It finally happened. Last night on Game of Thrones, two of the most important characters in the series — King in the North Jon Snow and Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen — finally met face to face. As showrunner David Benioff told Entertainment Weekly, the meeting wasn’t an immediately auspicious one. “There isn’t instant chemistry,” he said. “He’s annoying and she’s annoying and they have to figure out how to make peace.”
Indeed, there was more clashing than I think some fans were expecting. But again, you can’t expect two people so focused on entirely different goals to hit it off immediately. “It was fun to play,” said Emilia Clarke (Daenerys). “She doesn’t like him and she doesn’t believe him.”
But will it always stay that way? The interviewees were mum about how this relationship will develop going forward. Right now, you have two powerful characters who are circling and sizing each other up. It might seem to viewers that these two should instantly get along, but as Kit Harington reminded EW, the characters haven’t been watching each other’s stories.
"As far as Jon knows, he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard of and trying to negotiate with her — he’s not meeting Daenerys, who the audience has been watching for so many years. That helps with the surprise of it. He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s reaction is going to be, ‘Okay…’ but he puts that aside, because he has to."
We’ll see if he brings that back out in “The Spoils of War,” next Sunday’s episode.
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Harington also told a story about the scene where Jon and Tyrion talk on a cliff overlooking the sea. “It was a beautiful location with 50 mph winds and I was wearing a cape next to a cliff,” he said. “There was a danger of me being blown off! I’m not sure it’s the way I would have wanted to go.”
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