How Should Game of Thrones Kill Its Most Evil Character Ever?

Speculation about how Ramsay Bolton might die reveals the challenges of devising a cathartic TV death—and illuminates a larger issue facing the series.

..This ideal of the villain death—epic, memorable, with a hint of divine design—has informed some of the best antagonist sendoffs on television. Shows likeBreaking Bad, Fargo, Orange Is the New Black,The Wire, and Jessica Jones have all dispatched their Big Bads in ways that felt artful, appropriate, powerful, and original.

..Most shows, including Thrones, cycle through one or two main story arcs with antagonists before getting rid of them—and yet Ramsay has stuck around long enough as a presence so cartoonishly evil that a simple stabbing or poisoning won’t leave most fans feeling vindicated after all they had to suffer through.

..it faces the additional challenge of producing an ending that will fulfill fans’ innate desire for justice. There’s a reason viewers love to watch “evil” characters meet grisly ends onscreen: In addition to offering pure spectacle (an awful king being poisoned at his own wedding in front of hundreds of guests, a drug lord having half his face blown off and walking several feet before collapsing), it affirms the notion that the chaotic, uncaring universe sometimes gets it right. It’s why revenge narratives like Kill Bill, Old Boy, Carrie, Inglourious Basterds, and Memento resonate so viscerally.

.. Ramsay dying in his sleep would be a tragically Martinesque ending for a person who deserves nothing less than eternity in each of the Seven Hells being munched on by the spirits of all the dead Stark direwolves.

Fear trumps hope

Donald Trump is going to be the Republican candidate for the presidency. This is terrible news for Republicans, America and the world

His success, in short, is based on inviting the most exaggeratedly down-in-the-mouth Americans to indulge their meanest instincts. To attend a Trump rally, as hundreds of thousands of Americans now have, is to participate in a ritual enactment of injury and vengeance; an enactment which has, on occasion, done real harm.

.. It is probably only a matter of time before one of the journalists Mr Trump keeps caged up at the back of the rallies gets badly beaten. One of his party tricks is to insult them—“some of the most dishonest people in the world”—and invite his crowds to jeer. From the cage, as opposed to the privacy of his Manhattan office, where Mr Trump is immensely charming, he does not seem solicitous. He seems threatening and vile.

.. On primary day in Indiana he also gave voice to an outlandish slander against Mr Cruz’s father, a well-known evangelical preacher. (He suggested, on the basis of no evidence, that Mr Cruz senior had been involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy: “I mean, what was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”)

.. If Mr Trump’s diagnosis of what ails America is bad, his prescriptions for fixing it are catastrophic.

.. Mr Trump’s economic positions, some of which he rehearsed in his office, are also fantastical. For example, he has pledged to pay down America’s $19 trillion national debt in eight years, while at the same time cutting taxes by $10 trillion. Given that he has also pledged to protect Social Security, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, has estimated that he would have to cut other areas of government by 93% to meet his objective. He disagrees, citing the growth he promises to unleash by improving America’s trade terms and the savings he would make by rendering the government more efficient.

.. Mr Trump has in the past bragged about his many sexual conquests. He has had recourse to bankruptcy law four times. His every speech is littered with lies. By one calculation, 76% of his political statements last year were untrue. In a normal year, his Republican critics would have stopped him; why did they fail?

.. First, though it is a caricature to suggest, as Mr Trump and others have, that the Republicans have long made fools of distressed working-class whites by offering them God, the flag and tax cuts to the rich, it is a caricature with some truth to it. None of Mr Trump’s 16 rivals spoke convincingly to the concerns of wage-distressed workers; none had a thoughtful answer to them.

.. The several recent crises Republican congressmen have engineered over the passage of the federal budget, which they sought to hold hostage to their unrealistic and unconstitutional demands of Mr Obama, have earned the voters’ disdain. In that sense, the Trumpian revolt is not a continuation of the false promise raised by the anti-government Tea Party, but its successor. With Mr Trump’s nomination almost assured, its fires, too, must now rage and burn out.

A New Theory of Trump: “The Punisher”

he works with people who sign contracts featuring non-compete clauses with major corporations. When their time is up and they’re ready to move on, their employers threaten them with legal action due to the non-compete clauses. These claims are without merit, Steve says, but litigating them would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So his people stay where they are. It’s unfair, he says.

What on earth, I asked, does he think Trump would do to help him and his clients with a non-compete problem? What does this have to do with anything? It’s the big guys, Steve said. The big guys are lording it over the little guys.

Now, in no way is Steve a little guy—except by comparison with major corporations. But he feels like the little guy.

.. This illuminated my understanding of the Trump phenomenon. His candidacy is an emotional outlet for his supporters. They have taken his message about “winning” and the “losers” who are running things and doing it badly—and they have applied it to their own circumstances. They could be the children of autoworkers for whom the lifetime employment their fathers (or grandfathers) enjoyed is a nostalgic memory. Or they could be Steve the small businessman, feeling under constant pressure and never able to relax into his own success. They feel beset, and they feel ill-used by the forces that have beset them. Trump is telling them he will fix it, even though his answer to how he will fix it is preposterous. Trade wars and deportations will not work and will have complex consequences we cannot begin to foresee. What’s more, chances are, many of his supporters know this.

.. The rise of global competition, especially in Asia, that beset American industrial production began in the 1960s. The 1960s were half a century ago. The “amnesty” bill that still riles restrictionists was passed 30 years ago. Roe v. Wadewas decided 43 years ago. And yet here we are, in 2016, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

.. And this is why, I think, the meaning of Trump is being misused and misunderstood. He says he wants to “make America great again,” but I don’t think that’s what his acolytes hear. I think they hear that he is going to turn his vicious temper and unbalanced rage on the large-scale forces they feel are hindering them. They want someone punished. Could be China. Could be Muslims. Could be Mexicans. Could be bankers. Could be the GOP “establishment.” Whatever. He’s their Punisher.

.. The Punisher has arrived, eight years later—and the only punishment he will truly deliver will be to his own voters and to the party whose nomination he seeks.