MICHAEL LOMBARDO (former HBO programming president): It’s one thing [for producers to ask to keep a character’s return a secret] hypothetically before the world has experienced it. You go, “Okay, we can do that. We’ve killed off main characters on other shows.” But the death of Jon Snow resonated. I wasn’t in a meeting, at a dinner party, without people asking me about Jon Snow. It was very challenging to navigate the landscape, to be honest and forthright with friends and people I respect who were desperate to hope or hear that Jon Snow might be coming back.
At the Television Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills that summer, Lombardo was put in the uncomfortable position of maintaining the deception while onstage at a media event facing 150 reporters. A critic asked if Jon Snow was really dead—but not if the character was coming back.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM: Everyone fucking asked the wrong question: “Is Jon Snow dead?” Yes, he’s dead.
MICHAEL LOMBARDO: I was enormously relieved. That’s the answer I gave. “He’s dead.” And when we pick up [in season six], he’s really dead.
DAVID NUTTER: I was at a photo opportunity with President Obama at [sitcom producer] Chuck Lorre’s house after the finale aired. Obama turned to me and asked: “You didn’t kill Jon Snow, did you?” I said, “Jon Snow is deader than dead.”
The show’s cast and crew were officially let in on the secret once the scripts were sent out for season six. But how could Harington work on a TV set for months, often outdoors, without his return being revealed to the public?
DAVID BENIOFF: “Jon Snow” never appeared in any of the [season-six] scripts. It was now “LC,” standing for “lord commander.”
KIT HARINGTON: No one was allowed to say “Jon Snow” on set, ever; everyone had to refer to me as “LC.”
CARICE VAN HOUTEN (Melisandre): There were many jokes on set about his code name. Some people made it into “Little Clit.”
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD (executive producer): There were a couple of us in a meeting, and David Benioff said, “When LC goes to—Why am I using that? I know who he is!” We created our own worlds of hiding from ourselves.
And Harington was encouraged to stay hidden as much as possible while filming in Belfast.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM: Kit wasn’t able do anything. It was a nightmare for him.
KIT HARINGTON: I was put in a different apartment [instead of the cast hotel]. But I’d go stir-crazy if I stayed in all the time. I went out for meals with the cast. It’s not life or death.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: It was dangerous to have dinner with Kit anywhere. The guy has to eat. But we tried to hide him.
Set security was also ramped up, but one paparazzo got a photo of Harington filming during the Battle of the Bastards.
DAVID BENIOFF: Honestly, we were hoping [the finale] would air and we’d get a few weeks of uncertainty out of it. The fact it went on as long as it did was a pleasant surprise.
DAN WEISS: If you looked online you could see Kit in a field with a sword in his hand surrounded by three hundred extras and you’re going to say he’s probably not dead, unless this was a weirdly expensive flashback sequence to a battle Jon was never in. But the vast majority of people don’t troll around online looking for things that are going to fuck up their viewing experience.
There was, however, a second matter that needed to be handled. Before season six began filming, Harington had appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where he playfully griped about always having to film on sets in Northern Ireland instead of, say, the warmer climates of Croatia or Spain, like many of the show’s other cast members.
Asked what he would tell a traveler going to Belfast, Harington replied, “It’s wonderful for two or three days,” and joked the city has a “wonderfully depressing tourist board.” Then he dug deeper. “They celebrate three things: Having the most bombed hotel in Europe, which is great. They built the Titanic, which is a ship that sunk on its maiden voyage. And now they have Game of Thrones, the most depressing TV show in history.”
Harington was far from alone when it came to envying members of the show’s cast and crew working on the Spain and Croatia sets, where filming was far easier and the after-hours parties were more lively. Still, Harington’s interview didn’t go over well with the show’s fiercely proud Northern Ireland crew.
KIT HARINGTON: I’m kind of a bumbling English buffoon at times. I’ll put myself down and be pessimistic about a situation. That’s something I need to improve on. But on a talk show, you walk out and own the situation—“This is me, this is what I’m selling.” I’m not a natural salesman; I tend to put things down.
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD: Kit did not mean anything by that. This was a talk-show setup and, “Tell us a funny story about what it’s like being in Belfast.” Is it the most cosmopolitan city in the world? It’s not London, but we all loved it, and we loved the people of Belfast, and people there are very proud of their city. When it’s dissed, it’s like a fuck-you. So as soon as that aired, I’m like, “We need to show Belfast that we love them.”
Caulfield had T-shirts made for the crew that declared, “You Know Shite All, Jon Snow,” on one side and then “GoT Loves Belfast” on the other.
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD: [The crew] got over it. Kit has hung around Belfast more than anybody else and really loved staying in town.
So Jon Snow was coming back to life. But when, exactly? The writers debated how long to keep their hero dead before his inevitable resurrection by Melisandre using her oft-unreliable powers granted through the Lord of Light.
DAVE HILL (co-producer): There was some talk about putting [the resurrection] at the end of the first episode of season six because it’s such a great premiere ender. But Bryan made a great point, that we really want to milk Jon Snow’s death, otherwise he’s only been dead for fifty minutes. At the same time, his body would start to decompose, and story-wise we had a lot of pressing action that took place with him that season, so we didn’t just want him lying on a table for three episodes. Plus, Kit probably would have murdered us.
KIT HARINGTON: It was such an easy two episodes. I loved it. I’m in a warm room, which is unusual for me. I’m lying down for a week’s worth of shooting. Though I actually fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a scene. You know how terrifying it is when you wake up when you don’t know where you are? Imagine waking up in Game of Thrones world; it’s like a nightmare.
JEREMY PODESWA (director): We knew something had happened there; it was quite funny.
KIT HARINGTON: I also had to lie buck naked on the table. It’s very weird, like a teenage boy’s wet dream. You’re lying there naked and Carice van Houten is washing you.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: It took forever to resurrect him. Forever! It was such an important scene; we shot it from so many angles. I washed Little Clit’s body fifty times. There would be a lot of people who would be very jealous, including my mother and sister. I was joking about that—“If only my mother could see this”—and he loved that.
JEREMY PODESWA: It was very important to me that up until the last second, you don’t really know if he’s going to come back to life or not. The sequence has a kind of protracted tension within it, through this whole long ceremony, whether it’s going to work or not. There are people there who are doubting Melisandre, and she is doubting herself. Is this going to show the limits of her powers?
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: I was going through a difficult time in my private life, and it was really hard. It was hard to remember my lines in Valyrian. I made up the lines at some point, just putting letters behind each other.
Eventually, Melisandre gave up. The sorceress and Ser Davos defeatedly left the room. Suddenly, Jon Snow returned to life with a shocked gasp.
JEREMY PODESWA: That was a combination of him like a baby being reborn and a drowning person coming up out of being underwater for air.
CARICE VAN HOUTEN: I brought Jon Snow back to life and all of a sudden, fans went from “Die, bitch, die” to “Will you marry me?” S
uch a huge difference from being a complete bad guy to America’s sweetheart.
JEREMY PODESWA: Watching people on YouTube react to the scene was one of the more satisfying things I’ve experienced. People were jumping off their chair, screaming and flipping out.
Jon Snow then executed his traitorous would-be assassins and quit the Night’s Watch. He was finally free to pursue his own destiny.
KIT HARINGTON: He was done with it. He’d seen the other side, seen what’s there, and comes back and realizes he needs to live his life and get out of there: “This place betrayed me and everything I stood for has changed.” He’s also had to kill a child, and that’s what really does it—he kills Olly, the underage kid, and can’t see the point in being up there anymore. At the heart of it he knows by staying at the Wall he can’t help the kingdoms. “I’m going to die here if I stay here, I’m going to die very quickly.” Then he gets brought around to a different mission.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Pack Survives
If season five had the darkest storylines for Game of Thrones characters, the next year had perhaps the most triumphant. Season six depicted a succession of victories for the Starks, Targaryens, and Lannisters alike. Jon Snow and Sansa Stark defeated Ramsay Bolton. Arya broke free of the repressive House of Black and White. Bran became the Three-Eyed Raven. Daenerys ditched Meereen and set sail for Westeros. And Cersei crushed the Faith Militant. All gained personal or political power as the show edged toward its planned final two seasons.
In Braavos, Arya was locked in a battle of wits with the Waif (Faye Marsay) while she learned the mystical skills of becoming an assassin with the Faceless Men in order to avenge her loved ones. Yet Arya rebelled against the order’s mandate to sever ties to her past and truly become No One. “I don’t think she ever believed she could give everything up,” Williams said. “She tried. She really tried.”
As part of her training, Arya was temporarily blinded, an effect that presented a real-life challenge for Williams. While the production could have used CGI to cloud Arya’s eyes, the actress—just as she’d opted for the tougher decision to play her character left-handed like in George R. R. Martin’s books—volunteered for the less expensive and more convincing method of wearing thick full-eye contact lenses.
MAISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): Then I realized they were the most painful things ever. I hate saying that because I hate hearing people complain. Hearing about Jennifer Lawrence and her [thick blue body paint for playing Mystique in X-Men], I remember thinking, “That can’t hurt.” Now I’m like, “Holy shit, I’m sorry I ever felt like that, because these little things in your eyes are so thick and they’re the most painful ever.” I didn’t anticipate they’d get so sore after such little time.
Williams and Marsay had several sparring scenes as part of Arya’s training, which fostered some behind-the-scenes competitiveness.
MAISIE WILLIAMS: [Marsay and I] spurred each other on. I had a bit of pride. I’ve done some sword fighting before. But she had to be better than me, and every time she’d be getting it right and I’d be getting it wrong, I’d be like, “Hang on, I’m going to lose, but Arya still needs to get good.” And every time I was doing well, she was like, “Yeah, but I have to look the best.” So it was a healthy way to train.
JEREMY PODESWA (director): They’re both young and agile and incredibly athletic. For Maisie, because she’s meant to be doing it blind, she was absolutely remarkable and tireless about wanting to make it look right.
Arya and the Waif’s increasingly combative relationship came to a head after Arya refused to carry out an assassination. The result was an intense chase scene through Braavosi city streets that ended with Arya getting repeatedly stabbed.
MAISIE WILLIAMS: We wanted people to think this could be the end. Arya hasn’t been emotional in a long time, and we wanted to bring the emotion. It’s the first time she’s not going to make it, and it’s scary. She ends people’s lives like there’s no tomorrow, but when it’s finally happening to her she’s petrified of dying. She’s got so much more to do. And just the sheer anger—the Waif? Really? Of all the people!
Staging the chase included a discussion about Arya’s abilities. How much of a super-assassin is Arya Stark, exactly? Arya had her ever-evolving kill list (from which she would personally cross off only three names—Meryn Trant, Polliver, and Walder Frey). But Williams always preferred to keep her character grounded.
MAISIE WILLIAMS: I wanted it to look like she was struggling, so there were a lot of times I was like, “I don’t want to do that.” In the latter seasons, I took control a bit more because I knew Arya better than a lot of the directors. I’d ask, “Why would she run over here? She’d just duck under here and just get out. It doesn’t look quite as cinematic, but you’ll have to find something else if you want cinematic.” I felt awful because the job of the stunt guys is to make everything look as crazy and cool as possible. But you want to be happy with the work you’ve done.
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): It was always a struggle in the writing and in the shooting of the Arya scenes: How much ninja warrior versus how much humanity? The idea was that Arya was losing her sense of self, but Maisie was adamant about preserving her humanity. And she really appreciated the final season because Arya eventually found a way to balance both.
MAISIE WILLIAMS: We did so many different takes of emerging out of the water the first time she was stabbed. I had been to a music festival, so I hadn’t slept the whole weekend. I was jumping in the Irish Sea for a million different takes. It was a totally manic day. We wanted it to be real frantic and panicked, but she’s also a fighter. There’s this constant spectrum of how petrified Arya needs to look.
Arya outwitted the Waif by luring her into a pitch-black room, where all those blind training sessions gave Arya a much-needed edge. Killing the Waif served as Arya’s unsanctioned graduation from the House of Black and White.
MARK MYLOD (director): I got some stick from some of the fans for some of [the chase sequence]. I never managed to get the right energy into the shooting of that. It was functional but wasn’t great. But I loved what was written in the script in terms of Maisie’s character using the weapon of her blindness, turning her weakness into a strength against the Waif. I thought that worked well.
Back in Westeros, Arya’s brother Bran had been carried and dragged by Hodor up and down the continent, season after season, which was particularly arduous for Kristian Nairn given his back injury.
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT (Bran Stark): Bran’s mode of transport changed over the years. First it was a sled, then a wheelbarrow, then a [backpack]. It sounds so spoiled to complain about being literally wheeled around all day, but the wheelbarrow was a bit of a nightmare.
KRISTIAN NAIRN (Hodor): No matter what they did, it never got easier. People think the sleigh was easy, but it was a proper sleigh, and I wasn’t on ice or snow but grass and terrain. The easiest was having him on my back, and I think he would have stayed there if he hadn’t kept growing. It had gotten ridiculous, where his legs were almost dragging on the ground.
Then Bran underwent a major transformation when he became the Three-Eyed Raven, a wizard who could potentially see all past and future events (well, sort of). But it wouldn’t be Game of Thrones if Bran gaining power wasn’t accompanied by a tragic loss. The moment of Bran’s transformation was paired with one of the saddest deaths in the show, when Hodor perished as he was helping Bran escape an attack by the Night King and the Army of the Dead.
KRISTIAN NAIRN: With Game of Thrones nothing is ever certain, and that I made it that far was pretty good. Ned Stark only made it to episode nine! I couldn’t have asked for a better goodbye.
While taking refuge in a cave, Bran used his seer powers to travel into the past and saw Hodor as a young boy, then named Willis. In the present, the Army of the Dead attacked, and Hodor was ordered to “hold the door” to allow Bran and Meera Reed (Ellie Kendrick) to escape
. While back in his vision, Willis had an epileptic-like fit, repeating “hold the door” over and over. Gradually, the phrase morphed into just one word: “Hodor,” which became the name everybody called him. Hodor spent years loyally looking after Bran, saving him countless times and keeping him safe, and all the while it was Bran who was inadvertently responsible for his friend’s mental debilitation.
Martin conceived of Hodor’s backstory when writing the first book in his saga, and it was one of the ideas he told the show’s producers about during their season-three meeting in Santa Fe.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (author, co–executive producer): It’s an obscenity to go into somebody’s mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor’s simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran’s powers, the whole question of time and causality—can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it’s harder to explain in a show.
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT: We learned how sad it is, what Hodor has become. He really is a vulnerable soul, who had such potential to live a happy life. Through Bran’s selfish actions, not picking up that I should get out of the dream, and going to the White Walker vision in the first place, I’ve screwed him over. Then he sacrifices himself—you’ve been through all this and still you’re having to do this! It’s mortifying. Bran would be nowhere without him. It encapsulates the Game of Thrones world; the nice guys who deserve looking after don’t always get it.
KRISTIAN NAIRN: My favorite part is it tied up the question of why Hodor is Hodor. Why does he say the word hodor? It’s incredibly sad. The minute you finally learn something about Hodor, they kill him!
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