Kit Harington explains why Jon Snow killed Daenerys Targaryen

Jon Snow had a rough time of it in the final season of Game of Thrones. When he wasn’t on the ground fighting zombies or stopping his own men from killing the citizens of King’s Landing, he was trying to navigate a tangled family drama involving his sisters and his new girlfriend, who also happened to be his aunt. And it all ended with him putting a knife through the heart of the woman he loved and getting banished to live out the rest of his life beyond the Wall.

For actor Kit Harington, these revelations hit hard. “I sat on a plane next to Emilia [Clarke] on the way to the read-through in Belfast, and she had read them already, and se was like, ‘Shit, Kit. You are in for some surprises,'” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “That piqued my interest. (Laughs.)”

"I didn’t realize what was going to happen the whole way through until maybe half a page before Jon kills Dany. I remember my mouth dropping open and looking across Emilia at the table, who was slowly nodding as I went, “No, no, no!” It was a “holy fuck” moment, pardon my language. Jaw dropping. I was completely surprised by it, even though you can kind of see the path through the season of how it was getting there — and even the previous couple of seasons before that, once you can look back. But it was still a big shock to me."

And now that moment is preserved forever in the Game of Thrones documentary The Last Watch:

And if learning of the scene was shocking, filming it was exhausting. “It was essentially a page and a half of dialogue, and we spent three weeks filming it,” Harington remembered. “They wanted to shoot every conceivable angle, every way, to make sure they got it the way they wanted it. When you’re shooting the same scene for two weeks and it’s a page and a half, it becomes a long exercise in concentration. You have to remember the energy you’re bringing in, every day, and making sure it’s consistent. With a highly emotionally charged scene like that, it’s quite a lot, for everyone — the crew, me and Emilia. It was tiring. It’s one of the hardest things we filmed.”

"It’s that horrible conflict in a relationship: “Do I stay or do I go?” We’ve all been through it at some point … except this one involves a knife. (Laughs.) So, the stakes are even higher. But that’s the way I looked at it: “Do I leave my lover?” It was the same kind of thing between Jon and Ygritte [Rose Leslie] earlier in the series, betraying someone he loves for the greater good. But what it really comes down to, the real crux of it, is the decision is made when she puts it between her and his family. Jon essentially sees it as Daenerys or Sansa and Arya, and that makes his mind up for him. He choose blood over, well, his other blood. But he chooses the people he has grown up with, the people his roots are with, the North. That’s where his loyalties lie in the end. That’s when he puts the knife in."

And that, according to Harington, is what Game of Thrones is ultimately about: dysfunctional families, and how we’re tied to them. “[Jon is] faced with someone he loves as his lover — who he is related to — but his loyalty is with the people and the part of the world where his roots are, the people who raised him. As much as he was an outcast from that group as a bastard, and even though Jon became the legitimate heir to the throne, he will always be of the North. He’ll always be a bastard of the North. He’s always done the honorable thing, and Tyrion [Peter Dinklage] appeals to that: ‘Do the honorable thing. Do the right thing. Do the hard thing, but do the right thing.’ At the end of it, it’s beyond honor for Jon. It’s his family.”

So that was a brutal scene all around, but at least Jon gets a respite at the very end of the season, when he goes beyond the Wall in a sequence that resembled the first scene in the series premiere. “When I read it, that bit really made me cry,” Harington said. “[T]his character that I loved for so many years and had grown so close to, and had meant so much to me … 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.”

I enjoyed the ambiguity of Jon’s ending, the way we weren’t sure if he was leaving with the wildlings beyond the Wall for good or just escorting them northward before returning to the Wall. I’m happy to interpret things Harington’s way; lord knows the guy deserved a break.

As for the other big set piece of the season — the battle against the Night King in “The Long Night” — one of the things Harington will most remember is the pain of sitting in a rig to film the scenes of him riding a dragon. “Emilia had been moaning about it for seasons, and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. You have not been through the mud in Northern Ireland. A buck in a nice warm room? Boo hoo.’ But she was absolutely right. It was horrific. It’s not acting at all. It is not acting, it never will be acting, and it is not what I’d signed up for. (Laughs.) But it looked great, right? It just felt horrible! It is very uncomfortable as a man.”

“I don’t think I can have children now,” he added. Not with that attitude.

Something else Harington wasn’t wild about when he first heard it: that Arya Stark got to kill the Night King: “I was secretly like, ‘I wanted to do that!'” Harington confessed. “Especially because I love fighting with [actor Vladimir Furdik], who also played the White Walker I fought at Hardhome. I’ve never seen a better swordsman. But it was a really great twist, and it tied up Maisie’s journey in a really beautiful way. Over the seasons, we’ve seen her build up these skills to become this hardened assassin, and she uses it all to kill our main antagonist.”

Harington was only one of several Emmy-nominated actors THR talked to. Because in case you forgot, Harington is nominated for an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series as part of a series where it talks to several actors up for Emmys this year.

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