Game Of Thrones Actress Confirms Off-Screen Death

Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 7, episode 3

Turns out that we've seen the last of one of the major players on Game of Thrones, and we aren't talking about Lady Olenna Tyrell.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Indira Varma revealed that her character Ellaria Sand won't return to the show. Of course, that's not her in the photo above. That's obviously Cersei (Lena Headey). But we didn't want to spoil it in case you haven't seen the latest episode and wandered in too far. 

In the third episode of season 7, "The Queen's Justice," Cersei imprisons Sand and her daughter Tyene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) in the dungeons of King's Landing. As poetic retribution for Ellaria killing Cersei's daughter Mycella last season, Cersei used the same method to doom Tyene: she kissed her with poison laced upon her lips. But instead of outright murdering Ellaria, Cersei leaves them both chained and gagged so that Ellaria can watch Tyene die. 

While that seems to leave room for more scenes with Ellaria, Varma said it's the last time we'll see her. We don't see her (or her daughter) die onscreen, but the actress said that her character is a goner.

"[Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] called me, but I kind of knew already," Varma said. "Obviously, there's lots of trimming going on. It's all coming to a head and you have to get rid of less important characters that the audience hasn't had the chance to invest in as much. So I was expecting it. I wasn't heartbroken. And I was like, 'As long as I die on-screen...' and they were like 'Yeah!' But of course I don't die on-screen. I stay alive, I'm just not going to reappear. I think it's really clever."

However, Varma realizes that a lot of people were probably rooting for Cersei in her final scene, which was challenging to shoot.

"Ellaria hasn't had quite the screen time so people are inevitably more invested in Cersei," she said. "But people were so in love with Oberyn [Pedro Pascal] and there's a bit of that residue carrying on, and obviously, nobody wants to see somebody's child killed in front of them—that's every parent's worst nightmare, beyond worst nightmare. It's quite a challenge from an acting perspective to be interesting with no lines. It was fun trying to play anger resentment and impotence in that situation, but still wanting to fight. At what point do you give up wanting to fight? It's a human paternal instinct where you just want to keep fighting for your child."

It wasn't the only death in the episode that the writers left to our imaginations. Lady Tyrell (Dame Diana Rigg) also ingested poison and we left her while she was still alive.

If you missed the episode or just don't remember all the details, check out our recap.