Warning: contains spoilers

After the carnage of last week’s battle against the Night King, most shows would have given audiences some respite from death and destruction. But not Game of Thrones, with its long-established lust for killing off the most beloved characters when you least expect it.

Of the two deaths in this week’s episode, one is proving particularly divisive – and reminder of the show's somewhat dubious history with race. The outrage that began last week with the rather callous treatment of the Dothraki has now reached fever-pitch with the beheading of Missandei, one of the few non-white characters Game of Thrones has left.

Some viewers have complained that even the manner of Missandei’s death – chained up by Cersei like a slave – has racist overtones. In truth, it was just a clumsy way of hammering home that Cersei is "the bad guy". What Missandei’s death really shows, is that her character wasn’t as important to the plot as the other (white) characters. She and Grey Worm have had barely any screen time this season – and given how interesting their backstories are, that's a real shame.

Missandei has now joined GoT's long list of seemingly expendable characters of colour. Most recently the Dothraki were roundly extinguished in the battle with the Night King, the first to be sacrificed thanks to Jon and Daenerys’s strategising (or lack of of). The Unsullied were the next to go. It seems to some as though the creators of Game of Thrones are trying to rid Winterfell of its newcomers almost as soon as they arrived. Their deaths gave scale to the Battle against the Night King without having to finish off too many of the “key” characters.