Meryn Trant actor reacts to ‘Game of Thrones’ finale

BELFAST, Northern Ireland, June 15 (UPI) — [WARNING]: Spoilers ahead!

Ian Beattie says Meryn Trant got his just reward on Game of Thrones.

The 50-year-old Northern Irish actor discussed his character’s death on the season 5 finale in an interview with Vulture published Monday. Trant appeared on all five seasons of the HBO series, and was killed by Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) on Sunday’s episode.

“I’ve watched every episode of Game of Thrones, and I’ve watched every episode more than once, and I haven’t seen a death like this one!” he said of the gory scene. “It will be one of the toughest deaths, I think, for people to watch. It’s the Sonny Corleone of death scenes.”

“Those three days were probably also the biggest challenge of my acting career,” he shared. “I think and I hope we got it right, that it presents the viewer with the horror of Meryn Trant and the thoroughly just end that he deserves.”

“But it was also the worst moment of my professional career, and that was when the incomparable director David Nutter said, ‘That’s a series wrap on Ian Beattie,’” he recalled. “That was awful. That was terrible. It was like being told you can’t come back to your family again.”

Beattie called it “an absolute privilege” to work with Williams, and said filming the scene was both “sad” and “one of the most wonderful days [he’s] had on set.” Arya goes blind after killing Meryn, a consequence series creator David Benioff discussed in “Inside the Episode.”

“The Faceless Men don’t kill for revenge,” he related. “They’re not killing out of anger, they’re killing because death is a gift and the idea’s a painless death and it’s almost like you’re letting people go, and that’s not Arya’s way.”

“Arya is not dealing out death as some kind of gift to Meryn Trant, it’s a gift for herself,” he said. “She wants to learn how to become a great assassin and then go kill the people she wants to kill and she’s frustrated by learning that this dojo has a philosophy.”

The season 5 finale also saw the apparent death of Jon Snow (Kit Harington). Game of Thrones is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R.R. Martin, and will return for a sixth season in 2016.