Like the proverbial Glenn crawling from under a dumpster, Game of Thrones revealed Jon Snow’s fate Sunday, in the exact way everyone predicted it would last June. Melisandre used the Lord of Light R’hllor’s power to jolt life back into Jon Snow’s dead body, just like Thoros of Myr does for Beric Dondarrion—no warging, White Walkers, secret lineage reveals, or other creative twists necessary.
All it took to revive the dead Lord Commander was a wink-wink suggestion from Davos (here serving as audience stand-in, touting the same idea we waited ten months to see tested out) and a half-hearted attempt from Melisandre, who literally just mimics a thing she saw a guy do one time and lo and behold, it works. Jon Snow was too pretty to die after all.
When Melisandre began washing Jon’s wounds, I was among those who was sure she’d fail—a decisive, satisfying way for the show to quash that particular theory about Jon’s resurrection (one that somehow felt too obvious to play out onscreen). After Ghost suddenly awoke, hinting that Jon might have warged his way into his beloved pet wolf after all, it felt like a new mystery was ripe for speculation.
But in the end, it was the simplest answer the show chose to solve its Jon Snow conundrum: the Red Woman, whose real power we finally glimpsed last week, was the key after all.
Was this worth ten months of half-truths and outright lies from the show’s cast and creators? (For what it’s worth, Kit Harington says he’s sorry, everyone.) Was it worth every predictable beat in that final scene? It’s still early in the season—some storytelling masterstroke may still unfold to justify Jon’s death and the overly convenient nature of his resurrection. Or it might not and we’ve been trolled by yet another genre-TV juggernaut that underestimates its audience.
Predictable or not, Game of Thrones’ flimsy revelation at least succeeded where The Walking Dead’s Glenn stunt did not: it may have inspired a few eye-rolls, but it also made viewers want more of the story right away. That's what cliffhangers are supposed to do.
Part of the anticipation for next week comes from finding out whether the Snow Melisandre brought back is the same one who left us last season. No one comes back from the dead on Game of Thrones without losing some integral part of themselves. Khal Drogo became an empty shell when a Lhazareen priestess revived him. Even Beric Dondarrion, brought back six times the same way as Snow, tells Arya in Season 3 that he would not wish his fate on anyone. “Every time I come back, I’m a bit less,” he tells her. “Pieces of you get chipped away.”
Just the way Beric is driven by his last “mission” before death, the zombified Mountain now exists solely to serve Cersei (he was mortally wounded defending her in a trial by combat). Will the new Jon’s “mission” be uniting Wildings and Crows to defend the Wall, as he was so determined to do before Alliser Thorne betrayed him?
Or will his new purpose be more family-oriented? With Sansa on the way to Castle Black and Bran soon leaving his training with the Children of the Forest, at least a handful of Stark children are poised to finally reunite and, hopefully, retake Winterfell. There’s also the Benjen question: one of the last things on Jon’s mind before he was cut down was his uncle Benjen, whom Thorne and the other Night’s Watchmen lied about finding. (Coincidentally, we were reminded of the long-lost Benjen tonight through the first of Bran’s greensight flashbacks, in which a young Ned, Lyanna, and Benjen Stark talked to Hodor—aka Wylis, who spoke more than one word!)
Or Jon could really be Azor Ahai, the legendary figure in R’hllor lore who is reborn after “a long summer” once “the cold breath of darkness descends upon the world” and wields a flaming sword to defeat the White Walkers. Melisandre was once convinced this figure was Stannis; Jon seems a much better fit.
A Cersei resigned to her fate is just one more unsettling part of Game of Thrones’ new world order. Fanatics now rule King’s Landing. Dorne has been taken by coup. Ramsay reigns unchecked while the deserving Yara Greyjoy fights for her crown. And in a room in Castle Black, Jon Snow is back from the dead. Whether he’s here to save the world remains to be seen. We still know nothing after all.
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