Do your duty.... Or don't? (BOOK & TV SPOILERS)

[Ambria]

One minor difference - the Lord of Bones was hit multiple times on screen, How many times did you see Stannis struck by Brienne?

How about Syrio then, we didn't see him die on screen either

[Marcus Agrippa]

I am still not sure.- the only reason to keep Stannis Baratheon alive right now is to rally the norht with Jon dead. Also Gwen's interview was.... very non-commital. SOmething if off here,. Either jon or Stannis is coming back. They can't kill off all the northern protaginst's. Littlefinger is coming and will claim the north with the vale knights regardless. Also, I believe that those bodies of Stannis's soldiers will haunt the north in the end.

[SerRiley]

He's dead, Jim.

Fix him, Bones.

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a script writer!

[jet199]

How about Syrio then, we didn't see him die on screen either

Come on, everyone knows Syrio's alive!!

[Bael's Bastard]

I'm not really sure what would be the point of Brienne keeping Stannis alive, but they did a really poor job of showing Stannis getting killed considering they didn't show Stannis getting killed.

[Ambria]

Come on, everyone knows Syrio's alive!!

Yeap, so alive that he hasn't been seen for 4 seasons, if that's alive then I guess stannis will be too :3

[RedViperHD]

Stannis says the words "do your duty" and there is a shot where Brienne reacts to that surprised. Was it because she ended up having some respect for Stannis? Or did the words, "do your duty" remind her that she should have been watching Sansa instead? That is the reason people are suggesting that the scene was ambiguous. And I agree and see why, the scene was shot very strangely. Maybe those words snapped her out of her rage and she ended up just swinging at the tree instead or someone else behind Stannis? That being said, I just do not think that D&D are that clever. Leave a protagonist alive in the North? That would make sense! After last nights episode, I'm pretty sure that millions of fans have given them and GRR Martin way too much credit by dreaming up all these potential twists when in fact the 3 of them are all pretty "simple" in the head.

The fans have dreamed up a way more interesting story than what has ended up on the page or the screen. Sad, I thought this was the worst season and worst finale. It just seem to mash up everything that I thought the writers were "too stupid" to do. Now we look forward to what? Brienne riding around and coming out on top again somehow? Sansa crying? The battle between the vale and the boltons-two factions that have slowly killed our protagonists thoughout the series? Why would I want to watch that? Who cares? D&D attempted to sell the Cersei walk by saying that "we can't help but feel sorry for her." Thanks, but speak for yourself. I didn't feel for her during that scene despite the dramatic music and everything else that wanted to make us feel sorry for her. She's responsible for the deaths and rape of our main characters including a small dog! I just don't care about her! The only interesting thing left to see is how she is going to die. Well acted but if D&D thinks that "we're" just going to swallow bad filmmaking and bad story telling without being critical then they are insane! I saw Cersei do that walk and I saw a glimpse into Season 6. A lot of scenes just forced down our throats with characters that the show WANTS us to care about but we really don't from all the poorly developed characters and poor writing!

I mean, has the show jumped the shark? Because I thought I saw the Fonz fly across my screen during the Sansa rape scene and every scene in Dorne and when Brienne, yet again, 1 uped everyone and everything (Robert Strong watch out, Brienne will find a way to beat you!) Now if they attempt to have a touching scene with Littlefinger or with Roose/Ramsay like they did with Stannis this season then it will have truly jumped the shark. I can just see it- Roose takes Ramsay and hugs him and it's sweet and touching and then we all forget that these characters have raped and killed all the protagonists on the show because of the touching violin music. and then I can hear D&D, "Well, Ramsay has done a lot of horrible things, but we can't help but identify with him and the way he attempts to gain the affections of his father."

Yeah, that's where the show is going. Attempting to get the audience to identify with 1 diminesional characters who only previously existed before this point so that we had someone to hate and root against. Cersei's walk was just a preview of all the bad writing to come. How can you BEG your audience to hate these villains on the screen and then BEG that same audience to be interested in them (beyond hating them) and feel something for them and identify with them for an entire Season 6? It would be like if all of a sudden the creators of Batman wanted you to forget that they BEGGED you to love Batman for years and now want you to root for the Joker and they still call the show Batman. Bad writing. A more appropriate title would be Game of Pointless Torture and Rape and Brienne Winning.

By the way, Congrautlations Brienne, you have officially and single handedly defeated who we've been told throughout this story, was the best Duelist in Westeros and the best military commander in Westeros. I think when D&D have no poetic way to kill a character they just say "eh, we'll just have Brienne kill em' again!" At this rate, Brienne takes the Iron Throne at the end of the series and the show ends with a montage recap of the people Brienne has defeated cut together with a Rocky style celebration between her and Pod all set to this song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ht21MJkk8s. That's it. That's how the whole story ends probably. No R+L=J, no Lady Stoneheart, no Dornish Master Plan. Just Brienne and Steve Winwood.

I think D&D should feel a little like Stannis in that regard because they painting themselves in a corner by sacrificing all the interesting characters for pure shock value. And just like Stannis, walking into a battle with half his men, D&D are walking into Season 6 with their best and most interesting characters/actors already gone.

[Wise Fool]

So as with Ned, the next episode we will either see Stannis' decapitation, or we will see something that is not a decapitation. But, as things currently stand on-screen, Stannis is neither alive nor dead but exists in a quantum superimposition of both probabilities.

[Spilt Pea Soup]

Some of you make good points about the scene that could mean Stannis the Mankiss is still alive. "Do your duty". But where does his story go from here?

[Stannis' shadow babies]

It would be all wrong to use sword to finish vendetta. It would break oath

This is the only thing I can think could be a reason for Brienne not to kill Stannis. But that would be too subtle and too elaborated for TV (and anyway she could take another sword from the ground and 'do her duty').

So, my king is dead. Although TV Stannis is so far from book Stannis in many ways (not all of them) that I'm kind of indifferent. I'll miss Dillane, however.

They'll spin it as the broken man who lost everything and walked to certain death.

[Wise Fool]

Some of you make good points about the scene that could mean Stannis the Mankiss is still alive. "Do your duty". But where does his story go from here?

Option 1: Brienne lifts him bodily up and charges off to Winterfell. Stannis is "bolt"ed with hundreds of arrows but Brienne escapes serious harm by using him as a shield. She ascends the walls to find and rescue Sansa, but Sansa has already jumped to her death before she arrived. Surrounded and without hope, Brienne "does her doody," fulfilling Stannis's suggestion.

Option 2: She decides he's more valuable to her as a hostage and she decides to postpone the execution until later. He limps along with her and Pod, and they have to learn not to kill each other as they lurk about in the woods like Brienne has traditionally been doing for the last ever. Since Brienne and Stannis aren't much for idle banter, there are a lot of long, drawn out scenes full of woods and walking and scowls and awkward silence.

Option 3: Brienne shows her "Mother's Mercy" because the spirit of the Mother lives within her, and also a baby. Turns out that more went on during that hot tub scene with Jaime than we saw. Brienne, immediately becoming dependent on a man, saves Stannis to be a dad since Jaime and her are "just friends." This is because Brienne believes he has the qualities of a good father. She has not watched the most recent episodes of Game of Thrones yet. D & D respond to accusations of misogynist portrayal of women with "She's a very strong person, but strong people often have adorably weak, insecure, needy and irrational people who fulfill traditional gender roles and traditional family values inside of them" and, on a later interview, "It's a feminist message. I have female friends."

Option 4: Brienne decides to actually kill Stannis, but turns out Ramsay was there the whole time, and he parries her blade at the last moment. She turns to fight but they're surrounded by approximately 1.4 million Bolton soldiers. Brienne and Stannis (and Pod) are all captured by Ramsay, and will be brutally tortured and sexually assaulted in explicit detail over the next few episodes. D & D are quoted as defending this as "we just feel that's just what [the characters] would do in that situation." G.R.R. Martin could not be reached for interview as he is in a motel room slowly drinking himself to death.

Option 5: Brienne simply misses. Maybe Melisandre's magic worked to protect Stannis's life, but nothing else. Or maybe Brienne is tired and cramped from having done nothing but stare at a tower for the last few days and so her aim is off. Either way, she now has to yank the sword out of the tree and swing yet again, and of course she'd have to swear her oath and judgment again and ask him to repeat his final words, and she realizes she just couldn't be bothered. Stannis isn't in the mood either. They go their separate ways. We then cut between each of them muttering to themselves, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

[Pashernate Reader]

He's dead.

"I will not yield,

To kiss the ground before young Brienne's feet,

And to be baited with the rabble's curse."

[Rickeen Stark]

He will be sent to find Rickon Stark; then use Rickon to unite the mountain clans and retake Winterfell from the Boltons! The 20 good men will come, but alas, Stannis transforms into the StormLORD, he was prophesised to fight the Drowned God. This causes Balon's death and, the death of Ramsay and his 20 GOOD MEN. Rickon wargs him and Stannis kills thousands of men, using their blood to transform into the Storm Dragon. FOR HE IS THE STORMBORN, NOT DANY. Then he kills all the others and takes the throne.

Trust me, I write for season 6.

[whodafockcares]

stannis is definitely dead the HBO viewers guide says

http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/season-5/episode-10/people

the scene wasn't ambiguous and HBO is also making it clear on their website

That's probably what they want us to believe. Similar to what they just did to Jon Snow. A strategy to generate shock factors for S6.

But maybe Stannis is really dead. Jon Snow I don't think so.

[Mister Stoneheart]

Why is Mel at the wall. If Cheech and Chong wanted to tie up loose ends, they would have wiped her out too, and freed up the budget. She's there for a reason, and that reason is to breathe life back into Jon.

[Punchenbag]

Brienne lets him live, Stannis is left for dead until rescued by a religious brother to takes him on as an undertaker. Then Stannis will head to represent the faith in a trial by combat against Mountainstein.

[Follmann]

Brienne lets him live, Stannis is left for dead until rescued by a religious brother to takes him on as an undertaker. Then Stannis will head to represent the faith in a trial by combat against Mountainstein.

He is rescued by another rogue Maester who merges him with Sandor, creating Stanhoundstein.

[Ser Not Appearing]

They cliff-hanger'd his death because it matches the other cliff-hangers and it drives discussion. It also leaves some doubt, which prevents a full out spoiler of Winds of Winter. In fact, the question there matches the questions about the Pink Letter, albeit less intricately and well-designed.

[cgf]

Hello people.

You must first excuse the strong post content to username ratio. Fair? Good.

I have come here to offer a glimmer of hope for the Stannis fanboys. The rationale that he must die for storyline purposes purely because he is not a realistic contender for the Iron Throne anymore is one that I do not agree with. There are plenty of characters that aren't contenders, and yet can still have important roles to play. I personally think Stannis will remain in the North for the duration of ASOIAF, and will live to see the Others invasion, but perhaps not long after doing so.

After everything Stannis has done, it seems really, really poor writing to have his fate decided by a character like Brienne. It would have to be said that the motivation behind it was her crush on King Renly. Nothing else. She's not a Kingsguard, and to kill Stannis when her actual mission is to ensure the safety of Sansa and Arya would be an absolutely dire decision on her part.

Even with that said, this has been poorly written anyway. I refuse to believe that the battle for Winterfell was a storyline that D and D just wanted to hurry up and have over with. It certainly seemed that way when we saw Stannis' host out of formation and flanked on both sides by a charging cavalry. Are we really to believe that Stannis could escape that without being captured by Bolton's? The Bolton host was massive and Ramsay seemed quite content to return to WF without His Grace as a hostage? The Bolton's spent an entire season fretting about Stannis.

Another thing I was disappointed by was the lack of "North" about the whole thing. No Manderly, no Umbers and no Mountain Clans. In fact D and D's "North" is actually just the Bolton's and a pack of extras with flayed man shields. Definite thumbs down from I. And I don't even consider Sansa Stark as a "Northerner" anymore really. She's spent too much time in KL and with LF.

The sacrifice of Shireen was ridiculous if it happened for no reason. It has been proven that The Lord of Light is the real deal, and I'm convinced that Jon Snow's resurrection is on, but it requires Mel to use the same incantation that was used by that amusing drunken priest.

You all may have also noticed that Stannis was laying against a tree when Brienne was poised to execute him. I'm thinking Bran and his new erm "affiliation" with the Old Gods may repay this divine debt to The Lord of Light. The debt being, of course, that the Lord of Light saved a "Stark." We all know that Bran is the most family-orientated out of all the Stark children, and he liked Jon Snow. Yes, I'm convinced that Bran will rescue Stannis by some divine intervention / his new superpowers.

Mel also said that she saw Bolton banners burning. Although to be fair she made a similar prediction regarding a Stannis victory at the Blackwater, and then said it was the fact that she wasn't there as being the reason he didn't win. It's a reasonable assumption. She was there when Stannis routed the Wildling host.

Methinks that Mel will return with Jon Snow, Mountain Clans, Umbers, possibly Rickon and maybe re-muster some other Baratheon deserters. I really think that Jon Snow will abandon the Wall / Watch when he learns his new identity. I also think that Brienne in the North suggests that LS could be part of the retaking of WF.

The reason I think all of this will happen is because I firmly believe that the Bolton's arc is all but over. They were interesting, and their story was intriguing when they followed then betrayed Robb Stark. It stirred things up quite a bit. However, it's now a dead end, and they can't just sit around in the North and be nobs. It doesn't advance the plot in the slightest. They're going to have to go. They aren't contenders for the IT and they definitely won't march North to help the NW.

My biggest fear is that somehow Roose Bolton's and LF's conspiring at WF is somehow going to be made into a show plot line. This doesn't happen in the books but I also fear that LF will bring Sansa to the North and offer a marriage proposal to Roose Bolton and then the Bolton's begin their own private game and have a civil war. That's not the kind of vengeance anyone wants to see, though.

Is the Bolton arc over? What if Ramsay is instrumental in the fight against the white walkers? To leave us conflicted and wondering about when the ends stop justifying the means, just as Stannis's sacrifice of Shireen is meant to. Or if the Others are not the all killing force some believe, having them wipe out the boltons will help get your average fan/reader to start thinking about them in a new light, especially if unJon gives us some more insight into the organization/leadership-structure of the Others

[Truly Just Man]

Is the Bolton arc over? What if Ramsay is instrumental in the fight against the white walkers? To leave us conflicted and wondering about when the ends stop justifying the means, just as Stannis's sacrifice of Shireen is meant to. Or if the Others are not the all killing force some believe, having them wipe out the boltons will help get your average fan/reader to start thinking about them in a new light, especially if unJon gives us some more insight into the organization/leadership-structure of the Others

I can't imagine what would Ramsay possibly have to do with stoping the white walkers. The guy is not even a good fighter in the books. I recall Roose describing his swings with the sword as chaotic or something.

He's not the brightest either.

This guy is a goner sooner or later. I even still think Stannis will serve him some justice in the books.