By Lyanna Mormont was only ever meant to be a one-scene character, show-runner D. B. Weiss revealed after this week's episode of Game of Thrones. However they were so impressed with actress Bella Ramsey that they "kept bringing her back because we wanted more."
Now we know she won't be back again. In 'The Long Night', the 82 minute episode which plunged viewers roiling darkness interspersed with flaming arrows and tsunamis of ice, Lyanna Mormont defied her stature and stood as tall as the giant she took down.
All looked lost when giant wight Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun trampled into Winterfell and bowled down anyone that came into its path. Undeterred, Mormont raced forward and was snatched up by the giant who proceeded to crush her, the gruesome sound of her bones popping in his grasp. As she crumbled, her resolve did not, lashing out in her last seconds to stab the giant in the eye and take him down.
Mormont, she of the withering line "I don't plan on knitting by the fire while men fight for me", was always an obvious choice to die a hero, but the target she took down in doing so was especially poignant.
It echoed last week's episode where Tormund explained that he got his "giantsbane" nickname after killing a giant when he was 10 years old, before going into the follow-up that nobody asked for that he was nursed on giant's milk for three months.
The task of slaying the giant seems likely to fall on the burly shoulders of Sandor Clegane or left to the incomparable sword skills of Jamie Lannister. Instead, like Arya did in taking on The Night King, it was the underestimated girls of the show who ran at death and took the place of men as heroes.
“It’s like someone removed her fear gene,” episode director Miguel Sapochnik's said when advising Ramsey how to play the scene. This is how she appears in facing death and even in the moment she is crushed her face is set with grim determination.
Though the conclusion to the scene was far darker than a children's story, the moment where pint-sized Mormont was held up to the height of the giant had a fable-like quality to it. Reminiscent of stories of small girls defying their size, like a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale or Roald Dahl's The BFG - interestingly the part Ramsey auditioned for before landing Game of Thrones.
While last week's episode showed Brienne of Tarth and Arya both softening their resolves and showing themselves as more complicated than just pillars of strength, this week was a reminder that despite the fixations with behemoths like The Hound or The Mountain, strength is not solely determined by size on Game of Thrones.
