Major spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 7 ‘The Broken Man’…
You knew something was going on when Game of Thrones this week gave us its first ‘pre-credits’ sequence, essentially, which introduced not just Ian McShane for a special guest appearance but reintroduced someone almost nobody expected to see again (well, unless you’re one of those fans who look at the set pictures, because if you are then nothing this year has surprised you!). In short, David Benioff & D.B. Weiss this week proved the long held ‘Gravedigger theory’, which I invite you to explore in detail by watching Alt-Shift X’s excellent video on the subject, is real. Sort of. We’ll talk about the cliff notes of the theory going forward but what’s interesting is the ripple effect that discovering Sandor ‘the Hound’ Clegane is alive and well could trigger, and how his reappearance in the tapestry of the series may be a brief but hugely entertaining chapter in the show, which may lead into the final major element from George R.R. Martin’s books the series hasn’t yet covered.
Let’s first remind ourselves of who the Hound is, where we previously left him, and what the ‘Gravedigger’ theory is. Sandor Clegane, played with ferocious intensity by Rory McCann, began the series as a skilled warrior in the service of the Lannister’s, known to all as ‘the Hound’ due to the horrendous facial scarring he suffered as a boy at the hands of his brother, Ser Gregor Clegane aka ‘The Mountain’, the most feared warrior knight in all of Westeros. Sandor grew up to enjoy the cruelty visited upon him, to enjoy killing, and though he does so as a hired mercenary rather than flouting the law like his brother, he hates the knighthood and chivalry bestowed upon his brother by the Targaryen’s before Robert’s Rebellion. Sandor ends up serving King Robert and early in season one, his true murderous colours are revealed when he kills Mycah, a childhood friend of Arya Stark, after an altercation with Prince Joffrey. This is important, as while Sandor ultimately helps her sister Sansa Stark during the battle of the Blackwater, after deserting the Lannister’s and the Kingsguard following almost losing his life, Arya never forgets his act of savagery and it almost serves to be his undoing.
Before we get to that, there’s a key element to Sandor’s journey we ought to remember: his capture by the Brotherhood Without Banners, the supposedly ‘good’ force of outlaws in the Riverlands working to protect the ‘small folk’ during the War of Five Kings, led by the undead former Lord Beric Dondarrion, who’s sending out to apprehend Sandor’s brother Gregor by Eddard Stark, as the Mountain ravaged the countryside, essentially led to the Brotherhood coming into being. They put him on trial for Mycah’s murder and he ultimately fights and bests the undead Beric, no thanks to the magic of Red Priest Thoros of Myr, part of the Brotherhood.
Sandor ultimately is released following winning his trial by combat, and takes Arya hostage which leads to several seasons of the Hound desperately trying to ransom the Stark girl off to whatever power he can, while at the same time coming to respect and protect her. It doesn’t stop Arya leaving him for dead after his brutal (and kickass) battle with Brienne of Tarth at the end of season four, but there’s a sense Sandor has changed due to travelling with Arya, even if he won’t admit it. When he’s left to die on a mountain pass near the Vale, you always got a sense Sandor’s story wasn’t done and even though many wondered if he might return as a White Walker down the road, the fact the ‘Gravedigger’ theory has proven to be more or less true makes a lot more sense, and establishes some major possible threads for the future.
In Martin’s book, A Feast For Crows, while Brienne is on her seemingly endless journey around the Riverlands with Podrick (seriously, it goes on *forever*) she rocks up on an island called the Quiet Isle, which contains a monastery where she meets an Elder Brother of the Faith who not only claims rumours the Hound–who at this point has died, not at Brienne’s hand, but in similar circumstances–is roaming the countryside killing & raping are false, but that the Hound died in his arms. Brienne however sees a man digging graves around the isle, a novice monk, and it’s heavily hinted in Martin’s prose and dialogue that the ‘Gravedigger’ is infact Sandor Clegane, and that his death may well have been metaphorical, the passing of his old life into a pious, quiet one digging graves as penance for all the lives he took.
Now Sandor’s reappearance in ‘The Broken Man’ veers quite differently from these events, but there are similarities; McShane’s Brother Ray found him dying, nursed him back to health, took him to a commune of small folk building their own chapel to the Faith, and despite his tragic and disturbing demise seemingly at the Brotherhood’s hand, the Hound had started to consider a more earthy, redemptive, less hateful path of peace. In many respects, it’s a similar arc, and where the Hound goes from here may be even more exciting.
Firstly, it looks for all the world like he’s going after those swarthy Brotherhood types who, without a war left to fight, may have become the very murderers & pillagers they banded together to fight. There are rumours we may be seeing Thoros of Myr again this season and given the murderers of Ray’s commune appeared to be servants of the Red God, and Thoros is a Red Priest who can bring back people from the dead, is it a stretch that Benioff & Weiss may use the Hound’s revenge to introduce one Lady Stoneheart? That’s a whole other article discussing who she is, but in essence she’s an undead, terrifying Catelyn Stark using the Brotherhood to exact the vengeance she was robbed off after the Red Wedding. Lately we’ve seen a lot of callbacks to that unforgettable event, including the return of Walder Frey and the Blackfish, and just this week we had another mention of Catelyn’s death, so might we finally be getting the last major piece from the books? It’s possible.
The bigger possibility however is that ‘Cleganebowl’, another fan theory explained in the Alt Shift-X Gravedigger video, may almost now certainly happen, and by goodness you better hope that’s the case. It’s essentially a fight to end all fights between the Clegane brothers, and the seeds have been sowed for this to go down; Cersei Lannister has the FrankenMountain (as he is now) primed as her champion for the trial by combat the Faith Militant are set to subject her to, and she’s convinced he’s gonna walk it against the Faith’s own fighter. What if their fighter turns out to be Sandor? Let’s face it, he saw the goodness of the Faith after he was essentially saved by it, and may now consider that the purpose Ray mentioned the Gods have for him – to fight and possibly die defending the Faith against the Lannister’s, and especially a brother who caused all the hate and pain he has spent a lifetime suffering. Can you imagine how epic that fight would be? Whatever you’re thinking, I bet the reality would be even cooler.
In any event, the reappearance of the Hound makes a lot of sense in terms of not just his own character arc, a redemptive story the seeds of which were sown several years ago, but also to serve several greater stories in the fabric of the closing chapter of Game of Thrones. We may only be right on some of them. We may get them all wrong and be totally surprised. Right now, let’s just drink in the fact the Hound is back, as mean and fighting fit as ever, because the show really hasn’t quite been the same without him. Good dog!
Tony Black is a freelance film/TV writer & podcaster & would love you to follow him on Twitter.
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