There were many tragic deaths over the course of Game Of Thrones, including the death of its writing and quality as it ran out of source material. That was the worst death. And the most shocking—though in hindsight you can see quite clearly where the cracks began to form.
Now we have another death, though this one is more like a stillbirth. The Jon Snow spinoff series that’s been talked about for quite some time as one of many other Thrones stories has been canned. That’s a shame, because there is no doubt in my mind that Snow’s story arc was supposed to be wildly different in the books. So much buildup only to fall narratively so flat—like so many other story arcs in that show, but this one still the most important. Perhaps a Jon Snow spinoff could have given us a bit more closure.
Then again, it might be for the best. Harington told ScreenRant in an interview promoting his new film Blood For Dust that his team “couldn’t find the right story to tell.” A good story is crucial, and something so many TV producers seem to forget. I’d rather have no Jon Snow series than a bad one with a forced story. Maybe we can blame the ending of Game Of Thrones for a lack of good stories to tell, though I sort of hoped this would be a gritty survival story, with Snow and his people coming into conflict with some terrifying Wildling clan. Have it much smaller scale, very violent, and then, at the very end, maybe even reveal that the White Walkers aren’t, in fact, all beaten somehow.
Harington explained that the series simply never came together, but it’s not necessarily dead for all eternity, either:
I hadn’t really ever spoken about it, because it was in development. I didn’t want it leaked out that it was being developed. I didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen. Because in development, you look at every angle, and you see whether it’s worth it.
And currently, it’s not. Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough. So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being. There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf.
If the series is revived, it wouldn’t be the first time Jon Snow came back from the dead, but I wouldn’t hold out hope. It takes a great deal of time and resources to get the wheels spinning on a project like this. To shelve it firmly means a hard stop, all momentum lost. With other spinoffs in the works, it seems unlikely Jon Snow will make a comeback.
George R.R. Martin confirmed that a Snow series was in development last summer, and since then my Facebook feed has been filled with fake posters (made rather poorly) announcing the show’s release date and a whole bunch of gullible people falling for it, hook line and sinker. It’s been quite irritating. I suspect this will go on for some time before everyone figures out the truth.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Westeros we have House of the Dragon returning for Season 2 this June, the casting of the leads in the next spinoff A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, and news that Nine Voyages will now be an animated series instead of live-action. Here’s a pair of House of the Dragon trailers to spare you any sadness over Jon Snow’s fate:
Green Trailer:
Black Trailer:
What spinoffs would you like to see? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.
