Kit Harington gives fans a hint as to where HBO’s Jon Snow spinoff of Game of Thrones will pick up the storyline featuring everyone’s favorite brooding King in the North. At the official Game of Thrones conference on Dec. 11, Harington spoke about Jon’s demise, and while he didn’t name the spin-off, he did hint at where the show might start.
Game of Thrones viewers probably don’t need a reminder of the series’ controversial ending, but Season 8 ended with Jon Snow deciding he wouldn’t attempt the Iron Throne despite being a Targaryen by birth He had served as King of the North, and many fans wanted him to do it. Instead, after the murder of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) – who was his lover, aunt and queen – he moves north, beyond the Wall, to join the Wildings and his friend Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju).
“I think if you had asked him, he would have felt like he got off lightly,” Harington said of the ending at the convention, as reported by Weekly entertainment. “At the end of the show when we find him in that cell, he’s preparing to be decapitated and he wants it. He’s done. The fact that he goes to the Wall is the greatest gift and also the greatest curse.”
“He has to go back to the place with all this history and spend his life thinking about how he killed Dany and spend his life thinking about how Ygritte died in his arms and spend his life thinking about it how he hung Olly. and living his life thinking about all that trauma, and that… That’s interesting,” he continued, hinting at what the spinoff series would be about.
“I think where we leave him at the end of the show, there’s always this feeling of … I think we wanted that kind of little smile that things are okay. He’s not okay,” added Harington.
Already in June The Hollywood Reporter announced that the spinoff series is currently in development. Writer George RR Martin confirmed the news shortly thereafter his blog adding that Harington was the one who came up with the idea for the series, tentatively titled Snow, and that the actor himself assembled the creative team. “Kit’s team visited me here in Santa Fe and worked with me and my own team of brilliant, talented writers/consultants to flesh out the show,” wrote Martin.
According to Harington’s comments, the spin-off won’t undo the ending of Game of Thrones. It’s unclear if Snow will eventually head south again in the upcoming show (perhaps to see the siblings he left) or if she will focus entirely on Jon, Tormund, and the other Wildings. It’s also possible that other actors will appear whose characters were still alive at the end of Game of Thrones.
Harington has mostly retired since Game of Thrones ended in 2019, aside from coming to the MCU in 2021 with Eternals, in which he played Dane Whitman. Whitman’s role in this film wasn’t huge, but the ending scenes set things up for the character to take on the mantle of the Black Knight and appear in the upcoming Blade movie, starring Mahershala Ali as the title character.
HBO has been keen to do more Game of Thrones shows since the end of the original series, and that interest has only grown since House of the Dragon became a huge hit earlier this year. The network also has other prequel projects in development, including one set 90 years before Game of Thrones and focusing on the knight Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg. In Martin’s books, Duncan the Great is an ancestor of Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie).
For now, fans will have to wait for more details on what exactly Jon Snow has been up to in Westeros since the end of Game of Thrones. At least it looks like he’s going to be very sad and very cold once again.