All Bets Are Off For Season Five Of ‘Game Of Thrones,’ As Far As George R.R. Martin Is Concerned

Warning: This article may contain spoilers for Games of Thrones fans.

Fans of Game of Thrones should be used to the bloody deaths of their favorite characters, but even hardcore readers of the A Song of Ice and Fire series upon which Game of Thrones is based will be in for some shocking surprises in the show’s fifth season, if Mr. Martin is to be believed.

While speaking at the Writers Guild West Awards, Mr. Martin said that the HBO program based on his books is now outdoing the body counts of his own novels. George warns fans to “be on their toes” and expect the unexpected with a storyline that will have a grand total of four characters set to die by the end of Game of Thrones‘ fifth season, reports The Independent.

“People are going to die who don’t die in the books, so even the book readers will be unhappy…Everybody better be on their toes. [Game of Thrones writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] are even bloodier than I am.”

Adding to George R.R. Martin’s revelations, Sophie Turner told The Huffington Post that her own Game of Thrones character, Sansa Stark, was in for a devastating season five.

“There’s some massive moments, perhaps even more shocking than the Red Wedding type of thing,” Turner said, referring to a wedding feast that became a slaughter, leaving behind the corpses of several main characters. The Red Wedding also set the scene for the brutal murder of a pregnant woman.

“There’s a lot going on this season. There’s also, you know, a lot of blood, a lot of death.”

After all, all men must die.

George R.R. Martin was also interviewed on Conan and revealed the names of those unlucky characters. (Here come those Game of Thrones spoilers!) Some of those doomed characters, Martin reported, are: Joyeuse Erenford, one of Walder Frey’s wives, Daenerys’ handmaiden Irri, and Xaro Xhoan Daxos, a merchant of Qarth.

It seems, even without the devious minds behind the show’s writing team, Game of Thrones will have plenty of material to draw upon in the future. Mr. Martin is currently working on The Winds of Winter with The Dream of Spring to follow. George confirms that each of those new additions to the A Song of Ice and Fire series will be about 1,500 pages long, so there will be no shortage of source material for future seasons of Game of Thrones.

George R.R. Martin spoke recently about the publication date of The Winds of Winter for fans looking forward to the new novel.

Game of Thrones begins its bloodletting anew on Sunday April 12.