Conleth Hill (aka Varys) Reacts to Last Sunday’s Episode of ‘Game of Thrones’

*Warning: Spoilers ahead*

Game of Thrones star Conleth Hill (Varys) just admitted that “nothing could console” him when he first learned about his character’s fate on the hit HBO series.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the 54-year-old actor revealed that he had “mixed” feelings about Varys’s death during season eight, episode five of GoT. “Very, very mixed,” he said. “Bittersweet. I think it’s really good in retrospect now that I’ve had the time for it to sink in.” 

Hill went on to say that he was blindsided by the news, adding, “At the time, nothing could console me. I kept thinking: ‘What did I do wrong?’ There wasn’t any pre-warning. All these famous stories about [actors on Thrones] being taken out for a meal or being phoned at the very least [to notify them that their character was being killed off]. This was just reading cold hard copy.”

Although he originally felt like a failure, Hill learned to not take it personally when he realized that he wasn’t the only character to receive the same fate.

“You can’t help feeling that you failed in some way, that you haven’t lived up to some expectation that you didn’t know about,” Hill added. “The only thing that consoles you is people who worked a lot harder than you are in the same boat. So that helps.”

There, there, Varys. The Game of Thrones series finale airs on Sunday, May 19, at 9 p.m ET/6 p.m. PT on HBO.