'Game of Thrones' Season 5 Spoilers: Lady Stark Not Coming Back from the Dead

Jul 07, 2014 10:13 AM EDT

'Game of Thrones' Season 5 will not be seeing the return of Lady Catelyn Stark, who was killed off in the infamous Red Wedding massacre of the third season.

Michelle Fairley, the actor who plays Lady Stark, confirmed this in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last week.

"Yeah, the character's dead -- she's dead," Fairley said, when asked about the latest Lady Stoneheart rumors.

In the original 'A Song of Ice and Fire' book saga that inspired the TV show, Lady Stark's corpse is reanimated as the vengeful Lady Stoneheart by Beric Dondarrion. The resurrection sequence in question occurs at the end of the novel 'A Storm of Swords', which provided the basis for the Season Four TV plot.

Book fans were quick to voice their disappointment online when Lady Stoneheart failed to make a TV appearance at the fourth season finale. Even so, Fairley defended the decision that the 'Game of Thrones' writers made.

"They [screenwriters] can't stick to the books 100 percent. It's impossible-they only have 10 hours per season," Fairley said. "They have got to keep it dramatic and exciting, and extraneous stuff along the way gets lost in order to maintain the quality of brilliant show."

Rumors that Lady Stoneheart was coming to Season Five gathered steam back in April when Lena Headley, who stars as Cersei Lannister in the TV series, posted an Instalgram photo of a heart formed of pebbles. The captions read "my stone heart," which had fans guessing that Lena was referring to Lady Stoneheart.

It has not been confirmed exactly when 'Game of Thrones' Season Five will premier, even though it is generally agreed that the show is coming back to HBO in Spring 2015.