Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-5014364-20150621151627/@comment-5014364-20150621170833

Here's a thought:

Not knowing how the books go after this, this might be nice to see:

Ramsay rides back into Winterfell, expecting his father to praise him. Roose punches him out and knocks him to the ground, berating that an attack wasn't needed because they were in a strong defensive position in the castle and could have just waited out Stannis. Ramsay pleads that most of Stannis's army abandoned him, he only had 1,300 men and no cavalry. Roose counters that they were battle hardened veterans who had fought with Stannis since the Blackwater, fighting to the death and taking as many of their men with them as they could. He demands to know how many of Ramsay's 2,000 cavalry were lost in the battle. Ramsay quickly admits he lost around 500 men, causing Roose to kick him in the ribs. Ramsay tries to sound impressive again by gasping out that he personally killed 50 men in the battle - Roose demands to know if these were men he killed in combat, or wounded soldiers he had fun finishing off after the fighting was done; Ramsay's brief hesitation is silent proof that he was mostly killing the wounded, so Roose kicks him again.

Messenger then comes up bringing them to Myranda's dead body, revealing that because Ramsay took all of the guards out of the castle, it gave Sansa Stark the opportunity to escape.

Sansa was their hold on the North, and now Roose shows real anger for possibly the first time, directed at Ramsay. Maybe he pulls a knife on him or threatens that he will spend some time on the flaying rack for this, if he can't get Sansa back, and even then, he is having doubts about Ramsay for this and he's reconsidering if Walda's child should be his heir instead.

As soon as Roose begins giving out orders and is distracted, Ramsay then kills him by stabbing him in the back - realizing that he can't win back Roose's approval after this.

(Some readers suspect Ramsay may have killed Roose already in the books, "off-screen", after the debacle of letting Fake Arya escape)

The Boltons are left with Ramsay in charge, not mastermind Roose, and a substantially smaller army.

If they do all of this in the season premiere, it won't actually be that far removed from the novels -- just an annoying choice of fakeout for shock effect. But I can live with that.