Will ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 6 Mark The Rise Of House Stark?

Production of Game of Thrones Season 6 is winding down, which means soon there will be no more leaks from the set. Eager fans won’t have weekly insight into the twists and turns that await the characters they love and characters they love to hate. Game of Thrones fans are no strangers to characters dying, but Season 6 may mark the return of two characters that fans thought dead. Which raises the question, is there any truth to the rumors?

Naturally, any discussion about life and death in Game of Thrones must include Jon Snow. Snow’s rise from the bastard son of Ned Stark to Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch was a central storyline in the first five seasons of Game of Thrones. But his meteoric rise came to a screeching halt in the Season 5 episode “Mother’s Mercy,” when he was assassinated by his sworn brothers. In the final shot of Game of Thrones Season 5, the camera lingers over Jon Snow’s lifeless, pale corpse. The message seemed clear: Jon Snow is well and truly dead.

If you think that stopped fans from speculating on Jon Snow’s future return, then you know nothing. Almost immediately, Game of Thrones fans flooded the internet with theories of how Jon Snow survived his brush with death. But, everyone associated with Game of Thrones insists that Jon Snow is dead. During the summer, fan’s hopes were stoked when photos emerged of Kit Harington on-set and in costume. Not so fast. According to fan site Winter Is Coming, Emilia Clarke poked holes in the theory of Jon Snow’s return.

“I think that [Kit Harington] loves us, I think that he misses us, and I think that we like to mess with those people who are snooping around our set, trying to get information that they don’t really want to know.”

Jon Snow isn’t the only member of House Stark that might return during Game of Thrones Season 6.

As far as most of Westeros is concerned, House Stark has been without a lord since Robb Stark was murdered in the infamous Red Wedding, but the future of House Stark has been in question since the execution of Ned Stark. Originally billed as the main character of Game of Thrones, Ned Stark was beheaded on the orders of the newly crowed King Joffrey Baratheon in the penultimate episode of Season 1. Unlike Kit Harington, there have been no sightings of Sean Bean at the Game of Thrones Season 6 sets. Yet, some fans believe he will appear.

The Week explained that one eager fan hiked three miles through the hills of Spain to witness filming of what many believe is a flashback to the skirmish at the Tower of Joy. In the novel A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark has several flashbacks to the Tower of Joy, where he discovered his sister, Lyanna Stark, bleeding to death. Many have speculated that Lyanna died after giving birth to Jon Snow, but nothing in the A Song of Ice and Fire series or Game of Thrones has confirmed or denied Jon Snow’s parentage.

Thirteen-year-old English actor Sebastian Croft has been announced as young Ned Stark, but he’s far too young to portray Stark at the Tower of Joy. Many casting announcements for Game of Thrones Season 6 don’t announce the character the actor will play, so it’s entirely possible that an actor has already been cast as twenty-something Ned Stark, but fans hold out hope for an unannounced return of Sean Bean.

While the return of the dead men of House Stark is far from certain, House Stark will definitely rise again in Game of Thrones Season 6. Fans can find out what happened at the Tower of Joy and whether Jon Stark returns from the dead when Game of Thrones returns in the spring of 2016.

[Photo via HBO]