On Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the thing we all expected to happen, happened: Jon Snow was resurrected. Melisandre used some of her sorcery (well, necromancy) to bring everyone’s favorite bastard back to the land of the living – but one key element surrounding Jon’s death in the books was absent from the TV adaptation.
In George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, after Jon is stabbed by his traitorous Night’s Watch “brothers,” it’s heavily implied that he “wargs” into his direwolf, Ghost. This is something only Bran Stark seems to be capable of on the show, but fans still expected it to factor into the character’s resurrection in some way.
According to actor Kit Harington, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s what he had to say to EW about Jon’s experience in the afterlife.
There’s a brilliant line when Melisandre asks: ‘What did you see?’ And he says: ‘Nothing, there was nothing at all.’ That cuts right to our deepest fear, that there’s nothing after death. And that’s the most important line in the whole season for me. Jon’s never been afraid of death, and that’s made him a strong and honorable person. He realizes something about his life now: He has to live it, because that’s all there is.
He’s been over the line and there’s nothing there. And that changes him. It literally puts the fear of god into him. He’s seen oblivion and that’s got to change somebody in the most fundamental way there is. He doesn’t want to die ever again. But if he does, he doesn’t want to be brought back.
So, no light at the end of the tunnel, and more pertinently, no Ghost. This doesn’t completely disprove the loyal wolf’s involvement of course (he does react before life returns to Jon’s body after all), but it does seem to confirm that Jon’s warging abilities are going to be confined to the Song of Ice and Fire saga.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO this Sunday, when we’ll (hopefully) get some more answers.
