HBOUprooting the Rose is about to join the Red Wedding in pop culture vernacular. Warning, Game of Thrones spoilers for the season six finale are ahead.
In the season finale, Cersei (Lena Headey), well, blew everything up. Literally.
"When you blow up a huge number of cast members in a single moment, you don't want it to be completely random. It feels like it's got to be earned and it feels like it's got to be something that belongs to the world," executive producer David Benioff said in the behind the scenes video below. "It's tough. It's like the Red Wedding. It's tough to say goodbye to a lot of actors we've been working with for quite some time."
The moment where Cersei Lannister finally got her revenge with the help of Wildfire took Headey by surprise too.
"I just couldn't have seen all of that—I knew there was revenge to be had, obviously from last year, I'm still like this is crazy," she said. "It's like this pure enjoyment of wiping out all of them."
But Cersei taking the Iron Throne came at quite a cost (and not just the body count of enemies).
"She has a plan and she executes that plan flawlessly, except for one major wrinkle. The very person she wanted to protect most in the world is lost as a direct result of her actions," Bryan Cogman, supervising producer and writer, said about Tommen Baratheon's (Dean-Charles Chapman) suicide.
"What we were trying to do in this scene was to show something die inside of her. The prophecy has come true, she's seen all of her children die. The thing that kept her going for so long is gone," Game of Thrones writer Dave Hill explained. "She finally gets her heart's desire, the Iron Throne, at the same time she's lost almost everything she cared about to get it. There's that look between her and Jamie, which is enigmatic, which hints at season seven drama to unfold. But she is at the end of season six colder and stronger and queen of the Seven Kingdoms."
This presents a new dangerous factor in Cersei.
"Now you have this woman who, I don't know if its crazed, it's think it's just empty, which is probably more dangerous," Headey said.