George R.R. Martin Might Kill Two Beloved Game Of Thrones Characters Who Survived The Show

This piece contains spoilers for "Game of Thrones."

By the time "Game of Thrones" concluded in 2019, a lot of bodies had piled up, including Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), Cersei Lannister and her twin and lover Jaime (Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and a whole bunch of other folks unlucky enough to die before the story wrapped up. Now, author George R.R. Martin is threatening more carnage ... though said carnage would require him to ever finish "The Winds of Winter," so I wouldn't necessarily hold your breath.

"I was going to kill more people," Martin said of his intended conclusion in the books (per The Hollywood Reporter), which played out on the small screen courtesy of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. "Not the ones they killed [in the show]. They made it more of a happy ending. I don't see a happy ending for Tyrion. His whole arc has been tragic from the first. I was going to have Sansa die, but she's been so appealing in the show, maybe I'll let her live ..."

Wait, what?!

I'll back up a bit. Tyrion Lannister and Sansa Stark, two massive fan-favorites on both "Game of Thrones" and in Martin's novel series "A Song of Ice and Fire," played by Peter Dinklage and Sophie Turner, respectively, both make it to the end of the TV series. In fact, compared to a lot of the other two characters, they get "happy" endings (more on that in a second). Martin is an author and creator known for his relentless carnage; a popular joke about "Game of Thrones" has always been that you shouldn't bother picking a favorite character because they'll probably just die anyway. Still, knowing that Martin has these two in his sights is ... shocking, to say the least.

When Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister first cross paths in the TV adaptation of "Game of Thrones," it's in the show's first season when the Lannisters visit Winterfell, the ancestral home of House Stark. Tyrion and Sansa don't interact, but after Ned heads to King's Landing and brings Sansa along so she can get engaged to Tyrion's evil nephew Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson), they're forced into each other's orbits.

Tyrion valiantly protects Sansa whenever Joffrey feels like being atrocious (which he usually does), and in the show's third season, a new development makes everything stranger. Joffrey casts Sansa aside in favor of a new fiancée (Natalie Dormer's shrewd and beautiful Lady Margaery Tyrell), but the Lannisters still want to control the Northern territories of Westeros through Sansa, so they decide that she'll marry Tyrion. Both Sansa and Tyrion are, to put it lightly, horrified by this, but they do as they're told (though Tyrion refuses to consummate the marriage, showing some strange situational grace to Sansa on their wedding night). The two become friends and unlikely allies as husband and wife until Sansa receives word that the Lannisters had a large swath of her family killed during the now-infamous event known as the Red Wedding, and when Sansa escapes King's Landing after Joffrey is murdered, the two remain apart until the end of the show. 

Tyrion, despite being a political prisoner, gets to choose the next leader of Westeros (?!) and inexplicably picks Sansa's brother Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), while Sansa becomes Queen in the North. I guess George R.R. Martin might have other plans for them, though ... if he ever finishes his books.

In that same interview with THR, George R.R. Martin said writing "The Winds of Winter" is ... not going very well. "I will open the last chapter I was working on and I'll say, 'Oh f***, this is not very good.' And I'll go in and I'll rewrite it," he revealed. "Or I'll decide, 'This Tyrion chapter is not coming along, let me write a Jon Snow chapter.' If I'm not interrupted though, what happens — at least in the past — is sooner or later, I do get into it." He also revealed that he wrote a "Tyrion chapter" that he loved that would end up changing the entire narrative — he didn't say why — which is likely now on the cutting room floor. When interviewer James Hibberd suggested Martin could give up, he said no: "I would hate that. It would feel like a total failure to me. I want to finish."

Martin also said he's interested in writing other "Game of Thrones" and "A Song of Ice and Fire" stuff instead of "The Winds of Winter," including "more 'Dunk and Egg'" (referring to the source material for HBO's newest "Game of Thrones" series, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms") and "another 'Fire and Blood' book" (which is the basis for the Targaryen-centric spin-off "House of the Dragon"). "It's been made clear to me that 'Winds' is the priority, but ... I don't know. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that," Martin said, likely bumming out fans across the world. For now, at least, it seems like Sansa and Tyrion are safe — and you can watch those characters on "Game of Thrones" on HBO Max now.