5 Book Characters the 'Game of Thrones' Show Completely Ruined, Ranked
Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, high fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.
Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. You'll also find her enjoying video games, amateur photography, geeking out over all music genres, admiring birds from her porch, trying to overcome her meager baking skills, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.
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Bringing George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels to the screen was always going to be the adaptational equivalent of scaling Mount Everest. It took 15 years and an esteemed cable network with an ample budget to translate Westeros' intimidating intricacy and massive ensemble cast into HBO's Game of Thrones. Ranging from vile to virtuous and all shades of moral ambiguity in between, almost every individual is deliciously nuanced, distinctly human, and narratively load-bearing. One might argue Game of Thrones wouldn't have evolved into a cultural behemoth without them.
Sometimes, swapping mediums refines the original material. Game of Thrones' creative team, led by showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, enrich multiple supporting characters by showing their perspectives and making them active participants in the narrative engine. As for others, well — comprehensive autopsies of the show's polarizing final seasons reveal structural inconsistencies and contradictory, ill-defined characterizations. Compared to their book counterparts, the following five characters' richest qualities wind up lost in translation.
5 Doran Martell
Frankly, this could include every Dornish character aside from Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal). Book four, A Feast for Crows, pulls back the curtain on the once-independent region and House Martell's manifold secrets. Between allowing women heirs to rule and Oberyn's brother, Prince Doran (Alexander Siddig), plotting his vengeance while hiding in plain sight, the unresolved storyline offers tantalizing figures and electrifying possibilities aplenty. Martin's Doran projects weakness and hesitancy to conceal his unrivaled skill at playing the long game. Patient and discerning, his revenge plot against the Lannisters has been in motion since his sister Elia's brutal murder. He never rests, either, accumulating information, devising strategies, fortifying Dorne's defenses, and exploiting his enemy's weaknesses.
Bafflingly, Game of Thrones plays Doran's facade straight. Like Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma), who should be warning against impulsive violence, and the Sand Snakes, unrecognizable from the competent women carrying out integral missions on their prince's behalf, the show does Doran a disservice by denying him the intellect and dignity he deserves. What should've launched an even more devious round of power-dynamic political warfare instead ends as an underdeveloped detour that's disconnected from the main story.
4 Euron Greyjoy
When Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk) makes his debut, his watchful stillness and unflinching resolve curdle the blood. He radiates Lovecraftian cosmic horror — still a mortal, but a mythologically nightmarish figure with a god complex and a ruthless reputation to match. Those who aren't his eager acolytes avoid him at all costs. Yet the new King of the Iron Islands makes himself as inevitable as a hurricane. His planned steps toward world domination include marrying Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), summoning eldritch sea creatures, and plunging Westeros into a ruined crater.
As it stands, Euron's villainy is almost as intriguing, frightening, and unknowable as the Others (Martin's name for HBO's White Walkers). Few other guaranteed threats cast such a dread-filled shadow over the books' future. A man who's ready, willing, and able to harness occult magic and bend dragons to his will with an ancient Valyrian horn might be the Seven Kingdoms' greatest adversary. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones' interpretation lands as flatly as an undercooked pancake. It's no fault of Asbæk's, who tries his best to infuse a caricature of a devious pirate with unsettling energy and an inner life. Even when Euron contributes substance beyond his entanglements with Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), his sparse wins are plot-related contrivances.
3 Jon Snow
It's easy to see why Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) became a fan favorite for readers and viewers alike. His barely hidden insecurity, teenage impulsivity, and the bastard-sized chip on his shoulder make him as flawed as anyone on the heroes' side. It's his nobility, loyalty, tactical cunning, unconscious charisma, natural leadership, and determined drive to prove his worth that sway his fellow members of the Night's Watch into volunteers willing to follow their Lord Commander's cause into hell. Like the father-turned-uncle he idolizes (Sean Bean), Jon has all the makings of a classic fantasy hero whose rough-around-the-edges qualities polish into diamonds.
From Season 6 onward, the show's version of Jon personifies missed opportunities. For one, he returns from the dead without repercussions. Martin painstakingly illustrates how revived souls are never quite the same person; their minds can fragment, memories lost and personalities narrowed into cold, single-minded relentlessness. As for his mysterious parentage, Game of Thrones never priorities Jon's reaction to a life-altering bombshell, which should be a dramatic goldmine. Wouldn't a young man raised as a shamed and ashamed outcast have staggeringly complicated feelings about his royal heritage? Would his devotion to the Starks, his chosen family in blood and temperament, transcend death or warp into something poisonous? By the time Harington's Jon arrives at his circuitous and unsatisfying conclusion, he's a shell of his former TV self and Martin's creation.
2 Jaime Lannister
Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) dying at his sister's side is regression incarnate. As children, Jaime and Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) daydream about the same kind of virtuous knighthood. Joining the Kingsguard shatters the former's naivety; he sees firsthand how often powerful men discard their position's tenets and responsibilities. Years later, Jaime saves thousands of innocent civilians when he kills King Aerys II Targaryen (David Rintoul). In return, he receives scorn for violating his sacred oath instead of remaining an order-following bystander. Once he's free of Cersei's influence, Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) chips away at Jaime's cynical self-loathing, reminding him that, in rare cases and rarer hands, those ignored oaths still hold meaning.
Even though backsliding into past toxic habits happens, the act must follow the story's internal logic. Benioff and Weiss ran out of books to follow, but they should have known the characters inside and out. The Jaime of the books dismisses Cersei's plea for help. He initiates the slow process of regaining his honor and growing into his best approximation of a true knight — a man who's more than someone else's weapon. In a trifecta of dissonance, Game of Thrones abandons his redemption arc's trajectory without sufficient justification, contradicts his established compassion for the smallfolk, and jettisons the Valonqar prophecy, to boot.
1 Daenerys Targaryen
It's time for the most contentious elephant in the room. Season 8 rushes Daenerys' descent into tyranny. The show tries to retroactively reframe her past triumphs as sinster foreshadowing. Above (and worst) of all, the Mad Queen outcome just isn't compelling. Martin's surprises originate from the ways in which he upends genre archetypes. In the '90s fantasy space, making an idealistic and empathetic teenage girl the hero of a grim adult epic was subversive. In the 2010s, recycling the "power corrupts" refrain and forcing "madness" onto a multifaceted woman is stereotypical and regressive, especially for a trauma survivor who restores miracles to a bleak world, disrupts oppressive systems, empowers the abused, and strives to rule with a wise, just, and merciful hand.
Dany reclaiming the Iron Throne is what others expect from her. However, it never seems to be her deepest desire nor Martin's endgame. Breaking the wheel means interrupting her family's cycle of conquest, cruelty, and self-destruction. Every experience guides her closer toward the clarity she needs to recognize her personal mistakes, reject the Targaryen dynasty, and replace the overthrown old order with peaceful equality. Dany is the correction and the exception. If she dies, she'll likely sacrifice herself battling the Others. In a series called A Song of Ice and Fire, why would she bond with three dragons unless she plays a crucial role during the Long Night — as, say, the new Azor Ahai or the Prince That Was Promised? If Martin finishes his magnum opus and my predictions are wrong, then I'll accept having egg on my face. Until then, I hold firm to my conviction that Game of Thrones fundamentally misunderstands, undermines, and fails a heroine who yearns for a safe, loving home.
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