Beware of major spoilers from this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones.

Another Game of Thrones, another emotional sword through the gut. This past Sunday’s episode not only saw the death of fan-favorite Hodor, but also the heart-wrenching secret behind the character’s one-word vocabulary. In the “Inside the Episode” accompanying the hour, series creators and producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff called the “holy shit” moment a “shocking” revelation, “one of the saddest and most affecting things,” and a “really, really heart-breaking idea.” Now that we’ve all had a few days to process the revelations, the duo are back with an apology…but it’s not for the thing you think.

Jimmy Kimmel Live aired “A Heartfelt Apology” featuring both Weiss and Benioff. As they sat on a couch flushed with cash, they said, “We’d like to apologize for Sunday’s episode. Not for killing Hodor. We kill a lot of the main characters. We’ve killed 739 main characters, so far. We’re sorry for all the idiots who from now on will be shouting ‘Hodor' every time you go through a door.”

Watch their apology video below.


Also from “Inside the Episode,” Benioff confirmed this plot twist was brought to you by George R.R. Martin himself. “We had this meeting with George Martin where we’re trying to get as much information as possible out of him, and probably the most shocking revelation he had for us was when he told us the origin of Hodor, how the name came about,” he said. (Side note: We know that Martin already told these guys how the story ends in the event his old age prevents him from finishing the tale. Might this meeting Benioff mentions have been that same meeting?)

HBO also released video interviews with actors Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran Stark), the latter of which called the character’s death “the ultimate twisting of the knife” because “he’s the only character on Game of Thrones who genuinely doesn’t have an agenda of any kind.”

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Image via HBO