When asked to name her favoriteGame of Thronesscene, Sophie Turner didn’t choose a dramatic battle or a pivotal coronation. Instead, she recalled a playful, sibling moment — a scene atGame of Thrones’Winterfellfeast. The sisterly moment reveals a fondness for a time when Sansa was still allowed to be a child — vain, naive, and full of girlish fantasy. But that innocence, like so much of Sansa’s character in the show, would soon be sacrificed.
While theGame of Thronesbooks develop Sansainto a strategic figure who learns to survive, the show often stripped her of agency, folding her arc into brutal storylines borrowed from other characters. Her journey became synonymous with suffering, particularly inGame of Thrones’big season 5 Sansa mistakes. The treatment of the victimized little dove had a troubling pattern of sidelining her perspective and growth, whereas in the books, she has agency and a complex inner world.
Sophie Turner’s Favorite Game Of Thrones Episode Sees Sansa & Arya Squabbling
Arya Flings Pigeon Pie At Sansa In The Scene
A video clip onEntertainment Weeklyshows Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams discussing Turner’s favoriteGame of Thronesscene. Turner tells Williams that her favorite scene is one the Stark sisters share — the feast at Winterfell. In the scene, the Stark family is doing their best to impress their royal visitors from King’s Landing — Robert, Cersei, and Joffrey.Arya embarrasses Sansa by flicking foodat her face. Turner elaborated:
“I remember overacting the hell out of that scene – ‘ARYA!’ – and everyone laughing at me.”
The feast at Winterfell scene was reportedly part of the originalunairedGame of Thronespilot, which was shot a year before the reshoot of episode 1. The food flinging was one of several clips that were repurposed for the finalized season opening. It is touching that this is Sophie Turner’s favorite scene — it’s a typical sister moment between them, and you may see the actresses’ friend chemistry forming.
Sansa’s Game Of Thrones Character Arc Sees Her Go From A Spoiled Child To Queen
Sansa Represents A Different Kind Of Female Strength
In season 1, viewers see a naive and starry-eyed Sansa, the“little dove”Cersei addresses. She is contrasted with Arya as morestereotypically girlish and spoiled, with one of her first lines in the series being,“I would be queen someday, please make father say yes, please, please, that’s all I ever wanted!”She seems to believe in the fairytale version of being a queen. The favorite scene Turner describes is incredibly revealing in this regard, showing Cersei’s own marital resentment poorly concealed by a smile as she assesses Sansa as a match for her son.
Throughout the show, Sansa experiences endless abuse, making her berate her own childhood royal aspirations as those of a“stupid little girl with stupid dreams who never learns.”However, by the later seasons, she is not the same person because of her horrible experiences. Even Arya admits that she never could have survived what Sansa survived. She considers herself strong for her trauma, as she reveals by telling the Hound,“Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and all the rest, I would have stayed a little bird all my life.”
Sansa Deserved An Arc Not So Rooted In Trauma
Sansa Uses Her Innocent Demeanor To Her Advantage In The Books
Although Sansa’s revelation that her trauma has ultimately freed her from a naive and caged existence is incredibly moving, it also has its problems. The key issue with Sansa’s character arc is that it is blended with Jeyne Poole, undermining a lot of her characterization in George R. R. Martin’s books. Instead of a dramatic visual transformation as in the show, books Sansa learns relatively early to use her perceived innocence and naivete to her advantage.
In contrast, show Sansa is continually put in situations where she is powerless. In particular, her rape in season 5, episode 6, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"reduced her growing agencyto a narrative device for someone else’s development. After seasons of evolving into a more self-possessed character, her story is violently hijacked and reframed through Theon’s perspective, sidelining her trauma in favour of his potential redemption.
The scene reveals nothing new about Ramsay, offers no meaningful progression for Sansa herself, and feels exploitative, especially given that her suffering is used primarily to motivate others. It reflects a broader failure in the show’s handling of sexual violence: deploying it not to explore character depth or power dynamics, but as a shocking catalyst that strips a central female character of her momentum and complexity.
Her ruthless and calculating attitude comes across as an overcompensation…
While it is satisfying to see Sansa become Queen in the North in season 8, despiteGame of Thrones’controversial Bran twist, her ruthless and calculating attitude comes across as an overcompensation for her dramatically disempowered characterization earlier in the show. Instead of learning from her experiences as she seems to in the books, she comes across as more power-hungry and backstabbing, primarily motivated by her trauma. It makes sense to make her more savvy and pragmatic, but theGame of Thronesshowrunners went overboard, and undermined her complexity in the process.
