'Game of Thrones,' Jon Snow and the worst kept secret in television history

*This article contains light spoilers and speculation for Game of Thrones season 6, based on set photos, interviews and trailers.*

Game of Thrones returns next month following a season finale bombshell: Jon Snow, commander of the Night’s Watch and one of the story’s primary heroes, was assassinated. But although those associated with the HBO series insist we have seen the last of Kit Harington, I have not yet encountered a single fan who believes Snow is actually gone for good. His resurrection has become the most predictable twist since Khan's presence in Star Trek Into Darkness. Going into the season 6 premiere, then, it’s hard not to question whether HBO could have handled this whole situation better. Does it damper the excitement that practically everyone on Earth knows what’s going to happen? Was it wise to make the assassination the series’ cliffhanger when its impact would inevitably be undermined by photos of Kit Harington arriving on set? 

For book fans, Jon Snow's murder has been on our minds for the past four years, as the event occurred in the most recent novel, A Dance with Dragons (2011). At the time, virtually no reader took the twist at face value. For one, it’s not clear based on the text that Snow’s wounds were even fatal. He’s only stabbed four times, compared to the show’s six and the final passage reads:

"Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. ‘Ghost,’ he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold…"

This series already featured several chapter cliffhangers during which a character appeared to be doomed, only to show up later on perfectly fine, so why should we trust George R.R. Martin now? 

But even if Jon were dead, it was heavily foreshadowed that he might have warged into Ghost, setting up a resurrection storyline where his soul is temporarily transferred into his direwolf. The evidence? Well, the novel opens with a prologue all about the logistics of skinchanging, something that would seemingly not be relevant unless Jon made use of the power later on. He also calls out the name of his direwolf right before the chapter ends. Then there is Melisandre, the red priestess, who has the power to bring people back from the dead and who earlier on had a vision of Jon as “a man, now a wolf, now a man again.”

So for readers, even based on the book alone and no outside information, it was debatable whether Snow bit the dust. All the evidence seemed to point towards his return, and the scene as described is not nearly as definitive as it ended up on screen.

Besides that, though, off screen, George R.R. Martin made seemingly endless comments in the subsequent months all but confirming that Snow would be in the next book. In a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly, when asked why he decided to kill off the Lord Commander, Martin replied, “Oh, you think he’s dead, do you?” On plenty of other occasions, the author has referred to Jon in the future tense, and he has also said that readers will find out who Jon’s parents are. Would that really matter anymore if Jon's dead?

With all this in mind, going into the season 5 finale, the big question for book fans was how the show would deal with the ambiguity. It’s difficult to emulate the vagueness of the written word in a TV show; instead of imagining the scene in our heads, now we'd be witnessing it play out in an objective fashion. Was there even a point in showing him to be unquestionably dead when any rattled viewer could just Google “Jon Snow” and immediately find out that his storyline is not over? Plus, considering set photos leak all the time, it’s not as if the showrunners could realistically prevent pictures of Kit Harington filming season 6 from getting out for 10 solid months. Attempting to convince the average person that this cliffhanger wasn’t a cheat would be virtually impossible.

How should they handle the "death," then? One option would be to do the assassination scene in episode 9, leading to a week of post-Red Wedding style craziness and speculation, only to bring him back to life in episode 10. That way, it would be far easier to keep a lid on spoilers, and in just seven days, word of the character’s future likely wouldn’t have time to spread to all corners of the Internet. The series could very plausibly fool millions into thinking that Snow was done for, only to amaze them with a stunning reveal in the season’s final moments.

The second option would be to kill Jon off in episode 10, but conclude by strongly implying it's not the end for him. It would be like the television equivalent of a politician getting out ahead of a scandal; the writers would be acknowledging that nobody will really buy the twist, so the solution would be to not even play it as a twist. Instead of ending with a shock, end with the vague promise of more to come. An example many readers suggested would be to, right before the credits roll, have Jon’s eyes turn white, suggesting that he has warged into his direwolf (assuming that’s what’s going to happen next year). Or perhaps keep the scene as is, but end with a shot of Melisandre ominously surveying the scene. In others words, instead of leaving viewers believing that Jon is gone forever - something they’d instantly find out isn’t the case - they’d leave viewers wondering how Jon will come back to life - something nobody knows for sure at this point.

Instead, HBO decided to end on a traditional death scene and to double down on claims that Jon is absolutely not in season 6. In fact, minutes after the finale aired, an interview with Kit Harington went online in which he said with zero room for interpretation that he without a doubt had left the series. 

He explained to Entertainment Weekly, “I’ve been told I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m not coming back next season. So that’s all I can tell you, really.”

The issue now is that Game of Thrones will be off the air for 10 months, so how the hell can they keep up the charade? Surely Harington and the crew couldn’t successfully lie for nearly a full year, right? HBO had put themselves in a spot where the majority of Game of Thrones fans would discover the truth about Jon’s fate not from the show itself, but from seeing a blurry image of Kit Harington posted on Twitter. It's safe to say that the former would be far more impactful than the latter. 

A few days after the finale, some creative fans came up with a novel solution to this dilemma: the Game of Thrones producers could pretend Snow is dead for the following month, only to come out with the truth at Comic Con in July. They could show a brief clip of Snow's eyes opening and then have Kit Harington walk on stage to the sound of fans going absolutely wild. This would be before filming began, ruling out the possibility of the twist being ruined by set photos, and they could still keep viewers in shock for weeks only to generate an insane amount of press in July. Some even speculated that the director of episode 10 might have shot an extra scene that would specifically be intended for Comic Con.

But instead, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss skipped Comic Con for the first time ever, clearly to dodge Snow questions, and nothing particularly interesting happened at the convention. It was obvious now that they were really attempting to trick everyone. Good freaking luck.

As expected, as early as July, Kit Harington was already spotted in Belfast, where Game of Thrones is filmed and word spread that he was refusing to take pictures. As silly as it might have sounded to focus so heavily on the actor’s hair, fans also noticed that his locks remained as luscious as ever, even though he had previously stated he was going to cut it the instant he was off the show.

Over the next few months, the leaks would not stop. Here’s a timeline of just some of the evidence that quickly piled up:

1. July 21: Harington is again spotted in Belfast a few days before filming is set to begin. He is also seen coming off the same plane as Game of Thrones star Tom Wlaschiha (Jaqen H'ghar). 
2. July 22: Harrington is photographed on the streets of Belfast with costar Ben Crompton (Edd Tollet).
3. July 27: The HBO Store launches a sale of merchandise related to dead characters, but nothing Jon Snow related is to be found.
4. July 28: Reports emerge that Harington is staying at a hotel in Banbridge, Ireland.
5. July 29: Harington is seen hanging out in a Belfast restaurant with costar Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei).
6. August 11: Harington is spotted yet again in Belfast alongside Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton) and Ben Crompton.
7. September 9: After being off set for a few weeks, Harington returns to Belfast. Rumors spread that the actor is preparing to shoot a battle scene.
8. September 15: Harington gives an interview in which he says, “I’ll probably be in my thirties when [Game of Thrones is] over.”
9. September 25: It's official. Kit Harington is spotted filming Game of Thrones in costume as Jon Snow.

When pictures of Harington in Belfast initially started popping up, the argument could have been made that he was simply visiting his co-stars or filming a funeral scene. But that became less and less realistic as the weeks went on. This is a pretty long visit, huh? What funeral scene takes two months to shoot? And, sure enough, by September, it was all over: we had our first picture of Harington on set as Jon Snow, removing all doubt of what we were already 99% sure of. 

Each of these photos gained thousands of retweets and hundreds of individual articles. The buzz was impossible to escape, and if you were a Game of Thrones fan with an Internet connection, like it or not, you now almost definitely knew that Kit Harington would be in season 6. And you knew it not because you saw an amazing resurrection scene take place that surprised you; you knew it because your friend retweeted an image of Kit Harington getting drinks in a Belfast pub. Not the ideal way to learn such crucial story information, huh?

Even as of this writing, the official word is still that Harington is off the show. Seriously? Is it not time to give up and admit defeat? The actor even doubled down on those comments just last week, claiming that he has not filmed Game of Thrones in a while, as we previously reported. Literally nobody believes you, Kit. A trailer released earlier this month opens with a shot of Snow’s dead body with the voiceover saying, “He’s gone.” It’s too bad everyone on Earth has been let in on the secret, and in the lamest way possible.  

To be fair, Benioff and Weiss were in a tough spot. Ending the season with the apparent death of the main character may have been what they felt worked from a storytelling perspective, or perhaps they wanted to give George R.R. Martin 10 extra months in which to release his next book and reveal Jon’s future on his own terms. And thinking of the legacy of the show, it won't matter in 10 or 15 years what happened during the off-season. Viewers binging on the series for the first time will not be privy to any of this outside information and set leaks and so the Snow storyline will likely be effective. 

But for the millions watching Game of Thrones as it airs, Benioff and Weiss were naive to think they could prevent these fans from being spoiled on the twist. Maybe there are some who remain out-of-the-loop to whom the resurrection will still be a surprise. But they’re in the minority, and for many, Snow’s return won’t be a cathartic moment. Instead, for a show that prides itself on subverting expectations, this will be the first big plot turn that feels disappointingly inevitable.