10 Game Of Thrones Characters We Never Saw Die

It's one of the bloodiest shows on TV. Virtually every episode comes with a death scene or two, many of them shocking, unexpected, and often quite graphic. All of which of course means that, with the final season of Game Of Thrones just days away, there is inevitably a whole heap of speculation about who will still be alive come the 19 May finale. But what if some of those that will turn out to live in the final season are characters that we've been assuming are already dead?

By now fans are savvy enough to know that if the series - which glories in shockingly violent on-screen deaths like the iconic Red Wedding - doesn't actually show us the moment of a character's death, then perhaps they never really died at all.

Arya, for example, left the Hound to die, battered and bleeding after his fight with Brienne, on a cliff at the end of Season 4. By midway through Season 6, though, there he was alive and well and building a church with Ian McShane. Stark uncle Benjen, the First Ranger of the Night's Watch in early episodes, had an even longer gap between being presumed dead in the first season and riding to the rescue of Bran and Meera beyond the wall in the sixth.

But who else might pull a Benjen and surprise us all by showing up alive and well in the final season?

Last Seen:

In Season 2, Episode 10, being left to die, locked inside his own impenetrable (and empty) treasure vault by Daenerys, who has taken the only key.

Could He Still Be Alive?

The self-proclaimed King of Qarth was all about plotting and deception. The whole point of the vault and what it represents was about show rather than substance: a grand and supposedly unbreakable door which served to convince people that what was stored behind it must be the untold wealth that Xaro was rumoured to possess. Instead, of course, the vault was empty.

Which does beg the question of what else he was lying about. The idea that he would have died from being locked in an impenetrable vault does rather rely on the notion that he was telling the truth about breaking into the vault being impossible and the only key being the one in Daenerys's possession. Given his track record with the truth, though, that may not be the case. He could easily have secreted a key elsewhere or built in an escape route as part of his various schemes.

Daenerys' escape from the warlocks of the House of the Undying leaves them still pursuing her in the following season, which means that Xaro's allies still exist and both retain a grudge against the Mother of Dragons. If Daenerys's plot was still Essos-based this would mean that Xaro's return was definitely a possibility. As it is, though, he's just too far on the other side of the world still to be relevant to the story.