There are few factors that explain this seemingly impossible screen time vs. episode count paradox.
As showrunner Dan Weiss puts it, “You kill a couple dozen characters, the people who are left by default need to carry more dramatic weight.” Season 6 saw the departure of several main performers — including Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) and Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), who often anchored their own stand-alone scenes. So now, as Kit Harington (Jon Snow) put it, “Everyone gets a bigger slice of the pie.”
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