Game of Thronesreally did its youngest Stark dirty. Despite sharing the last name withGame of Thrones’primary protagonist house, Rickon (Art Parkinson) was never really treated as a Stark by the show. Outshone by the brilliance of his parents and siblings, Rickon Stark always came off as a flat, one-dimensional character. Granted, Starks in the show have been prone to early death, but all of them — Rob (Richard Madden), Ned (Sean Bean), and Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) — have left behind an imposing legacy of their own, and even in their demise they went down in a blaze of glory,shocking and traumatizing the audience, leaving behind a lingering effect.
Rickon’s story, however, only ever served as a cautionary tale to remind people to zigzag when there are arrows trailing behind them. His character failed to connect with the audience in life or death, and nothing he said or did throughout the course of his six seasons-long journey could justify his existence in the show.
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Rickon Was Seen as Key to the North in the Books
Unlike the show, however, the book’s version of Rickon has discernable qualities and political significance. For one, he is the wildest and the most undisciplined Stark child, a trait he shares with his untamed direwolf, Shaggydog. He is implied to have some form of green-dreaming abilities like his brother Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) as both of them had prophetic dreams about their father’s death. More importantly though, in the aftermath ofthe Red Weddingand Bolton’s sacking of Winterfell, Rickon is at the heart of an important Northern storyline. Since Bran is believed to have died in the books (though he is alive and north of the wall) Rickon is seen as an important political figure to gain stronghold over the North. At the end of the last book,A Dance with Dragons,Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton) is still ruling the North, but his new subjects are eager to get rid of him. And they’re brewing a Grand Northern Conspiracy to remove the Boltons.
Stanis (Stephen Dillane) is also alive and at the wall, planning to overthrow Boltons. To this end, Davos (Liam Cunningham) has traveled all the way to the North to rally the Northern lords behind Stannis' cause, and there he learns from Lord Wyman Manderly that Rickonmight actually be alive. Now, Lord Manderly agrees to help Stannis, but first, he wants Rickon brought back so that he and other Northern lords can unite under the figurehead of Rickon Stark. Rickon is believed to be in the Skagos Island — where people supposedly eat human flesh and ride unicorns — with his direwolf Shaggydog and the wildling Osha (Natalia Tena). Jon even has a dream where he sees Shaggydog fighting with a unicorn. And that’s where the books have left Rickon, on the savage island of Skagos, where he’s been for the past three years, and one can only imagine how the brutality of the island has shaped up an already wild Rickon.
Rickon’s Journey Turned Into a Shaggydog Story in the Show
The tragedy with Rickon in the show is that the showrunners entirely resigned any possibility of his character arc and growth without ever making an attempt. They couldn’t even be bothered to flesh him out as a character. The wildness and stubbornness that was core to Rickon in the books was removed in the show and every other scene he appeared in made him come off as whiny. And under the pressing politics and thrilling warfare that hooked the viewers, Rickon’s nagging nature came off as a nuisance. In the end, Rickon’s story, in the show, amounted to little more than the name of his direwolf, culminating his arc into a shaggy dog story. Ashaggy dog story is a narrative tropethat takes a character through a very complex journey only to end on an anti-climatic note.
And Rickon did go through a complicated journey. He gets fake murdered by Theon (Alfie Allen), journeys across the wall with Bran and company, goes back to Winterfell with Osha seeking asylum from the Umbers, gets betrayed and sold off to Ramsay, and ends up dead because he couldn’t zigzag through the fields. Though his journey was long, he had few meaningful lines and almost no actions that made any significant impact on the story. He was merely an appendage to the larger story of Bran. Given the one-dimensionality of his character with almost no discernable personality quirks or backstory, even his death failed to make an emotional impact, being treated merely as an afterthought to the overall devastation ofthe Battle of the Bastards. It was only after his death that Rickon was even treated with the dignity of a Stark — being buried in the crypts beside the rest of his family — a dignity he was deprived of while alive.
Rickon Stark Was Destined to Disappoint
It’s now clear that the showrunners were unsure of what to do with Rickon as a character from the very onset. During an interview in the bookFire Cannot Kill a Dragon, George R. R. Martin revealed that when he first met withDavid WeissandDavid Benioffto talk about the adaptation of his books, they proposed removing Rickon’s character since he didn’t do much in the first book. But Martin was strongly opposed to the idea, claiming that he had important plans for Rickon in the later books. Towards the latter seasons, however, the show heavily trimmed down some of the majorstorylines from the booksand compressed them into a few seasons. As a result, the grand setup that Martin was aiming for Rickon was lost on the show. The last released book meticulously laid down the foundations for the Battle of Winterfell between the Boltons and a united North. The slow and measured build-up around this inevitable battle was greeted with much excitement by the fans, and Rickon was meant to be at the center stage of it all.
But by season 5, the show had surpassed the source material it was adapting from, and the showrunners decided to move ahead with their own version of the story which resulted in the omission of the overall Grand Northern Conspiracy. This left Rickon without a clear purpose, and in the end, he became just another meaningless addition to Ramsay’s (Iwan Rheon) kill list. There were plenty of characters that suffered as a by-product of the show exceeding the books with many of them getting dumbed down or even ignoring the very essence of their personhood. But at least we got to see most of these characters in their glory days, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) with his wits intact and Arya (Maisie Williams) with her compelling journey. Rickon however never had such a luxury. From the onset, he was a character doomed to disappoint.
