Let’s revisit the end of “Game of Thrones,” shall we? Bran becomes king of everything but the North, which Sansa takes over. Arya sails east, and Jon Targaryen, reunited with his BFF Tormund, leads the Free Folk north of the wall where a lone piece of grass pokes its way through the snow.
The obviousness of that symbolism matches the clarity of the ending for the Stark kids, but we have been wondering about Jon. There’s a moment where, as the door to Westeros literally closes behind him, he looks back with a combination of sadness and doubt in his eyes. Is he doing the right thing by leaving Westeros behind? Kit Harington offered his perspective in a pre-Emmys interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“[S]eeing him go beyond the Wall back to something true, something honest, something pure with these people he was always told he belongs with — the Free Folk — it felt to me like he was finally free. Instead of being chained and sent to the Wall, it felt like he was set free. It was a really sweet ending. As much as he had done a horrible thing [in killing Daenerys], as much as he had felt that pain, the actual ending for him was finally being released.”
Jon Snow looking back and wondering.
(HBO)
So there you have it. Jon Snow did leave Westeros, and he did the right thing for himself, in leaving behind the place where he had to kill his aunt/lover, and the people of Westeros. Because by giving up his legitimate claim to the crown, he cleared the way for Bran to, perplexingly, be chosen as king.
While we’d still definitely love a spin-off that’s just about Jon, Tormund, and Ghost, it’s nice to get some closure on the end of the series from the man who played Jon Snow for nearly a decade.
This article originally appeared on Fatherly. Follow @FatherlyHQ on Twitter.
