If you have not seen Sunday night’s riveting episode of Game of Thrones, do yourself a favor and stop reading now.
In “The Lion and the Rose,” we were treated to the glamorous, star-studded wedding reception of King Joffrey Baratheon, the bastard son of incestuous brother-sister duo Jaime and Cersei Lannister, and Margaery Tyrell, the throne-hungry schemer.
Things didn’t exactly go as planned.
After a carnival of Joffrey-curated insults—a reenactment of The War of the Five Kings with dwarfs that offended everyone in attendance, Joffrey fileting his wedding cake with his new Valyrian steel, Sigur Ros pelted with change, and Tyrion’s repeated degradation—the lip-less boy-king was given a dose of his own medicine. After drinking a goblet of wine (or was it the pie?), the evil lil’ turd went into anaphylactic shock and dropped dead.
Joffrey, played with brilliant precision by the 21-year-old Irish actor Jack Gleeson, is no more. This may also be the last we see onscreen of Gleeson, who announced his plans to retire from acting after Game of Thrones and enter academia (he’s currently a religious studies student at Trinity College, Dublin).
Back in October, Gleeson participated in a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with students from University College Dublin that touched on his acting career, why he’s quitting, and all things Joffrey.
Watch it here:
