 Years later , showrunner D. B. Weiss commented that the explicit style of the execution scene was selected in part to make it clear to the viewers that Eddard Stark , despite being the arguable protagonist of season one , actually was dead : " It ’ s that rule : ' If don 't see the body then they ’ re not really dead . ' Like when we cut Ned ’ s head off , we didn ’ t want a gory Monty Python geyser of blood , but we needed to see the blade enter his neck and cut out on the frame where the blade was mid @-@ neck . [ ... ] we needed Ned 's death to be totally unambiguous . " 
