As viewers eagerly await a second season of House of the Dragon, the status of another potential Game of Thrones spin-off is being addressed. In June, The Hollywood Reporter first reported that Kit Harington’s Jon Snow would potentially receive his own series at HBO. After months of silence on the topic, the two-time Emmy-nominated actor is now offering coy insight into what the show may bring.
At a Game of Thrones fan convention on Sunday, Harington was asked about Snow’s outcome in the divisive series finale, where he discovers that his true identity is Aegon Targaryen, an heir to the Iron Throne, after killing Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys. He’s then exiled from Westeros and sent off North of the Wall with the Wildlings to start anew. “I think if you asked him, he would’ve felt he got off lightly,” Harington said, via Entertainment Weekly. “At the end of the show when we find him in that cell, he’s preparing to be beheaded and he wants to be. He’s done. The fact he goes to the Wall is the greatest gift and also the greatest curse.”
The actor continued, “He’s gotta go back up to the place with all this history and live out his life thinking about how he killed Dany, and live out his life thinking about Ygritte [Harington’s real-life spouse, Rose Leslie] dying in his arms, and live out his life thinking about how he hung Olly [Brenock O’Connor], and live out his life thinking about all of this trauma.” Harington tellingly added, “So I think where we leave him at the end of the show, there’s always this feeling of like…I think we wanted some kind of little smile that things are okay. He’s not okay.”
Earlier this year, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin confirmed the spin-off’s existence under the working title Snow in a blog post. He also said that Harington’s team had met with him to “hammer” out the central story. “Yes, it was Kit Harrington who brought the idea to us,” Martin wrote. “I cannot tell you the names of the writers/showrunners, since that has not been cleared for release yet…but Kit brought them in too, his own team, and they are terrific.”
Clarke similarly spoke of Harington’s creative involvement on the show, telling the BBC, “He has told me about it. And I know it exists. It’s happening. It’s been created by Kit as far as I can understand, so he’s in it from the ground up. So what you will be watching, hopefully, if it happens, is certified by Kit Harington.”
