurrection of murdered Red Wedding casualty Catelyn Stark — would make an appearance in the season four closer “The Children” (that’s fan art above, not from the show). In the books, she appears in the epilogue of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords — which is roughly where the fourth season of

concludes for several characters. And then there was that suspect image that Lena Headey put on Instagram — a heart made of stones! Surely that’s confirmation Lady Stoneheart is coming, right? In our finale preview, the most up-voted comment read: “You’d need a heart of stone not to be excited for what might happen in this finale!” Even EW.com’s own

Book Club closed with last week’s prediction that “Lady Stoneheart’s grand entrance … is going to make the Unsullied go absolutely bonkers.”

post-finale chatter among book-readers is bound to be dominated by something that did not happen instead of what did happen.

showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss had a different plan for the closer: Instead of revealing resurrected Catelyn, who Brienne later meets after fighting a man masquerading as The Hound, Brienne found Arya and fought the real Hound. Which doesn’t mean that LS might not show up in season 5 or beyond. But allow me make a case both for tonight’s finale absence and against a future appearance: No Lady Stoneheart is a good thing for

was a brilliant page-turning blast of one climactic encounter and twist after another. Then I hit that epilogue and winced. Can we agree to disagree? Nobody who writes 4,000 pages of a massively complex fantasy epic will make the absolute best narrative decision at every turn, it’s impossible. And obviously many, if not most, fans don’t consider LS a misstep, but an awesome vengeful twist, some soothing balm for the book’s most heartbreaking chapter. But since missteps, and certainly differences of opinion about the narrative choices, are inevitable — we can at least agree on that, right? We’re going to discuss this subject in tomorrow’s

Book Club post along with a bunch of other finale topics, but since book readers are going to be hugely reacting to this, let me kick-start the chatter with my own rather unpopular take:

The balance between reality and fantasy is always delicate and tricky in ASOIAF. Lady Stoneheart represented the fantasy element running roughshod over the medieval realism side of the story. First her rescue seemed too convenient — her body just happens to be found and resurrected by Lord Beric by magic? Second, her return undermined the impact of Martin’s most powerful scene, The Red Wedding, by “taking back” her death. Third, LS then presides over a “trial” of Brienne and finds her guilty — which seemed horribly unfair, with the final LS chapter ending in Brienne’s possible death; the wrong person punished because Catelyn is now a murderous zombie who doesn’t much discriminate about who she kills. It’s all kind of a bummer, and then … that’s it! The story thread doesn’t continue after that chapter in Book 4, though it’s not clear if Martin has discarded it or if there is more to come (presumably the showrunners know more about the future importance of LS in the books than we do). So removing LS from HBO’s version gives the story of Catelyn Stark a stronger — albeit more tragic — ending. I want to remember Catelyn for who she was, not as some twisted Monkey’s Paw version. And the changes have arguably already improved the story of Brienne, who as portrayed wonderfully by Gwendoline Christie, deserves a more interesting and satisfying fate.

As said, we’ll take on this subject in more detail in

Book Club post on Monday afternoon, where Hillary Busis, Darren Franich and I will join forces to form a giant robot of Thrones analysis and discuss LS and other changes from the books. Meanwhile, for much more on The Children, check out my recap here.

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