Courtesy of HBO
"I think with the whole 'winter is finally here' business, it means everyone is going to have a really bad time," the Jon Snow actor tells THR.
Kit Harington has some bad news for anyone who thinks a happy ending is in store for Jon Snow, now that he's been named King in the North, and now that the audience knows he's secretly related to House Targaryen.
"I think it's going to get very bleak before if there is a happy ending," the Emmy-nominated Game of Thrones star told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview this week. "If there's any sort of win or heroic moment for Jon and everyone else. I think it's going to get very dark before it gets better. I think what we might see this season is those White Walkers and that Army of the Dead really come into force. So that's going to be exciting to see. I don't know what it means. I think with the whole 'winter is finally here' business, it means everyone is going to have a really bad time."
Everyone in the world of Westeros, perhaps — but hopefully not a bad time for the folks lucky enough to experience the horrors of Game of Thrones only through their television sets.
Read on for more of the week in Game of Thrones:
** In the same interview with THR, Harington revealed his approach to playing the resurrected Jon Snow: "Having died at the end of the fifth season, I was told I'd come back, but they didn't tell me anything about how. And I thought, 'Is it going to be some seismic shift in Jon? Is he going to come back as a nasty person? Is he going to come back as fundamentally changed and altered?' And he comes back, and he's the same. And then I thought, 'Oh.' Sort of what he comes back with is the knowledge about life that very few people have, which is, there is nothing after it. And that's terrifying for a young man who probably is religious in some ways and thinks he'll see his father after he dies. He goes to the other side and there is nothing there. That is going to fundamentally change him inside. And it does."
** When Harington spoke with THR about the future of Thrones, he did so purely as a hypothetical, without having first read scripts for season seven. Since then, however, his co-star (and fellow Emmy nominee) Maisie Williams has announced that she's read the scripts for the coming season — and what's more, there's absolutely no way for fans to prepare for what's in store. In Williams' own words: "shit gets REAL."
** Speaking of Game of Thrones and Emmy nominations, VFX supervisor Joe Bauer spoke with THR about the special effects work in one of the past season's most complicated episodes: "Battle of the Bastards," the epic field battle between Houses Stark and Bolton. But far away the war outside Winterfell, the show dealt with another fiery fight in Meereen, as Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons roasted the Masters of Slavers Bay alive. Bauer spoke about both battles in his chat with THR.
** Let's stick with Daenerys for the time being. In the books on which Game of Thrones is based, the Mother of Dragons experiences several visions and hears about consistent prophecies predicting her future as a leader. For the most part, Thrones has scaled back on this aspect of Dany's story, but that doesn't mean the final results won't wind up on the show in some other form. For a primer on the role of prophecy in Dany's story and how it might impact her story in seasons seven and eight, prolific Thrones theorist Alt Shift X has produced a video diving deep into how the House of the Undying sequence played out in the novels, and what it might mean for the past and future of the series.
** Is there anything better than watching Tyrion smack Joffrey around on an infinite loop? Probably not, but this one comes close: DailyMotion user Ceek uploaded a video of Sansa Stark repeatedly slapping Sweet Robin Arryn in the middle of the Vale, an endless punishment for stomping all over her snow castle. If only this video lasted as long as the coming winter of Westeros.
Watch our season seven predictions in the video below:
Follow THR's Game of Thrones coverage for more news, interviews and analysis.
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