Opinion: Olly From Game of Thrones Is the Worst Character in the Entire Series, and I Will Die on This Hill
By Robert Tomlinson | March 30, 2025
Listen, babe. I know Game of Thrones had a lot of terrible people. Joffrey Baratheon? Human rat infestation in a crown. Ramsay Bolton? War criminal with a skincare routine. Euron Greyjoy? Jack Sparrow if he were clinically insane. But even among this absolute horror show of morally bankrupt characters, there is one who rises above the rest in pure, unfiltered awfulness:
Olly.
That’s right. The whiny little farm boy turned traitor. The self-righteous junior snitch. The literal child who made the single worst decision in all eight seasons of the show—and yes, I am counting Bran "I Live in the Past Now" Stark becoming king.
People will argue, “Oh, but his village was slaughtered by the Free Folk, he had his reasons.” NO. I DO NOT CARE. This mop-headed backstabber had one job: shut up, listen to Jon Snow, and not be the single most insufferable human being at Castle Black. And guess what? He failed. Spectacularly.
The Traitor of Castle Black, a.k.a. The Dumbest Child in Westeros
Let’s be real: Olly’s entire personality was just “angry child with poor decision-making skills.” That’s it. That’s the character. And sure, you could argue that it was “understandable” that he hated the Free Folk after they raided his village, slaughtered his family, and probably stole his family's prized wheel of cheese or whatever. But guess what?
LITERALLY EVERYONE IN WESTEROS HAS HAD THEIR FAMILY MURDERED.
Did Arya Stark whine to the nearest authority figure and join a treasonous little pre-teen coup the second she felt personally slighted? No. She took some initiative. She learned face-stealing murder magic. She did the work. Meanwhile, Olly just sat around, fuming like a kid whose mom took away his Xbox, waiting for the moment to betray the one person keeping his dumb little body alive.
And betray he did. Not just Jon Snow. Not just his sworn Lord Commander. Not just the one guy actually trying to stop an army of zombies from killing literally everyone, including Olly himself.
No. This bow-legged little menace helped stab Jon Snow to death.
The man literally saving the entire world, and Olly—Olly, who contributes nothing except bad vibes—goes, “For the Watch” and shanks him like some medieval middle school bully.
The Worst Crime of All: Olly Murdered Ygritte, the Best Character in the Entire Show
And if all of that weren’t enough—if Olly’s consistent commitment to being the most obnoxious child alive wasn’t already enough to land him in the Westerosi Hall of Shame—he also committed an even greater crime before all of this.
He killed Ygritte.
YGRITTE. The greatest character in all of Game of Thrones. The only woman in the entire series with both common sense and personality. The only person Jon Snow ever truly loved.
She was perfect. A warrior, a rebel, a woman of the people. She shot Jon in the chest and was still the best girlfriend he ever had. She delivered the single most iconic line in the show—“You know nothing, Jon Snow.” She was funny, deadly, and completely unbothered by the nonsense of the Seven Kingdoms.
And Olly—the little worm—had the absolute gall to shoot her in the back with an arrow.
An ARROW. Like a coward. Like a stupid little farm boy who had no idea what he was doing.
Did Jon Snow personally train him in archery just for him to turn around and murder Jon’s girlfriend? YES. Did Jon, despite all logic and reason, take this child under his wing, treat him with kindness, and even give him a job at the Night’s Watch? YES. And how did Olly repay him?
BY KILLING HIS WILDLING GIRLFRIEND.
Jon should have drop-kicked him off the Wall right then and there.
Instead, what did he do? He forgave him. Because Jon Snow, for all his brooding and loyalty, was an idiot.
Olly was not some tragic, misguided child. He was an agent of chaos, fueled by nothing but pettiness, bad decisions, and terrible timing. He killed the coolest woman on the show, then stabbed his own mentor to death, and still had the audacity to glare at Jon on the way to his execution like he was the one who had been wronged.
