I could see them being “programmed” by a White Walker to do certain things under certain circumstances, or to draw upon fighting skills they had in life. It’s even possible, I suppose, that there’s a WW observing from cover and pulling their strings. Perhaps one will be revealed this season.
Err, what about the obvious ending which is Dany and Jon marrying each other? Then finding out they are related, but hey, they’re Targaryens, so it’s cool.
Strong disagree.
The point is, some characters have been killed off when they still had great potential to play a big part of the ongoing story.
People look at these things in retrospect and say “Robb’s story had run its course” or whatever, but if we go back we see few people saying that before his death. Same for most of the other deaths.
Now, with Jon, I don’t see why his death had to be different. His resurrection means he will probably play a big part in future events, but it easily could have been otherwise. His storyline would not have been a deadend as he has a big legacy: free folk south of the wall, leader of free folk makes alliance with (some of) the watch, intel on events at hardhome etc.
Meanwhile, right now, there’s nothing concrete we need jon for.
Is this like some sort of telegram-style speech?
That’s true of most characters, but that’s not what I am saying.
Robb wasn’t expendable because his story had run its course. His own story certainly had far more potential, which made it surprising - but not impossible - for him to be eliminated. He was expendable because there were other characters available to carry on the Stark plotline. And with recent developments it’s become evident that that is Jon.
Nearly all of the characters involved in the central plot of the War of the Five Kings are expendable. That included Robb and Catelyn. It’s the characters who have been central to the side plot lines, including Daenerys, Arya, Bran, and Jon that are most unlikely to be eliminated. Their elimination would pointlessly discard a lot of plot development in a way that Robb’s did not. There are only a small handful of them. This doesn’t mean they will make it through to the end, just that their plotlines will rejoin the central plot and have some effect on it before they are eliminated.
Robb’s elimination was admittedly a big zigzag in the plot, but it didn’t violate basic dramatic rules the way eliminating some of the other characters would.
None of the other characters, including Tormund or other members of the Night Watch, have been established enough yet to replace Jon in the fight against the White Walkers. There are other loose ends that need to be tied up like Jon’s ancestry before he can be eliminated. Perhaps if that had happened his death could have been possible if unlikely.
Regardless of whether Jon could theoretically be eliminated, the set-up of his death, with Melisandre present, made it obvious (at least to me, even without any exposure at all to fan speculation) that he would be revived. Jon has an arsenal of Chekhov’s guns: his Stark ancestry, his mysterious ancestry, his Valyrian sword, his knowledge of dragonglass, his ability to rally both the wildings and the North. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Aside from the fight against the White Walkers and the restoration of the Stark’s fortunes, you mean.
It goes without saying that SOME characters are absolutely essential to the resolution of Martin’s story line. And the farther we get into the story, the less likely the main characters are to get bumped off.
But Martin has been very clever in misleading us as to where the story is going and who the essential characters are. More major characters will undoubtedly die, but few (if any) future deaths will make us groan, “Damn, I was SURE that guy was going to play a huge role in how this all turns out, and now it turns out he wasn’t important at all.”
I rewatched the first 3 episodes, here are a couple things that seem obvious now that did not then.
Jon was groomed for and sent to the wall to protect him from Robert, Both his father and Uncle know his ancestry and neither would have lied to him to get him to the wall without good cause…It was Tyrion who told him the truth about the wall. Both uncle and father were waiting until he actually took the black to tell him about his mother.
His story line in the early seasons was about 90% Jon Snow is an idiot. To the point of “You know nothing Jon Snow” becoming his Words like the Stark words are “Winter is Coming” In retrospect Jon has been taught about a zillion lessons between season one and the present. I cannot say for sure but my guess is that he is the character who has gone through the most growth over all on the show (Sansa as well but much more slowly) His continued growth has turned him from moron to leader and made him able to make decisions that others could not.
Jon Snow’s story arc started on episode 1 season 1. There is no-one at the wall who could replace him without wasting a ton of time being spent shoehorning them into the story. On top of this is that his death/Rebirth and his Targaryin ancestry will both play a role in the future. I cannot say if he will remain Lord Commander in some Hybrid role but the Nights Watch as we know it is pretty much effectively dead anyway, between all 3 castles there are what 200 left?
Jon leads whats left of the Watch and the wildlings in the coming battle against the white walkers, of that I am fairly sure. Sansa may very well meet up with Jon and possibly the Umbers to finish off Ramsey and put Sansa in charge at Winterfel but that is just me talking 100% out my arse.
Right. It’s one thing to eliminate a character like, say, Drogo after a single season. It’s quite another to eliminate someone who’s been a major factor for five seasons unless their story has played out (like Stannis). The first is surprising, the second would just be playing “Gotcha!” with fans and just pisses people off (and IMO is poor writing).
Drogo is an example of a character who peaked too soon. He seemed to be key to Dani’s conquest of Westeros, but we knew that wasn’t going to happen as soon as the second season. He either had to be offed or his invasion would have to fail.
Game of Thrones is different from shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, or Boardwalk Empire in that it actually has a story arc that will extend across all seasons of the show. The other shows only have story arcs that extend for one season, so they have more freedom to eliminate characters within seasons. They weren’t going anywhere in particular when they started out. There may be call-backs to previous seasons, but that’s done retrospectively. Even if Martin hasn’t finished the saga, he surely knows more or less where it is heading, and has communicated that to the TV writers. Plot developments aren’t going to be entirely arbitrary.
Plot twist, and pure speculation on my part:
Sansa is pregant by Ramsey.
I wouldn’t normally spoiler such lame speculation but this is GoT.
What I’m wondering is how the story arc plays out in the end. Is the climax of the story the grand battle for the Iron Throne, featuring Dany’s dragons and her unsullied horde (plus possibly the Dothraki united behind her)? Is it a massive attack by the White Walkers and their wight army? Or is the climax the arrival of winter and how the kingdoms respond? Admittedly, the last is probably the least dramatic. But perhaps the White Walkers only venture south after winter arrives, so their attack is at the same time as the beginning of winter? And perhaps Dany’s dragons are the principal defense against the White Walkers, so that all of the various threats come together?
You put your point well Colibri, but I still disagree.
Unavoidably, this is a somewhat long post…
But arguably Jon’s already has.
Like I say, I don’t see how it’s a dead end, already Jon’s actions are rippling through a great deal.
Yeah, but I don’t see why Jon needs to be around for other characters to be established.
Many times already they’ll throw in a new guy who will then go on to become a central part of the plot, or just promote a side character into a main one.
Well it’s true the ancestry is a loose end…I don’t think I agree that that alone is enough reason to keep him around. Have they even mentioned his mother since season 1? And when they did, the implication from the way Robert was speaking was that she was an ordinary woman.
Now that Jon’s resurrected, no doubt she’ll turn out to be some goddess / targaryen / white walker, but just looking at the story prior to jon’s rebirth, I’d take no issue with him just dying and the mother not actually being that significant.
Agree 100%. I, like everyone else, guessed he was going to be revived from the fact the red woman went to the wall.
Stark ancestry: plenty of starks have died, and there are still plenty around
Mysterious ancestry: same point already mentioned, but OK, that’s one
His sword: Anyone can use the sword. Note it was only gifted to him recently
His knowledge of dragonglass: Lots of people have explicitly been shown to know about that now. By now, all of the Watch should know, at least as a rumor if not established fact
Rally wildlings: We’ve already seen the start of a fighting alliance while everyone thought jon was dead
The former: I don’t think any reason has been given why Jon is essential to that.
The latter: we don’t know that the starks should necessarily be restored. My expectation is that they probably will return to winterfall as rulers eventually, but I don’t see that this is absolutely where the story must go. There are ways for Westeros to become a better place ultimately without everything going right back to how it was.
All of the above.
Seriously, we’re going to see the integration of all the main plot lines in some fashion. Martin has woven an exceedingly tangled web but he’s not going to drop major threads.
We’re beginning to see plot lines that have been separate for a long time begin to come together, with Tyrion and Varys meeting Danaerys, and even the Dothraki back in the game. Jon is the linchpin that connects the Wall with the Starks and the battle for the North, and his death now allows him to act in both roles.
I’m going to answer these somewhat selectively, since I’ve already made arguments for most of them already.
I don’t think two seasons is enough time to bring in or promote a major new player while throwing away five seasons worth of Jon’s development.
IIRC, she was only mentioned in a conversation between Robert and Ned. If the speculation about Jon’s ancestry is correct, there would be reason for Ned to pretend to Robert that Jon’s mother was someone insignificant. Robert would relate to her being a casual fling.
Dramatically, I don’t think that would have been the last thing Ned mentioned to Jon before going off to meet his death, while leaving it a mystery. Major major Chekhov’s gun.
None of 'em is a swordswinger except Jon.
Jeor Mormont gave Longclaw to him all the way back in season one and told him never to lose it. He’s almost lost it several times but has always gotten it back. It’s a sword that had been in the Mormont family for five generations. It had been passed to Jorah but he sent it back to Mormont when he was exiled. This is a sword of great significance. With all that backstory, it isn’t going to be used by anyone else.
The two swords that were made from Ned’s Valyrian sword Ice will no doubt also come into play, Brienne’s Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, which is now in the possession of Tommen.
They only rallied because of their debt to Jon. They have no particular reason to ally themselves with anyone else in the Seven Kingdoms.
Perhaps not absolutely essential, but he is best positioned in several ways to lead the fight, which I have mentioned.
I meant “restore their fortunes” in a broad sense, not that everything would go back to how it was. They won’t necessarily be restored at Winterfell (although I suspect at least one of them will end up there.) What I meant was the Starks will have to be vindicated in some way. The family really are the central good guys in the show, and they have gone through an extraordinary amount of suffering. It won’t be a satisfying story if all that suffering ends up to being for nothing.
This is Heroic Fantasy, not a Shakespearean drama where everybody including the hero is dead at the end. Although there will surely be more casualties along the way, the good guys will (mostly) triumph and the bad guys will (mostly) die in horrible ways. We’re not going to see an ending where White Walkers have conquered the whole world with the aid of ice-breathing zombie dragons.
Yes, it was disclosed in the first season or two that Martin and the showrunners had met, and that he told them, in broad strokes, how it’s all supposed to end up. How bound they feel by that info is unclear.
Remember that this is Martin we’re talking about.
And HBO.
The first clue we had that Stannis’s storyline was played out was in his last act where he was beaten by the Boltons during his attack on Winterfell. Up until that moment, Stannis could easily have been the one to take Winterfell and been one of the key players in the battle against the White Walkers - assuming there is going to be such a battle.
Likewise, if Jon Snow died permanently and the plot moved away from him, it could easily look like his own story line had ‘played out’. Jon Snow’s part in the grand story would then have been that he was the guy who rescued the wildlings and brought them south of the wall. Someone else could have come along to turn them into a new army of the north and a big part of the final battle.
Stannis looked like he might be a major player right until the end, but now it’s looking like his part in this drama consisted of killing Renly, the last known legitimate heir to the throne, and then choosing to take his army North to the wall. And all it did there was save Jon Snow and the wildlings, then die fighting. In terms of the struggle of the five Kingdoms, Stannis turned out to be a non-factor. He lost the battle of King’s Landing, he lost the battle for Winterfell, and then he died.
It may turn out in the end that Melisandre and even Ser Davos were more important to the overall arc than Stannis was, and his main role in the story was to get them to where they are now. Or maybe they’ll be next on the chopping block.
Why not? Life is arbitrary. Joe Kennedy Junior was the Kennedy who was supposed to be President. He was groomed, he was smart and handsome, and everyone expected big things from him. Then a bad electrical connection caused his airplane to become a fireball, and Joe was gone. There’s something to be said about a story that isn’t afraid to allow a certain amount of apparent randomness to change events, so long as it’s done in an intelligent way and the plot keeps advancing forward. That’s the advantage of a story that has a multitude of ‘main’ characters who take turns on center stage. You can afford to throw curveballs at them - even fatal ones.
Look at Ned Stark’s arc in the first season. That season was all about him. We thought the show was going to be about Ned Stark trying to survive and restore the greatness of the throne against the machinations of a bunch of power-hungry people. Then he just died. The next season was about Robb Stark and his raising an army to avenge Ned’s execution. That gave Ned’s story some meaning and a point. But after watching that plot escalate for a long time, it was cut out from under us at the Red Wedding.
So at that point, why did we need Ned Stark’s story at all? The Lannisters were back in charge at King’s landing, the rebellion put down, and narratively it was all for nothing. It turns out the whole point to all that was to destabilize the North and to put Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Jon on their respective story arcs. That seems like a long way to go for that.
But I’m cool with it all, because in real life you don’t get to know who all the players will be that make an impact in your future. Stuff happens. It can be just as much fun seeing how the story moves when random events shuffle things up, even if it means stepping on some traditional narrative rules.
This is not real life.
This is a story… a narrative.
If Jon died as he died and then in the first episode of this season we shifted focus to Sam and the Citadel and him trying to learn more about the Others and rally the south… then we would say "Oh Jon’s story was to get Sam’s story to this point. That is understandable.
Like I said, most characters are not essential, even if they have been important in the past. There are around a half dozen characters that have plot armor, in my estimation. Not one other player in the War of the Five Kingdoms has the kind of plot armor that Jon Snow does. Tyrion probably does especially at this point, and Littlefinger won’t go before his game becomes clearer. But most others are expendable.
Davos, Melisandre, Cersei, Jaime, Tommen, Margaery, Olenna, Pod, Bronn, Ramsay, etc can all go at any moment. Sansa, Theon, and Brienne won’t go immediately until their current forays reach a resolution, but they are also expendable.
Bolding mine.
Life is arbitrary, but literature, at least good literature, isn’t. As I have been saying, it’s not the apparent importance of a character in the narrative that determines whether they will survive, but their place in the structure. Many characters can keep some plotlines moving forward, but there are a few plotlines that are more dependent on a single character. Those are the characters that are unlikely to be eliminated.
Bran and Arya have had virtually no impact on the main plot so far. By this standard they are unimportant characters. But we’ve spent a lot of time with them, and they are the central characters of their own independent plotlines, so they won’t be eliminated until they do have some impact on the main plot. This is the kind of essentialness I am talking about. Counterintuitively, characters with independent plots outside the main narrative are less likely to be eliminated than most major players in the main plot.
Except Samwell Tarly just doesn’t have that same “leading man” quality that Jon does. That’s pretty obvious to anyone.
Yeah, Sam is a sidekick, not the Lone Ranger. He’ll figure in the future struggle, but not as a leader of men.
Aside from Sam, there are too many other loose ends about Jon not to have them tied up somehow.
It’s exactly because this is a narrative that certain things need to be resolved. We’re not going to get something like “What became of the Russian in the Pine Barrens?” in the Sopranos.
I don’t disagree with any of that, except to say that you don’t necessarily know what the point of a dead character’s arc was until much later. I agree that you don’t just introduce a character, spent a huge amount of time with them, and then pointlessly kill them off if they did not advance the story in some way.
What I’m saying is that the point to a character may not be all that obvious at the point of their killing. Jon Snow, the person we’re saying is ‘unkillable’ for that reason, has already had a massive effect on the story. Without him, the wildlings would all be walkers now. Samwell Tarley wouldn’t have gained his courage and gone on his path to be the new Maester - with effects yet to be played out. Without Jon’s letter to Stannis, Stannis doesn’t show up at the wall. Certainly Jon Snow has had just about as much effect on the story line as Robb Stark did at the time he was killed.
Daenerys is another matter, and a good illustration of what you’re talking about. If her story ended now, a whole lot of her narrative arc would become completely irrelevant. She would have no impact on the main story whatsoever. Or so it seems. If her death forced Tyrion and Varys to take charge of her army and lead it to victory, we could discover that Tyrion is really the central character to the story and Daeneris was just a mechanism for getting Tyrion an army of his own. But you wouldn’t know that at the time she was killed, and it could seem totally pointless until later plot events uncovered the real reason why she had to be there.
Jaime Lannister? He could die. He’s done a lot, and it’s not clear yet what he has left to do other than try to protect what’s left of his family’s power. On the other hand, he could turn out to be the key to the whole thing. It’s easy to see who’s story has ‘played out’ in hindsight. Not so much while the story is still going on.
Anyway, getting on with the speculation as to what might happen now:
It sure would be nice for Tyrion/Daenerys if there was someone out there that had a fleet of ships that could be used to transport their army across the sea. That someone would probably need a pretty good reason for lending that fleet to another group who wanted to use it to crush the Lannisters.
You know, some organizaation like the Iron Bank of Braavos. The bank that you don’t screw over without dire consequences. The one that lent the Lannisters a whole lot of money that isn’t coming back…
But you’d have to go to Braavos. I wonder what character might be in Braavos at that time? Someone with a few names still left on her list, and who might by then be a fully trained faceless man. Someone who might be very handy to have at your side when overthrowing a kingdom run by the family who killed her father…