Game of Thrones: Sophie Turner on that dark Ramsay showdown

Warning: This contains a huge plot point from Game of Thrones‘ latest episode, "Battle of the Bastards"…

For the past year, Game of Thrones fans have been saying the same thing over and over again to Sophie Turner.

"Everyone is just saying, ‘I hope you kill Ramsay,'" the Sansa Stark actress tells us.

And on Sunday night, fans got their wish: Sansa fed Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) to his starved hounds at the end of the eagerly awaited ninth episode, "Battle of the Bastards." The scene concludes Sansa's brutally torturous relationship with the sadistic young lord, whom she married last season in the show's most controversial twist.

"It was amazing!" Turner says. "I really loved the idea of the Battle of the Bastards. And I was loving the idea of Jon killing Ramsay. But then I was like, no, Sansa needs her first kill and it has to be Ramsay. No one else but her. And when he basically says, ‘He's yours.' I'm like, ‘Yes!' She leaves him for dead, walks away doesn't even watch him die. It's such a great scene, so well written, and it's so great to be able to have my first kill."

We asked Turner if Ramsay's suggestion in his final scene was correct — that he's had such a strong impact on Sansa that he's changed her forever, and is imprinted on her now.

"Definitely," she says. "It shows when she sees him in this scene. With Joffrey it was different. He was a little boy and he was so angry at her all the time. Whereas with Ramsay there would be serenity, and then he would be such a bastard — in every sense of the word. He just gets under her skin, and he violated her in such a terrible way. He's imprinted on her, mentally and physically. She can never get that part of her back again."

Sansa also turned around the battle's outcome by reaching out to Littlefinger, who arrives just in time to rescue Jon and the remaining wildlings with the knights of the Vale.

"Jon doesn't listen to her," Turner notes. "She can actually formulate a plan behind his back and they need it. So she does save the day. But she doesn't really gets her thanks. Her reward is killing Ramsay."

More Battle of the Bastards coverage: Ramsay Bolton actor Iwan Rheon on his exit; our deep-dive recap with our thoughts on the episode, director Miguel Sapochnik gives a detailed rundown of how he pulled it off. Separately, Sapochnik also weighed in on staging Ramsay's final scenes. Don't forget to subscribe to our Game of Thrones Weekly podcast in which we share our experiences on the BOB set in the latest episode (posted below).
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