Game Of Thrones Cut The Most Horrifying Part Of The Mountain’s Reanimation

While Game of Thrones cut out key details of The Mountain’s reanimation, here’s some chilling information about the undead Gregor in ASOIAF.

Game of Thrones left out the dark secret of The Mountain’s reanimation performed by ex-maester Qyburn. His dramatic transformation occurs after King Joffrey Baratheon’s assassination. When Tyrion is wrongly accused of regicide, he decides not to leave his fate into the hands of a bigoted few but demands a trial by combat. Cersei Lannister appoints Gregor Clegane aka The Mountain as the Crown’s champion, and Prince Oberyn Martell volunteers to fight on behalf of Tyrion Lannister in the hopes of exacting revenge against Clegane who’d killed his sister, Elia and her children during the sack of King’s Landing.

Gregor Clegane and Oberyn Martell’s epic showdown occurs in Game of Thrones season 4. Oberyn acts with remarkable agility and injures Gregor in his chest, Achilles tendon and stomach with his poisonous spear. However, things take a drastic turn in the final moments of the combat when a seemingly dead Gregor manages to knock overconfident Oberyn off his feet and bashes his skull with his bare hands. The duel culminates in Oberyn’s death with The Mountain’s wounded body beside him. In the following events, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister entrusts The Mountain’s mortally wounded body to her loyal aide Qyburn.

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Cersei Gives Qyburn Women To Torture For The Mountain’s Reanimation In ASOIAF

Game of Thrones held back on Qyburn’s nefarious and inhuman medical procedure, but author George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire provides some information about how the undead Gregor came to be. An ex-maester with a tainted past record, Qyburn was expelled from the Citadel for conducting unethical human experimentation and for “dabbling in necromancy.” Martin also mentions Qyburn’s know-how of “the black arts” and “black magic,” and it’s pretty obvious he utilizes these branches of knowledge to create a zombie-esque and somewhat undead, mute version of The Mountain named Ser Robert Strong.

Qyburn continues to study The Mountain and concludes that Oberyn had treated his spear with manticore venom thickened with a magic spell to prolong his opponent’s death. Though ASOIAF plays coy about the reanimation’s precise details, Qyburn asks for women in his procedure, and Game of Thrones‘ Cersei Lannister agrees. He performs agonizing experiments on Cersei’s former handmaiden, Senelle, two puppeteers and Lady Falyse Stokeworth. His procedure renders the puppeteers “quite used up” and Lady Stokeworth half-dead. When Cersei inquires about Falyse, Qyburn remarks she “…is no longer capable of ruling Stokeworth. Or, indeed, of feeding herself.” The reanimation comes at a human cost and neither Qyburn nor Cersei show remorse.

How The Mountain’s Book Fate Will Be Different To Game Of Thrones

A fan theory postulated that Gregor and his younger brother Sandor (The Hound) would face off against each other in Cersei’s trial against the faith militant, but the show took another route. The Mountain served as Cersei’s bodyguard until his demise in Season 8, episode 5, “The Bells.” The penultimate Game of Thrones episode is noted for Cleganebowl, i.e. the showdown that sent The Mountain and The Hound into fiery depths. They confronted each other on a narrow staircase during Daenerys’ torching of King’s Landing. While Sandor deserved a better ending on account of his character development, Gregor was given an easy death for his unspeakable crimes.

The Clegane brothers’ backstory is key to understanding why a detailed face-off is crucial in ASOIAF. Their hatred stemmed from Gregor’s childhood cruelty and the infamous burning incident due to which Sandor retained a fear of fire. Gregor had burned off Sandor’s face by holding it over flames for playing with one of his discarded toys. The dream of Cleganebowl as a climatic duel may come to fruition if the books are finished. There’s still hope that Martin writes a better arc for the brothers, which is longer in screen time than their anti-climactic end on Game of Thrones.

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