Tormund Giantsbane
A boisterous, boastful free folk war-chief and one of Mance's chief captains, full of tall tales about giants and bears and his own legendary appetites.
A soul born at Beyond the Wall, sworn to The Free Folk.
The fuller tale
Season Three
A wildling raider under Mance Rayder's banner, loud, thoroughly pleased with his own reputation, and part of the war party that takes Jon Snow prisoner north of the Wall rather than killing him outright. He's there when Jon's loyalty to the Free Folk is tested in blood, and there again leading the climb up the sheer icy face of the Wall itself with Ygritte close behind him, more amused than suspicious about the crow who claims to have turned his cloak for good — he has his doubts about Jon Snow long before anyone else does, and mostly keeps them to himself.
Season Four
Leads the wildling assault on Castle Black from the ground while Ygritte's raiders come at it from above, throwing everything the Free Folk have at a fortress garrisoned by a fraction of the men it would take to hold it properly against a force this size. The attack breaks against the Night's Watch anyway, costly on both sides and decisive on neither, the wall itself and the men holding it proving harder to crack than the war council expected. Tormund survives the rout that follows, one of the few senior raiders left standing, and fights on under a King-Beyond-the-Wall who does not.
Season Five
Brought south under guard to Castle Black to serve as go-between when Jon proposes an alliance the rest of the Night's Watch wants no part of. At Hardhome he helps evacuate as many of the Free Folk as the ships can carry while the dead close in from the treeline, and gets Jon off the beach alive when the retreat turns into a rout.
Season Six
Marches a wildling army south to Winterfell on Jon Snow's word alone, trusting a promise made by a crow who by rights should still be an enemy, and asking little in return beyond a place for his people to live. It is that army, arriving late and nearly too late, that turns the Battle of the Bastards from a slaughter into a victory — Rickon already dead and the field all but lost when Tormund's horn finally sounds over the ridge and the tide of the fight turns with it.
Season Seven
Joins the expedition beyond the Wall to capture a wight for the southern lords, trading barbed affection with the Hound the whole miserable trek and making no secret of his admiration for Brienne of Tarth back at Winterfell. He survives the ice lake and the retreat to Eastwatch, one of a shrinking handful who make it out of that whole doomed errand.
Season Eight
Fights through the Battle of Winterfell and lives to see the dawn after it, one of the few among the Free Folk still standing. With the war for the Iron Throne no business of his, he leads what remains of his people back north of the Wall when it's over, to the kind of life the South never had room for.
How it ends for them
The chronicle records no death for this soul — they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.
Their chapters, book by book
A Dance with Dragons 3 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Book-Tormund is grayer, older and — the White God-Beyond-the-Wall forbid — slightly more modest; several of the show’s tallest tales are the screen turning his boasts up to eleven, and the Brienne infatuation is pure invention (they never meet on the page). His book role after Mance’s fall is weightier: it is Tormund who takes up leadership of the shattered free folk remnant, Tormund who negotiates the great passage through the Wall with Lord Commander Jon Snow — hostages, terms, the weeping of chiefs handing over sons — and Tormund who is standing at Jon’s side at Castle Black on the night of the knives. He is alive in the published books, unfinished business incarnate; the show’s Hardhome and Winterfell heroics are extrapolation the books have not yet reached.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.