'Cocky' Kit Harington Feels Jon Snow Is Now Safe on 'Game of Thrones'
You should never feel safe on a show that kills main characters while they're using the toilet. No one -- and nowhere -- on "Game of Thrones" is safe. That said, Kit Harington is probably right. His character, Jon Snow, is one of the few who will probably be sticking around for the bulk or entirety of the final two seasons.
Harington earned an Emmy nomination for GoT Season 6, and he talked to TheWrap about Jon's death-to-king journey, which initially disappointed him. TheWrap asked if he thought, between seasons 5 and 6, about how being dead and coming back would affect and change Jon.
"I did. But at the same time, you don't get the scripts until about two weeks before you start shooting the new season. I knew I was coming back to life, but I didn't know if I'd come back as a changed person, as a villain. So I couldn't pre-plan anything, which was hard. And then I got the scripts, and actually, he comes back as himself, as the Jon that everyone knows. Which at first I found disappointing. But it's more subtle than that. He has an insight into what lies beyond that very few people in his world do, and that no one in our world does — he knows that there's no afterlife. Which does quietly drive who he is and what he wants to do."
Before the Battle of the Bastards, Jon told Melisandre not to revive him if he died on the field. Don't bring him back again. TheWrap asked Harington if he's wondering when Jon will die for good.
"[Laughs] Yeah. But here's the thing: I feel like one of the safest people on Thrones now. Maybe I shouldn't say that. He could die next season, but I felt very safe this season. Because if I come back to life in Episode 2, it would be awful storytelling if you kill me in Episode 4. So I felt a bit cocky this season."
You have to be cocky to feel safe on this show. But if he's around for the end game, he hopes Jon Snow learns the truth about his parentage -- Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen -- and he has his own ideas about what that might mean for Jon's future.
"I do, and I never really like expressing them. If I say what my theory is, then some people will take it as gospel because I play the character. And I also find it unhelpful in playing the character to theorize about it, because he doesn't think too much about it. If he gets to know that truth at some point, which I hope he will, it will be a really fascinating moment to play."
Season 7 will only have seven episodes, down from the usual 10, and the final Season 8 is also meant to be shortened. But if King Jon is one of the "safe" characters, where do you suspect he'll be by the time the screen goes dark in a couple of years? Sitting on the Iron Throne? Still the King in the North? Back up at The Wall, where he started and wanted to be First Ranger?
Read Harington's full interview, it's pretty good, including the note that they practiced that "gasp" return about a thousand times.
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