Game Of Thrones Creators Would Change One Thing About The Series (But Not What You Expect)
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who served as the dual showrunners on "Game of Thrones," would love to revise one thing about the series — and no, it isn't the highly divisive ending. The two sat down for an in-depth interview with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss their new Netflix series "3 Body Problem" in January 2024, and shortly thereafter, THR reporter James Hibberd revealed a tidbit that didn't make the cut for that piece. Specifically, that the two wanted to bring back a character briefly seen in the very first season of "Game of Thrones." Benioff told Hibberd, "One thing I know I wish we could have done is there's the character Mord the Jailer," before Weiss jumped and said, "It was a mistake not bringing Mord the Jailer back into it. We always talked about doing it."
Who is Mord the Jailer? Here's a quick refresher on the character for those of you drawing a blank. Played by Ciaran Bermingham, Mord works as a servant to Lysa Arryn (Kate Dickie), the Lady Regent of the Vale, who ends up imprisoning Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage). To say Mord is easily manipulated is an understatement. When Tyrion is placed in the Eyrie's precarious Sky Cells, he makes a bargain with Mord that allows him a trial by combat in court in front of Lysa. Though Tyrion doesn't have any money on him at that moment, he tells Mord that "a Lannister always pays his debts." After Tyrion's champion Bronn (Jerome Flynn) defeats Lysa's fighter, Tyrion does, indeed, hand Mord a sack of money, proving that the family motto is more than just words.
Benioff and Weiss wanted to give Mord his own business
So how would Mord the Jailer have returned to "Game of Thrones," exactly? As David Benioff noted when he and D.B. Weiss sat down with The Hollywood Reporter, the two had a perfect scene to bring him back — one set in a tavern. Apparently, the two thought Mord could just quietly own a tavern where other characters gathered. "Was it Brienne or The Hound [in the scene]?" Weiss mused, wondering about Gwendoline Christie and Rory McCann's central characters. "But we realized too late that Mord could have owned the tavern. We could have had that actor in the background acting exactly the way he did as a jailer, except now as a small-business owner. It was just such an obvious, no-brainer, day-after idea."
To be fair to Benioff and Weiss, there are a lot of characters in "Game of Thrones," and it would have been largely impossible to keep bringing lesser-known ones back into the fray to stand in the background. Sure, fan favorites like Hot Pie (Ben Hawkey) and Gendry (Joe Dempsie) ended up returning after long absences, but Benioff and Weiss completely abandoned major players like Daario Naharis (Michiel Huisman) and Jaqen H'ghar (Tom Wlaschiha) without any explanation. Considering how important those characters were, it's somewhat of a relief that the showrunners didn't leave them behind and bring back someone as ultimately inconsequential as Mord the Jailer.
Other things that Benioff and Weiss should regret
Ask any "Game of Thrones" fan, and they'll say the fate of Mord the Jailer is the last thing they hope David Benioff and D.B. Weiss regret about the series. In the show's seventh and eighth seasons, quite a lot of things went wrong. When Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) followed in her infamous father's footsteps and became the "Mad Queen," it felt utterly disappointing — not because Daenerys shouldn't have went full-on Targaryen (she was arguably always going to), but because it happened in the blink of an eye.
That wasn't the only issue with the finale. Characters that redeemed themselves thoroughly over several seasons, like Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), undid all that development in mere minutes. And when the remaining characters picked a new leader of the Seven Kingdoms, Tyrion pushed for Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a character so baffling that he was omitted from an entire season because Benioff and Weiss apparently didn't know what to do with him.
Things got so dire in the aftermath of the "Game of Thrones" series finale that fans even mounted a petition to hire "competent writers" to re-do it, meant as a pretty obvious insult to Benioff and Weiss. In any case, fans now know that the showrunners lie awake at night thinking about Mord the Jailer running a tavern, not that dreadful eighth season.