One thing has been abundantly clear since Game of Thrones first aired in 2011: it ain’t easy being a Stark. The northern family began the pilot as a powerful well respected and wholly alive clan, and things have been going downhill ever since. One of the most unfortunate Starks, although she’s one of the few that is still breathing, is the oldest daughter Sansa. Sansa has been essentially someone’s prisoner for the entirety of the series, and has struggled to truly begin playing the game of thrones. Actress Sophie Turner, who plays the red-headed maiden, recently opened up regarding Sansa’s fate in Season 6, and how it will differ from what we’ve seen thus far.
I mean this season is a really, really big one for Sansa, it’s probably her best season yet. It’s her really coming into her own. She, this season, really commands the respect that she deserves and she grabs hold of it and she runs with it and it’s really good.
FINALLY it looks like Sansa is about to catch a break, according to Sophie Turner’s statement to EW. Especially after how Season 5 went for her, it appears that the team behind Game of Thrones has heard the fans’ outcry regarding Sansa’s fate.
This exciting change in Sansa originally looked like it was going to happen last year. The Season 4 finale showed Sansa in full adulthood, with black dyed hair and a black dress with a plunging neckline. After successfully lying and getting Petyr Baelish off the hook at The Eyrie, it appeared that she learned how to begin manipulating people.
Unfortunately, this didn’t last very long as Season 5 saw Sansa shipped back to Winterfell to marry Ramsay Bolton. Once again, it seemed that Sansa was a captive, becoming simply a chess piece for the Boltons to secure the North. We were forced to see poor Sansa fall victim to sexual assault by Ramsay, despite this plot point never existing in the source material.
Now, it seems she may finally be free of captivity and she and Theon Greyjoy escaped Winterfell during the season finale. While this seems like a precarious position to be in, as they have no supplies, it seems that Sansa will finally be coming into her role as a strong adult woman of Westeros.
Personally, I’m excited for Sansa to begin taking control of her own destiny. She was learning deception from arguably the most adept liar in the Seven Kingdoms, Littlefinger, but was unable to use her new skills during her captivity at the hands of the Boltons. After all, she’s the head of the Stark family by this point. Sansa is the only one who has hope to restore the Starks to their former glory. Bran is training in a cave, Arya is possibly blind in Braavos, Jon may be dead, and who the hell knows where Rickon is.
We’ll get to see how Sansa’s character develops when Game of Thrones returns to HBO on April 8th.
