With Season 6 of HBO’s Game of Thrones almost upon us, it’s finally time to ask the big question, and hope fervently that it is answered: Is Jon Snow really dead?
The fifth season of the widely-popular show ended on a gut-punch of a cliff-hanger, with the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) getting stabbed by his own men, not unlike Julius Caesar. The season finale closes with a shot of Jon bleeding out into the snow (pun intended).
And cue fan outrage.
George R.R. Martin is famous (or infamous) for killing off most of the popular characters of GOT. Going by that pattern, Jon Snow’s apparent death shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise. But given that he is one of the few remaining good guys in Westeros, it makes little sense to kill off such a pivotal character.
With the end of the fifth season, the show had caught up to the books, so even fans of A Song of Ice and Fire are in the same boat as those of show.
In that sense, this truly is Game of Thrones: Uncharted.
Coming back to Jon Snow, Harington was spotted filming a few scenes for Season 6, sparking speculation that he will come back this season. But as the trailer shows us, we do see Jon Snow, but he’s just a corpse in this one, being defended by Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham). Even if he does come back to life, it might only be towards the end of the season.
One of the more persistent fan theories about the character’s fate has been the “Warg Theory” as in Jon Snow is a warg (someone who can transfer their consciousness into an animal). The argument is that at the moment of his death, Jon Snow transported himself into his pet direwolf, Ghost.
There are only two problems with this tantalising theory. Firstly, Ghost was nowhere near the scene of the assassination and secondly, do fans really want to see Jon Snow played by a wolf?
