Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington recently responded to a question audiences have been asking ever since the series came to a dramatic finale in May, according to his interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
What is Jon Snow thinking as he rides toward the Wall in the last few moments of the eight-season-long series?
The final episode’s final moments are startlingly ambiguous. And down-right frustrating. Jon Snow picks up from Castle Black and rides toward the Wall. Whether he is abandoning the Night’s Watch to live with the Free Folk or plotting his next political move, or both, is unclear.
Image Via The Hollywood Reporter
Turns out, Harrington has the answers we need:
… seeing 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 abandons his post on the Night’s Watch, and essentially civilization, to live with the Wildlings, but this move is about the character’s personal freedom more than anything else.
Snow has been a victim of Westeros and its strict social hierarchy since his story began — he was born a bastard and raised to never forget it.
This ending is actually so perfect for Jon Snow, who wears the chains of various establishments and tyrannical figures over the course of his arc in the series, because he is set free.
When he rides away from Westeros and the “puritanical servitude of the Night’s Watch,” Snow is escaping the constant war and heartache of his past, according to analysis from Entertainment Weekly.
Image Via Huffington Post
The scene is also a heartbreaking nod to the true love of Jon’s life, Ygritte, who was a Wildling. This is a homecoming, and the highest honor he can pay to Ygritte.
Finally, Jon Snow belongs to no one but himself.
Featured Image Via Entertainment Weekly.