As a big fan of the show, and as a huge hater of Joffrey Baratheon, I was ecstatic to see him die. In fact I was so happy that the day after I saw the show, the first thing I did was watch him choke to death about 6 times in a row. Never have I been so happy about someone dying, in fact, never have I been happy at all about someone dying. As screwed up as that sounds, many share my happiness. The reaction to this episode was incredible, within hours there were millions of tweets of people celebrating the death of this dreadful, evil character. Now that a week has passed, however, I can’t help but feel a certain degree of melancholy for the absence of this character.
What is the reason for these strange internal contradiction I find in myself? Well, it took me ages to work out, but the fact of the matter is, people LOVED to hate Joffrey. It is a weird notion, but a huge part of watching the show was witnessing his twisted and evil ways and just imagining ways in which he could be killed. Now that that is absent from the show, there is a sort of void, as if the show is no longer complete as it was, because there is no one we love to hate like we loved to hate Joffrey.
Happily, there is still a long way to go, and hopefully that void will once again be filled, and there are many plots still to follow with a lot of attention. What will happen now that the king is dead? Who poisoned him so brilliantly? What will this mean for the rest of the characters seeking control of the throne? Most importantly, who will fill the void of hatred left by the elimination of Joffrey? Whoever that character is, it has some big shoes to fill, because again, we absolutely LOVE to have someone to HATE like we hated Joffrey in Game of Thrones. We shall see what happens.