Game of Thrones' étoile, star Alfie Allen: 'It's been cool going back to Winterfell' 

\'Game of Thrones\' star Alfie Allen: \'It\'s been cool going back to Winterfell\'

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"Game of Thrones" returned to Winterfell after too long an absence, but not with the Starks in power. Instead, Roose (Michael McElhatton) and Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) have taken up residence in the Northern keep, and they recently welcomed Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) into their fold.

With the Boltons came Theon (Alfie Allen), who is the main reason the Starks no longer hold the castle. Back in Season 2 he betrayed Bran and Rickon Stark, pretended he killed them and had his Ironborn soldiers take over Winterfell. Theon\'s men ultimately betrayed him, which is what landed him in Ramsay\'s clutches to begin with.

"It\'s crazy," Allen tells Zap2it about returning to the set in Season 5. "Winterfell was sort of burned down by me -- by the character Theon -- at the end of Season 2. ... It\'s been cool going back to Winterfell this year. There\'s a relationship with a certain someone that happens, and it\'s been an absolute joy to work with this person."

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Chances are that person is Sansa, who Theon hasn\'t encountered since Season 1. In episode 4 he caught a glimpse of Ned Stark\'s daughter, though she still doesn\'t know he\'s a prisoner of the Boltons. Sansa chose to return to Winterfell and become betrothed to Ramsay Bolton as a way to avenge her family and take back their ancestral home, but she didn\'t know just how terrible this family is -- even with the knowledge that Roose betrayed and killed her brother.

"The Boltons are definitely emerging as a superpower within the \'Game of Thrones\' world," Allen says. "They\'re just so at ease and almost regal about the way they treat people and the way they just are. I mean, their banner is a skinned man, for Christ\'s sake. They\'re not the nicest bunch of people, but they\'re completely at ease in that fact, which kind of makes it interesting to watch."

It\'s true; with the Starks dead or scattered and the Lannisters in the same situation, other families are coming into power. The Tyrells are doing their best to take over King\'s Landing, the Martells of Dorne are rising in the south, and in the north the Boltons chose Petyr Baelish over their alliance with the Lannisters.

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Of the Boltons, Allen teases, "There\'s some amazing scenes between Ramsay and his father this year, without a shadow of a doubt, and I think the Boltons are going to be a force to be reckoned with for the years to come."

Just don\'t lump Theon in with the Boltons\' despicable deeds. Despite Theon\'s previous wrongdoings, Allen doesn\'t view his character as a bad guy.

"I never really saw him as a villain. I think that\'s an HBO trait with a lot of their shows is there\'s never any good or bad characters. Everybody\'s got their own sort of motivations or path that they want to go down, and I would say that Theon\'s one of more human characters in the show rather than just a villain who makes mistakes," he says. "I would not really put him down as a villain, but I would definitely not put him down as a good guy either. He\'s just a normal human being who makes mistakes."

"Game of Thrones" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.

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