A lot of major characters died in the final season of Game of Thrones, but there was one who almost made it. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, staff writer Dave Hill (who was behind the season opener “Winterfell”) revealed which character who got the axe was originally going to make it to the end.
“For a long time we wanted Ser Jorah to be there at The Wall in the end,” Hill said. “The three coming out of the tunnel would be Jon and Jorah and Tormund. But the amount to logic we’d have to bend to get Jorah up to The Wall and get him to leave Dany’s side right before … there’s no way to do that blithely. And Jorah should have the noble death he craves defending the woman he loves.”
So Jorah Mormont was originally going to go to the Wall with Jon Snow, which probably means he would have been involved in the plot to kill Dany, assuming he was getting the same punishment Jon was, to take the black and live in exile.
I can see where they were going with it; three guys walking out of the Castle Black tunnel at the end would have paralleled the three men who walked out in the very first scene of the show.
But they were definitely right to go another direction. For one, it would be extremely hard to make the audience believe that Jorah would betray Dany, even after what she does to King’s Landing. For another, his death was probably the most touching part of “The Long Night,” an episode where many fans complained about the low death count. And finally, keeping him around would have undermined the already shaky case for Daenerys losing it and burning King’s Landing in “The Bells.” Presumably, losing Ser Jorah is part of what isolates her and leads her to make her fateful decision.
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So yes, as much as I like him, killing Ser Jorah was definitely the right call. Plus, it spared Jorah the sight of his beloved queen burning down a city. “There’s a sweetness in that because Jorah will never know what she did,” said actor Iain Glen. “That’s probably best. It’s a blessing for him that he never found out what happened to her. And from a pragmatic story point of view, his death served a greater purpose. Where could we have taken Jorah from there? F— if I know.”
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