5 things from the Game of Thrones books we wish were in the show

If there’s one thing that Game of Thrones fans are good at, it’s finding ways to occupy ourselves during the long wait between novels or seasons.

A gorgeous new piece of fan art from Ertaç Altınöz went around this week, envisioning what a poster for HBO’s Jon Snow sequel series might look like, should it actually come to pass. As with Altınöz’s previous cover art treatments for The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, the forthcoming sixth and seventh novels in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, the Snow poster was filled with little details to geek out over.

One of those details is the fact that Jon Snow’s eyes are covered in a milky white film — a nod to the idea of him warging. Following the poster’s release, I had a few discussions with people who hadn’t read the books yet who wanted to know what the deal was with that, because while Jon does quite a bit of warging in the novels, he never displays those abilities in the television show.

This got me thinking about some of the book details that didn’t make it into Game of Thrones, and which of those were missed the most. And thus, here are five things from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books we would have loved to have seen in Game of Thrones.

1. Warg abilities for the rest of the Stark children

The very first scene of A Song of Ice and Fire that George R.R. Martin envisioned for his book series was the Stark children finding a litter of direwolf pups in the forest outside Winterfell. This iconic moment carried over into the television series, where all five of Ned Stark’s children as well as his secret nephew Jon Snow claimed pups of their own. Considering that direwolves are never seen that far south of the wall, it’s a mystical moment with broad implications for the wider series.

As TV viewers know, Bran Stark eventually develops a supernatural ability to “warg” into his wolf as well as other beings, astrally projecting his consciousness into their bodies. While Bran’s warging abilities are by far the most developed of the Stark kids, in the books several others in the family also display these abilities, most notably Jon and Arya. It’s not quite clear whether all six children would have been able to warg, since some of their wolves die in gruesome ways, but what’s not in doubt is that warging is much more of a family trait than something specific to Bran. Jon in particular has some very memorable warg moments. Alas, it fell by the wayside in the TV show.

But hey, since Ghost and Jon are still around, there’s always a chance that the Snow spinoff could revisit this idea. Maybe Altınöz’s poster will prove prophetic after all!