Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-5014364-20161218050632

Sansa Stark didn't actually "do" anything in Season 6.

This is not a criticism of "Sansa Stark" - she is a fictional character. She does not "exist". I'm not saying "Sansa made stupid choices" - step back and think out-of-universe, I'm criticizing the bad writing of the showrunners.

The showrunners omitted Sansa's Vale arc and replaced it with the Jeyne Poole rape subplot. They stated, in their only interview about it in Entertainment Weekly, that this was not due to time constraints - not because the Vale subplot was too long, but because they felt it was too short - only 2 chapters and a waste of Sophie Turner's talents. So they merged her storyline with a character who gets raped to give her something significant to do. Apparently. They considered it unthinkable to simply give Sansa Stark a year off, or at least a light year....the same season that they gave Bran Stark an entire year off rather than make filler material.

I wonder if they thought, in Season 5, "just wait, the viewers who didn't like the rape subplot will realize they were wrong when they see how much Sansa does in Season 6!" -- she didn't do anything.

After the invented/merged Sansa rape subplot in Season 5, there could not have been greater emphasis on the TV writers to have Sansa "do" something in Season 6: be an active "player in the political game". By "player" we meant "political player". It seems like they think that someone is a "player" if they just have screentime, because if you write out a list of what Sansa actually "did" in Season 6, it was minimal. But this entire year since the rape controversy, they kept insisting "but it isn't over yet! You can't judge it until the Ramsay Bolton arc is over!" - now it is, and it isn't what they promised at all.

There are three things, broadly, that Sansa could have "done" in Season 6:


 * 1 - Kill Ramsay Bolton
 * 2 - Rally the loyal Northern Houses under her leadership
 * 3 - Manipulate events so the Vale army comes to defeat the Bolton army.

The first one seems the most obvious: Sansa "executing" Ramsay does not count as Sansa "defeating" Ramsay.  From how the cast & crew talked about it at the SDCC panel, they seem to delusionally consider them the same thing. What's worse, people on the internet kind of just go with the flow and repeat the same thing - though thank god, many share this criticism.

Killing a man who is already tied to a chair in a prison cell, his army already defeated, and already beaten to a pulp by someone else, does not constitute "defeating" him. No more than Ilyn Payne could be said to have "defeated" Ned Stark...Cersei and Littlefinger orchestrated that.

Even if say....Jon ordered that Ramsay be kept alive and imprisoned, because it was "honorable" or something, but Sansa snuck in to kill him anyway, that would have been "something" - a "narrative choice" Sansa did on her own initiative. Instead she...literally killed Ramsay with Jon's permission after Jon already beat him up and captured him.

Now once the initial shock of "but the TV show presented that scene as if it was Sansa defeating him", I think for most people the logic of that holds up pretty well: killing a man tied to a chair in a prison cell is not "defeating" him. What "defeated" Ramsay is that he lost the battle. So okay, how did we get to that point?

Sansa was never shown successfully rallying any of the northern Houses. I think most would still agree on this. Glover was a failure, and Mormont....Sansa was in the room, but what won them over in the TV version was Davos pointing out the White Walkers. Dear god, in the inside the episode commentary, Benioff and Weiss purely remark on how they wanted to see Jon Snow reacting to a child ruler, they don't even mention Sansa as a factor.

As others have pointed out, the theme of the Jeyne Poole arc in the novels is that even though she's just one of their friends being passed off as Fake Arya....the northern lords gathered for the wedding are furious at Ramsay for raping the girl - not just that he raped her, but that her cries are echoing through the castle at nigh, and he doesn't even care that people can hear him doing it. It offends their honor so much that many are on the verge of openly fighting them with daggers and forks, and fights nearly break out. The northmen, beaten on their knees, would still fight for the memory of the Starks given how badly Ramsay is mistreating his alleged Stark bride.

None of that happens in the TV version. NO ONE is fighting to avenge that Ramsay raped Sansa (except possibly Jon Snow himself).

Imagine if....I think they were going to film the Umbers turning on Ramsay mid-battle, then just plain ran out of time due to poor planning. Imagine if this was all an Umber trick (and the Rickon stuff got reworked somehow). Imagine if the Umbers turned on him mid-battle and at the end said, "you raped Ned Stark's daughter, you didn't think we'd stand for that, did you? You didn't care about honor but we do."....and if the Rickon stuff is too complicated, imagine if they flat out had Wyman Manderly saying that somehow.

Jon Snow was shown as a political leader in that he at least won over the wildlings, who are a blunt folk who follow strength and felt they owed it to him; that and the simple logic pointed out to them that Ramsay would never tolerate their presence and would kill the wildlings eventually.

Just...remember how going into Season 6, we thought they were going to set up Sansa as "the Queen in the North" - not post-battle, I mean rallying loyal northern Houses? Then we didn't see any of that?

But the first two points I think anyone is isn't utterly self-deluded would agree on:


 * 1 - Sansa executing Ramsay with Jon's permission after Jon already defeated and captured him doesn't actually count as Sansa "defeating" Ramsay.
 * 2 - Sansa was never shown successfully winning over northern Houses. She was a non-factor in that, as was her rape (in contrast, Jeyne Poole's rape was a major factor, because the vassal Houses thought she was Arya).

The main point of contention is the final one: Sansa didn't really do anything in the TV version to bring the Vale army to the North

In the book version, Sansa remains in the Vale and is actively helping Littlefinger tighten control over the Vale lords, to one day use their armies to invade the North.

The TV version....genuinely seems to think Sansa, as they wrote the character, "did" something to bring the Vale to the North which was a decisive role. She didn't.

Now I know the music is swelling and presenting it as a triumphant moment but...what exactly did Sansa do?

Littlefinger offered her the Vale army, that wasn't her idea. She refused him at first, but then later grudgingly accepted.

How the hell is that her being "a player"? After the whole rape subplot? Daenerys commands armies and dragons, Cersei blows up the Great Sept, Sansa...sends a letter to accept an offer that her stalker already made?

A few things:


 * Littlefinger was already planning to help her destroy the Boltons, that's why he said he was sending her to Winterfell (though even the TV show later...pointed out that this plan made no sense; that Mole's Town scene was very uncomfortable to watch, it was like the TV writers bluntly admitting "Yup, that didn't really make sense, did it?" What?!
 * Littlefinger had a scene in Season 5 with Cersei in King's Landing, the same episode that Ramsay rapes Sansa, explaining that he intends to attack the Boltons using the Vale's much larger army How the heck was Sansa "manipulating" these events as a "political player" when Littlefinger already wanted to do this on his own initiative?
 * Littlefinger musters he Vale army and sends them to Moat Cailin as soon as he hears that Sansa has escaped Winterfell. Without her intervention.  Then the FIRST thing he says at Mole's Town is "hey, I'm ready to send the Vale army to invade".  She refuses him.
 * Later, Sansa grudgingly writes a letter to....accept his offer of aid. How is this being "a player"?
 * The TV show teased out the tension that Sansa didn't even know if the Vale army would come after she told off Littlefinger earlier; thus she wasn't presented as "in control" of the situation at all! They didn't even present this as a plan she knew would work.

So....what did Sansa actually "do"?

Most of you will hopefully say "nothing". The showrunners just....declared her "a major player" for actions which weren't really that involved in shaping events. Why would Sansa want Jon to thank her? Wouldn't Jon thank Littlefinger for offering to send the Vale army?

Sansa did not manipulate Littlefinger into sending the Vale army; if anything, he manipulated her, because he wanted to invade the North already to control it.

Now most of you....I hope....will agree with this in broad strokes:


 * 1 - Simply "executing" the defeated Ramsay in a prison cell doesn't count as "defeating" him, he was already defeated.
 * 2 - She was never shown successfully rallying any of the northern lords and was basically a non-factor in any of that.
 * 3 - ...Sansa "accepting Littlefinger's offer to send in the large army of the Vale"....doesn't count as "Sansa" doing anything. All she did was accept an offer Littlefinger already made, as part of a plan Littlefinger already had, as seen in his conversation with Cersei.

What boggles my mind are....all of the people on the internet who are just plain in denial. Most people when presented with this logical breakdown realize it doesn't make a lot of sense. MANY people, I mean you've seen this, in major reviews and recapper posts, were asking "Why didn't Sansa just tell Jon about the Vale army?" (Sophie Turner openly admitted at SDCC during Q&A that it was purely to increase dramatic tension and had no in-universe explanation whatsoever).

What's frightening is.....think the Matrix, redpills and bluepills....I think a lot of people are in denial that the TV show could fail so massively, fail to write Sansa well. Clearly the TV show...intended for Sansa to have a storyarc of empowerment in Season 6, right? So therefore there must be one, and we're just not seeing it well enough. Wow. Yeah, they "intended" for it but then failed to deliver it's like they forgot Sansa in her own revenge storyline. A revenge storyline which was supposed to make up for a rape storyline. And which, even had it succeeded (it didn't), would still be criticized as a simplistic, formulaic "rape and revenge" storyline.

So I'm seeing all of this stuff online ranging from....people adamantly claiming that "yes, Sansa manipulated Littlefinger!" (how? HOW?!) to.....actually rather elaborate theories, claiming that Dark Sansa had a master plan to not tell Jon about the Vale army, so he would rush in and get his army slaughtered, so she could swoop in at the last minute and save him with the Vale army, but he wouldn't have enough supporters to be a threat to him. Wow.

Okay, dear god, 1 - there was no hint of that, it's just people trying to desperately rationalize an in-universe "head canon" explanation where there is none, 2 - ...the Vale army is an order of magnitude bigger than the North's remaining armies. Even the Boltons, with their army intact, only have around 6,000 men. Most of the dozen or so other Houses only have a few hundred left, young boys and old men, after their main armies were killed at the Red Wedding. The Vale army is unblooded, they hadn't fought in the war yet and are at full strength! Something like 30,000 men! What possible benefit would there be to bleeding off Jon's supporters?!

And please, no tinfoil hat theory indulgence here: nothing ever suggested Sansa didn't tell Jon about the Vale army because she wanted his Northern army to be depleted. This is you reading into it or developing a more elaborate explanation than the showrunners did. The actress even said the writers never told her why. It was just for dramatic tension.

But at least that is....reading into a character's motivations, which aren't always spelled out.

In contrast, how can ANYONE claim that Sansa ....sending a letter to Littlefinger accepting an offer he already made ...counts as being "a political player"?

Tywin Lannister was a political player. He promised the Tyrells a marriage alliance if they'd switch sides to him. Tyrion was a political player, he manipulated and outmaneuvered his enemies on the small council. What did Sansa do that could remotely be called "being a player"?

At best, she was the Damsel in Distress..."offering moral support" to the male lead Jon Snow.

I am stunned that Benioff and Weiss are still considered writers, much less won a major award of artistic merit in writing after this.

Do any of you still think Sansa was "a player" in Season 6? Did anything to shape the plot or politics? If so please explain it to me. 