For this video, I wanted to put a bit of a
spotlight onto Bella Ramsey since she’s doing a great job in The Last of Us and I wanted to go
back and analyze what she did so well as Lyanna Mormont. Initially, she was supposed to be a
one-off character, and somehow she was able to convince David and Dan to give her more scenes
and even a major one at the end of season 6. Along with becoming a recurring character afterwards.
This is a rare feat in shows and essentially means that the actor was so good to the point that
they changed the minds of the writers. Another example of this was Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad.
Jessie was supposed to die in season 1, but Vince Gilligan was convinced through Aaron’s performance
that there was something missing within the show. From there he became an integral character and
even ended up getting his own spinoff movie. Now even though Lyanna Mormont isn’t as important as
Jessie was, Game of Thrones is an inherently big show with dozens of characters so it could have
been really easy for David and Dan to have dropped her and there wouldn't have been a major impact.
So that means that she’d have to be even more impressive to push past any potential competition
for screen time. For Lyanna Mormont, Let’s identify the core internal and external reasons as
to why she turned out to be such a good character. Starting out with the internal factor, we have
the performance of Bella Ramsey. Game of Thrones has had some amazing child actors and I won’t
go so far to say that Bella Ramsey is the best, but I think she stands out because of how
well she fits into the mold of Lyanna’s badass persona. It’s really hard for a child to
command this much respect and to be this bold, and it could have easily of not worked. That’s why
to me she’s so distinct and must be why David and Dan wanted to extend her presence within the show.
But let’s look specifically at what Bella Ramsey does to achieve this. Acting wise what sticks out
the most is her usage of inflection and the volume of her voice. She intentionally puts a lot of
emphasis on certain words to further punctuate a character beat. Along with using this louder shift
in volume to be more commanding and to stand above the other characters who are more hesitant to
speak louder. It erupts her onto the scene where she breaks the tradition of making a bit of small
talk and cutting to the chase with why they are there. I think a clever thing that Bryan Cogman
does with the script was having Lyanna interrupt characters on multiple occasions when she starts
talking. It creates this brief moment that catches the characters off guard and immediately
establishes that we are playing by Lyanna’s rules. She’s essentially in charge of this scene.
Another small moment that geniusly sets up a more independent and intelligent characteristic for
Lyanna is the fact that she chooses to confide in her maester for information, but the second
he approaches her without approval she waives him off. Just a very efficient bit of writing and to
be honest this is one of those rare well-written scenes of the later seasons. Then there are even
some instances of subtle cinematography that aid the notion that Lyanna is in charge. For this
shot, the composition places Jon on the right side of the frame and there’s a lot of space behind
him. Since there is barely any room ahead of him It gives off a claustrophobic presence in front of
him and it feels like he’s talking into a wall or there being opposition ahead of him. This breaks
the normal shot composition of having leading room ahead of someone talking. And then the shot
after this where it cuts to a close-up of Jon as he’s speaking, we assume that we are going to
stay on this shot for a while, but we don’t when Lyanna interrupts him and we quickly cut away.
So between these two shots, we break tradition in footage to establish Lyanna as being in control.
Now I said I was going to talk specifically about Bella Ramsey’s acting, but I think it’s important
to point out the other aspects of production that aid her in this scene. It all comes together to
make a strong introduction for her character. This scene may not require a ton of range emotionally
from Bella Ramsey, but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable. As especially shown in The Last of
Us where she goes through an entire gambit of emotions that she effortlessly breezes through.
She perfectly does the task she was given in Game of Thrones and if anything does an even better
job than what was expected. She doesn’t come off as trying too hard to be intimidating and her
attitude in this scene is smart and calculated. She’s not being overly emotional and it feels
like everything she’s saying has purpose. And even though she’s interrupting characters, it
never comes across as that disrespectful because she’s normally the one prioritizing what should be
discussed in the conversation and is smart enough to see that this attempt at small talk is futile.
Looking at her final scene of season 6, she gives a rousing speech that leads into the climax of
Jon’s entire season arc. Like that’s honestly an insane upgrade from being a one-off character to
one that has to build up the hype to announce Jon Snow as being King of the North. And I think she
nails this scene really well. Again her usage of inflection is very particular and detailed, but I
also love how much she pauses between some of her lines. It creates a sense of dramatic buildup
for her delivery to have even more of a punch when she’s calling out different lords for not
showing up to the Battle of the Bastards. Then the writing aids her acting because she’s able to
escalate a recurring phrase throughout the scene. It’s as if she’s embodying a viper as she strikes
down each one of her victims and then she caps off the moment with a triumphant approval of Jon Snow.
In season 8 we have the mirror of this scene which is kind of a nice moment, but it feels a little
cheap that David and Dan are essentially copying this moment from season 6 but it’s in reverse.
Along with it being pretty unreasonable that the North is mad at him for leaving temporarily
to get reinforcements to fight the Night King. Which was completely necessary, but going into all
that would be getting off-topic. Bella Ramsey’s acting has well-timed character beats, is able
to captivate an entire room of people with her commanding voice, and she’s able to come across
as simultaneously intelligent and giving off a crazy amount of confidence that really shouldn’t
be possible for a child to portray. And the fact that a child actor is able to achieve all of this
and so much more is extremely impressive. So I think she perfectly executes the character
Lyanna Mormont from an acting standpoint. Looking at the more external reasons for
why Lyanna Mormont is a good character, there are quite a few. Firstly, I think one of
the most important factors is that she symbolizes what the later seasons lack so much which are more
new characters. David and Dan in general for the later seasons wanted to minimize new characters
and focused primarily on the pre-existing ones. Instead of committing to a 10-season goal that
George and HBO wanted, David and Dan opted to rush through the finish line with 8 seasons that were
also shortened. An example of them not introducing new characters is them reducing plotlines in Dorne
and the Iron Islands. For those two areas, there were much bigger conflicts within the books that
also brought about more characters. Like it would have been much cooler if we saw more greyjoys in
the Iron Islands that Euron could kill to make him more intimidating. This all highlights a core
issue within the later seasons of game of thrones in which instead of retaining the big scale of
Westeros that the first 4 seasons had, David and Dan subtly reduced it by not making more
additions. So this makes the inclusion and high quality of Lyanna Mormont that much more important
because she’s a representation of the expansion within the world that should have been more
abundant. From the characters that they did add, Lyanna Mormont is the best in my opinion.
Now you’d think that wouldn’t be the case but try to think about what new characters
David and Dan added in seasons 6,7, and 8 who were better. You basically just have Euron
Greyjoy, Lady Crane, Randyll Tarly, Dickon Tarly, Archmaester Ebrose, Robett Glover, and the
most important character Captain Strickland. Between these characters, the only one that really
stands out is Randyll Tarly and you could make a case for liking him more than Lyanna because
of his complicated relationship with Samwell, but I still like Lyanna more because she has more
to offer in comparison. Lyanna is essentially a gateway into us seeing more of the world of
Westeros. We’ve never been to bear island before and house mormont is pretty important considering
that Sir Jorah and Geor Mormont play big roles in the overall story. This is the content that
should be elaborated on. Show us more northern houses and flesh everyone out. Especially on each
side of the coin. Because looking at the Battle of the Bastards, Jon Umber and Harald Karstark were
basically background characters who had minuscule character work. It’s just wild to me that Lyanna
Mormont is one of the only new characters that has tangible personality traits and is tied in with
the plot. Like even Lord Glover who I thought had some good scenes in season 6 ended up getting
tossed into the bin for season 8. He apparently doesn’t show up and there are no consequences
for that since it’s never revisited. Unless if the Night King attacked him first, but if the
Night King hit every Northern Kingdom north of Winterfell then that would have taken ages. So it
sucks how David and Dan are shrinking the size of the cast and Robett Glover could have easily been
a character to pad out the deaths for The Long Night. When you look at the earlier seasons of the
show, you had a much better roster of characters and they also made massive decisions that affected
the story. An example being Rickard Karstark murdering some Lannister boys that then prompted
Rob Stark to execute him which then alienated the Karstark army. And that even leads into Rob Stark
having to stoop so low as to ask help from the Freys. Like would you look at that, characters
making big choices that drastically impact what happens. Lyanna doesn’t really have any major
decisions and is mostly along for the ride, but at least her character achieves the bare
minimum for some form of representation of the North. She’s entertaining not just because
of Bella Ramsey’s captivating performance, but because it gives you a small ounce of
expansion for the north. If we had her and like 3 other prominent northern lords then hey,
maybe we’d be able to have more engaging dialogue scenes within Winterfell. Similar to the scene
where Lyanna is talking to Ser Jorah Mormont. Another reason why Bella Ramsey worked so well
as Lyanna Mormont was the irony of her stature, power, bravery, and pure big balls as a
kid. In comparison to the other grizzled and battle-hardened characters of the North, she
blew them away in terms of her chad-like energy. It made her shutting down these seemingly tough
individuals that much more satisfying and boosted her up as being more likable. It basically set her
character up as being inherently entertaining from a writing standpoint and then Bella Ramsey took
that character and brought it to life with great expertise. And I also love how she’s not afraid to
get her hands dirty and wants to become a warrior. It further gives off an angle of feministic
empowerment because if this little girl is ready to fight and isn’t scared then surely you should
not be. It’s also interesting how David and Dan made a more obvious version of this notion
with this random extra girl wanting to fight after this guy was scared to fight. It kind of
bashes this message into your face and I think it worked perfectly well through Lyanna Mormont as
a character and they didn’t need to spell it out for the audience. Not to mention this girl doesn’t
show up again. So this feels like a deleted scene and the point they’re making here is made very
clear in the next episode through Lyanna Mormont taking down a giant. Lyanna has one of the most
badass death scenes in the entire show because of this. And this is really the only good moment
in the entirety of The Long Night because it’s the irony of the smallest character bringing
down the biggest opponent on the battlefield. Although it’s questionable as to why this giant
would pick up Lyanna and stare at her like this, but whatever, it makes for a good moment if
you don’t question anything. So in essence, I think her character is inherently likable
because of how much she embodies a warrior which is also a common trend in game of thrones. Like
through Brienne of Tarth and Arya Stark. However, it’s just as commendable in Lyanna
because of how much younger she is. For the last external factor, that benefits Lyanna
Mormont, she offers a good contrast in comparison to the other child characters. For those child
characters we have Joffrey who is a mad and unhinged brat, Sansa who is in constant turmoil
and very slowly over time learns the nature of politicking, Bran was a curious adventurer
turned into a depressed child who finally finds purpose in life, Arya who is similar
to Lyanna in that she wants to be a warrior, but she has a gaping hole in her heart as
she looks for people to bond to. Lyanna is the most adult-like child out of this bunch
and seeing these qualities within a child is rare. Making her leadership qualities and
other confident aspects tied to her character that much more fun to watch. She doesn’t feel
like a redundant character because of this and she is able to offer a unique perspective in
the already massive world of game of thrones. To me, Lyanna Mormont is one of the only new
characters past season 5 that isn’t written poorly. The fact that Bella Ramsey was able
to succeed so well at being a compelling and mature kid who comes across as a leader was
impressive. I’ll also do a video on Oberyn Martell since Pedro Pascal also happens
to be in The Last of Us. In hindsight, I probably should have started with him
since he’s a more popular character, but I’ll get to it. Thank you for
watching as always and have a good day.
