‘Game Of Thrones’: Kit Harington On Jon Snow’s Harrowing Past And His Future

There’s no doubt that Game of Thrones has put Jon Snow through the wringer. I mean, he’s literally been to… the afterlife and back. Except that he discovered that there is no afterlife. In the last season of Game of Thrones, Jon finally seemed to finish on top. He defeated Ramsey Bolton’s army and was recognized as King of the North. With only two more seasons to go, fans are eager to see how everything turns out for Jon Snow. And Kit Harington fans wonder what he’ll do next and how he feels about Game of Thrones, the show that put his name on the lips of so many, coming to an end.

Kit recently told The Wrap that initially he was disappointed that Game of Thrones writers didn’t create a Jon Snow that was changed more by his death and resurrection. At the end of the previous season, he knew he would come back in the next season of Game of Thrones, but he didn’t know anything else.

“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.”

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The Hollywood Reporter talked to Harington about his Game of Thrones experience recently. With all he has been through and the knowledge that the R+L=J theory is true, there’s so much still to happen in two short seasons. There was so much that could have been asked of Harington about Game of Thrones. Of course, they couldn’t talk about last season without talking about the Emmy-nominated “Battle of the Bastards” episode, an epic episode that will remain a GoT classic for years to come. Some of the shots of Jon Snow in “Battle of the Bastards” will remain in the brains of Game of Thrones fans for a long time. It’s the episode Kit credits for the skyrocketing popularity he’s enjoying now.

“The ‘Battle of the Bastards’ was a lot of my season in one episode. It was quite physically challenging. I was so happy that episode did what we wanted it to, because we spent so much money on it and so much time and effort.”

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The Game of Thrones star also shared that the scene in “Battle of the Bastards” where Jon Snow is buried beneath a pile of bodies and fights his way out of the top is actually based on a real-life fear of his. As Vanity Fair reported, the episode was already over budget financially and in terms of time. So it seems that Harington and the Game of Thrones director had a chat about where they could take Snow in the battle.

“That piece came about with me and director Miguel Sapochnik having a conversation. Everything had backed up a bit and we were running out of time to shoot what we had intended. Miguel and I talked about what my greatest fears are. And as it happens, one of my greatest fears is a human crush — those horrible stories you hear about stadiums where people literally suffocate to death because they can’t get out of other people panicking. I thought if we could do that in this sequence, that could be really terrifying for the viewer.”

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It worked. The Game of Thrones scene where viewers see Jon Snow buried under the bodies and fighting his way to the top, reaching air above them all and taking a breath, was terrifying because we could relate to this fear.

Regarding what may happen to Jon Snow in the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones, the star said he thinks the character will survive.

“… 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.”

Has Kit given much thought to the fact that his time as Jon Snow on Game of Thrones will come to an end soon? Yes, he has given it a great deal of thought.

“It has been in my consciousness a lot. This mammoth, goliath event in my life, which has so much of what my 20s are, is going to come to an end.”

Harington says he plans to really focus on enjoying the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, as he knows this may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Here’s that Game of Thrones scene where Jon Snow emerges from beneath a pile of bodies, the scene that was based on a very real fear of Kit Harington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKHuTK9U3A

[Image via HBO]