Why the Cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 Changed Everything You Thought You Knew About TV

Honestly, looking back at 2016, it’s wild to think how much pressure was riding on the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6. This was the year the training wheels came off. George R.R. Martin hadn't finished The Winds of Winter—he still hasn't, by the way—so the actors were basically flying blind into territory that even book readers didn't understand. It changed the vibe. You could feel it in the performances; there was this nervous, electric energy because nobody knew if their character was actually safe anymore.

The Resurrection of Jon Snow and Kit Harington’s Best Work

For months, Kit Harington had to lie to everyone's face. He told fans he was just playing a corpse. He told his co-stars he was done. But when Season 6 actually rolled around, the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 was centered entirely around his gasping return to life on a stone slab.

Harington’s performance this season was different. It wasn't just about being the "brooding hero" anymore. He played Jon Snow with this hollow, shell-shocked trauma that felt incredibly real. You see it in the "Battle of the Bastards." When he’s being buried under a pile of bodies, gasping for air, that isn't just acting—that’s a physical manifestation of a character who has literally seen the afterlife and found nothing there.

He didn't have the books to lean on. Neither did the directors. Miguel Sapochnik, who directed the major episodes that year, worked with Harington to make Jon feel more desperate and less like a traditional fantasy protagonist. It worked.

Lena Headey and the Art of the Silent Villain

While the North was freezing, Cersei Lannister was simmering in King's Landing. If you want to talk about the MVP of the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6, you have to talk about Lena Headey. She had almost no dialogue in the finale, "The Winds of Winter," yet she dominated every single second she was on screen.

Think about that sequence at the Great Sept of Baelor.

She isn't even there. She’s just standing on a balcony, sipping wine, wearing that black leather regalia that looked like armor. The way Headey uses her eyes to convey a mix of grief for her children and absolute, murderous triumph is a masterclass. Most actors would have chewed the scenery. She just stared. It was terrifying.

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And then you have the casualties of that scene. The cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 lost some heavy hitters in one green explosion:

• Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell, who was the only one smart enough to realize they were all about to die.
• Jonathan Pryce as the High Sparrow, whose smugness finally met its match in wildfire.
• Finn Jones and Eugene Simon, proving that in Westeros, even the most pious characters aren't safe from a vengeful mother.

The Arrival of Lyanna Mormont: Bella Ramsey’s Breakout

Sometimes a single casting choice changes the entire trajectory of a show. Bella Ramsey was about 12 years old when she stepped onto the set as Lyanna Mormont. She had one scene in Bear Island where she basically had to put Jon Snow and Sansa Stark in their place.

She stole the show.

Usually, child actors in high-fantasy can feel a bit... stiff? Not Ramsey. She had this gravelly authority that made seasoned veterans like Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) look genuinely impressed. It’s funny because she was only supposed to be in one scene, but the producers realized she was gold and kept bringing her back. Without her, the North never would have declared Jon Snow the King in the North.

Peter Dinklage and the Meereen Struggle

Not everything was perfect. We have to be honest here. While the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 delivered some of the best moments in TV history, the Meereen storyline felt like it was spinning its wheels. Peter Dinklage is a genius, but Tyrion Lannister spent a lot of this season telling jokes about drinking and trying to make Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) and Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) laugh.

It felt a bit like the writers didn't know what to do with the smartest man in the world while Daenerys was off riding dragons.

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However, the chemistry between Dinklage and Conleth Hill (Varys) saved those scenes. Their walk-and-talks through the streets of Meereen provided the necessary political context that the show often skipped over in favor of spectacle.

The Hodor Revelation: Kristian Nairn’s Quiet Exit

"Hold the door."

If those three words don't give you chills, you weren't watching. Kristian Nairn had played Hodor for years with a one-word vocabulary. Most people treated him as comic relief or a human forklift for Isaac Hempstead Wright’s Bran Stark.

But in Season 6, the backstory of Wylis becoming Hodor through a paradoxical time-loop was heartbreaking. Nairn’s performance in his final moments—the sheer terror and dedication as he held back the wights—was a reminder that there are no small roles. It remains one of the most emotionally devastating exits for any member of the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6.

Sophie Turner and the Evolution of Sansa Stark

Sansa started the series as a girl who wanted lemon cakes and a handsome prince. By Season 6, Sophie Turner was playing a survivor who had endured the worst of Ramsay Bolton.

The dynamic between Turner and Iwan Rheon (Ramsay) was incredibly dark. Rheon played Ramsay with this twitchy, unpredictable malice that made him the most hated man on television. When Sansa finally feeds him to his own hounds, the look of calm satisfaction on Turner’s face marked the definitive end of her "victim" arc. She became a player in the game.

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Why Season 6 Was a Turning Point for the Ensemble

By this point, the cast was massive. You had Pilou Asbæk joining as Euron Greyjoy, bringing a sort of rock-star-pirate energy that the Iron Islands desperately needed. You had the return of Rory McCann as The Hound, proving that "Cleganebowl" was still a possibility that kept fans up at night.

The sheer scale of the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 meant that the production was essentially filming four different movies at once across multiple countries.

• Spain stood in for the scorching heat of Dorne and the Dothraki Sea.
• Northern Ireland provided the mud and blood of the North.
• Croatia remained the sun-drenched, treacherous home of the Lannisters.

The logistics were a nightmare, but the actors stayed remarkably dialed in. You didn't see the "phoning it in" vibe that sometimes hits long-running shows in their later years.

Real Insights for Fans and Rewatchers

If you're going back to rewatch, pay attention to Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in Braavos. A lot of people hated the "waif" chase sequence. It felt a bit like a Terminator movie. But Williams’ physical commitment to those stunts—jumping off balconies while supposedly blind or recovering from stab wounds—is actually pretty impressive when you realize how much of that she did herself.

Also, keep an eye on the background actors. The "Battle of the Bastards" used hundreds of extras who were trained in basic cavalry and infantry tactics. It wasn't just CGI. The fear on the faces of the soldiers in the "crush" was real—they were packed into a tight space to simulate the claustrophobia of ancient warfare.

What You Should Do Next

If you really want to appreciate the work the cast in Game of Thrones Season 6 put in, stop watching the "best of" clips on YouTube. Instead, find the "Behind the Scenes" features specifically for the episodes "The Door" and "Battle of the Bastards."

See how the prosthetic team worked with Kristian Nairn. Look at the choreography between Kit Harington and the stunt team. It gives you a much deeper appreciation for the technical skill required to pull off a show of this magnitude.

Most importantly, look at the transition of the female leads. Season 6 is the year the women—Cersei, Sansa, Daenerys, and even Lyanna Mormont—took the reigns of power. It wasn't subtle, and the performances reflected that shift from survival to total dominance. That’s the real legacy of this particular cast during this particular year. They moved the needle from "fantasy trope" to "prestige political drama," even if dragons were involved.