In honor of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, IGN is taking a look back at some of the iconic characters who’ve fallen along the way, and the lasting impact they had on the story. These heroes and villains may not have made it to the end of the road, but their lives weren’t in vain – they stand as a fitting reminder that when you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die.
Syrio Forel only appeared in three episodes of Game of Thrones: Season 1, but his pivotal role is still being talked about years later — in fact, theories about the fate of his character are alive and well, even as the show enters its final season. Arya Stark’s “dancing master” helped set the stage for what would become one of Game of Thrones’ most iconic arcs, seeing Arya follow in the footsteps of her Braavosi mentor to become not just a master swordswoman, but someone who frequently says “not today” to the God of Death.
The vague nature of Syrio’s “death” scene in Season 1 and general badass nature of the character led many to believe the First Sword of Braavos might not have really died at the hands of Meryn Trant after all, despite the showrunners definitively telling star Maisie Williams that he is dead. Theories aside, Miltos Yerolemou sat down with IGN to reminisce about Syrio’s death and the legacy it left on Game of Thrones in Chapter 2 of our retrospective series, “When I Died on Game of Thrones.”
What do you remember about your last day on set, and was it your death scene?
It was my alleged death scene. [Laughs.] Yeah… It was that last fight. We shot the episodes in order, which is kind of handy. So my last day was the first day I met Ian Beattie, who played Meryn Trant. And it was great, because of course the first lesson and the choreography of it was something I worked on before I met Maisie and went to Northern Ireland to the studios to start work. And so I’d already worked with my master swordsman, a man called Bill Hobbs, who is a legend amongst sword choreography and people who do period detail. His attention to detail is amazing. And he really is my own Syrio Forel, because he’s the guy who cooked up the vocabulary of what the water dance would be.
And so then I took that, I worked with him and Maisie’s stunt double – so I didn’t meet Maisie, because she was already filming in Northern Ireland – and then we went to Northern Ireland. Then I taught her what I had been cooking up. So we’d had a bit of time, and she is a dancer, I used to be a dancer, so our understanding of choreography and the way we process stuff was great for us, because it allowed us to be able to not use our stunt doubles. So all the stuff you see in the first season between me and Maisie is all us, and we’re very proud of that.
But that last fight, we didn’t have so much prep, but by that point, we’d had breaks throughout the filming, while they were doing other stuff … But we weren’t given weeks, we were given days to work on it. And so it was great. But those guys – the majority of them were Hungarian stunt people – were just fantastic, and of course, made me look good. I could do it over and over and over again and hurt them and hit them and they just took it whenever I used to make a mistake. Usually a mistake is following through too much and actually really making contact.
But that was my last memory and my last day on set, and it was fantastic. It all felt so luxurious, really. I remember talking to Sean Bean and him saying … “I’m in this show and you know that only once in a lifetime do you get these amazing opportunities where you’re in something you know is going to be special.”
And remember, that was the first season. We knew that HBO had a great reputation and we knew they were doing fantastic work, but no one knew that it was going to be like this. But some of the elder statesmen of the company were like, “No, you can tell this is really going to be good.”
Syrio wasn’t on the show for long, but he’s still so beloved and so discussed by fans. Is that surprising to you?
Yeah. I mean, I never would have expected it. I had a little inkling of it when I was announced in the casting news back in the day. You’ve got to remember though, none of us had really read the books. I’d done a little bit just for research, for casting. But we hadn’t read the books. We didn’t really know. I read the books as I started to work on it. But that was a real surprise that people loved the character and … I mean, this goes back to the books. In the books, the character is beloved and I imagine it’s because he starts Arya’s journey, he’s the guy who instigates it, is the stimulus. And that is exciting. The ambiguity of the way that George R.R. Martin has written that chapter… because everything’s written in POV, when Arya leaves the room, you leave with her.
I have this amazing theory and … well, I say it’s amazing, it’s my theory, so it’s probably not that amazing. [Laughs.] But I really believe that it’s a brilliant piece of narrative storytelling that George does, which is in the books, you hear the mantra of the words – those mantras that Syrio gave Arya right in the beginning. They’re replayed in her mind over and over again, even in the latest books. So his echo hangs over her and kind of guides her. And I think the ambiguity, or not having a traumatic experience of Arya seeing Syrio’s death – or for anyone concerned, the audience, the reader, whatever – allows the echo of the character to exist, in the same way that Obi-Wan Kenobi exists as a force ghost. It’s like, it’s not extinguished, it’s kind of there as a force ghost. That’s the only way I can describe it! And I think that’s a really fantastic bit of storytelling that George does.
Do you think Syrio is really dead?
I like the idea of him being a man of honor. I like the idea that he sacrificed himself for a girl that he barely knew, but grew to love. Because there’s not that many honorable people in the show, and maybe that’s why he’s still … people pray for him to return in some way. But we all know that God is dead, so prayers are no use to anyone! But I think it’s a testament to creating fantastic characters that people love and hate and then love, like Jaime Lannister. You begin hating him, but now, I’m a big fan of that character. I think that is what it’s about, and I love the fact that the fans have … Whenever you create a world that is so complete in many ways, everyone’s going to have their own theories. And as it’s turned out, some of those fan theories have been proved correct and have been realized in the show, which I think is really fantastic.
I do like that fan theory about “is Syrio a Faceless Man?” I thought it was very intriguing the way that they fed it into the very first season, because there is a scene … because there [are] not a lot scenes even in the books between Syrio and Arya. So Dave and Dan said, “We’re gonna write you another scene, because otherwise the book ending is not going to give us enough interest in what is going on between the characters. And for the payoff to work in episode 8, we need to see you a bit more.” So they wrote this scene that completely doesn’t exist in the books, which turned into be the thing that will probably end up on my gravestone when I die, which is, “What do we say to the God of Death?”
I think it’s really fascinating that they decided … I don’t think in the books we ever talk about, “who does Syrio believe in?” He’s the First Sword of Braavos. His role is very practical. He’s a bodyguard, the person that is the first lieutenant to the king or queen. So that idea means that it’s very fascinating that they decided to put in that thing about, “Who do you believe in? What god do you believe in?” And that god that they talk about is the same god that the Faceless Men believe in. So they’ve conflated two things. The showrunners decided to do that, and I thought that was… It was almost like a little bit of a troll for the fans. At least I think it was, because it makes you suddenly go, “Hang on a minute.” That’s like putting it on the nose. That’s like saying, “Yeah, they believe in the same things.” There’s absolutely every reason why they would believe in the same thing. It’s a very Braavosian religious presence in that place. So there’s absolutely every reason to think that he would understand that too. But I think that was very telling, and I like that a lot.
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