While the Game of Thrones TV series has already strayed far from the story told in the novels, it made a shocking jump in a different direction when Ser Barristan was killed off in a shocking ending scene to this past Sunday’s episode – the fourth of season 5. The actor, Ian McElhinney, who plays Barristan was just as blown away when he found out his character’s fate. He has read the books, and told the Huffington Post that he was “shocked” to read of Barristan’s death. He even went to the writers to argue in favor of Barristan staying in the story.

“I did talk to them about it. I gave some arguments of my own why I thought Barristan was kind of important in Daenerys’ story, important enough that he should stay in Daenerys story, and he didn’t.” McElhinney didn’t stop there, continuing with, “At the end of the day, it’s up to Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff]. Their decision was a lot of what happens to Daenerys in this series is sort of predicated a bit on what happens to Barristan, so there you go. It’s their call at the end of the day, so you kind of have to accept whatever the decision is, but I did certainly sort of ask them further about it.”

Jacob Anderson plays Grey Worm, a soldier who fights along-side Barristan in the final fight scene where Barristan dies. Grey Worm is left in very bad shape, but the scene ends with him lying wounded on the ground, although not yet dead. Anderson told the Huffington Post his thoughts when reading the final scene: “It was like a mix of excitement and fear. I was excited because I was going to get to do another fight … and also there’s a slight fear of, you know, I don’t know what happens at the end. I was reading it like, I don’t know how this is gonna end, you know? It was left on a cliffhanger.”