Kit Harington Wasn't 'Excited' By The Cancelled Jon Snow Show

I kinda liked the last season of Game of Thrones. I know! It wasn’t perfect by any stretch. It also wasn’t an abomination. The show had an incredibly high standard to live up to. It was a cultural phenomenon. One of the biggest shows ever on television. It said it was ending and had to stick that landing. I don’t think it did, but I enjoyed watching it try. Game of Thrones was a real favorite of mine that I rewatched several times as it was airing. Since it ended? I haven’t revisited it once.

It’s not like I didn’t have the time (at one point). Game of Thrones ended less than a year before the world shut down. There were days upon days where I was just trying to pass the time to keep from screaming. I rewatched a lot of stuff but didn’t return to Westeros. Hell, I haven’t even watched House of The Dragon. When Game of Thrones ended, it was like my connection to the show ended with it. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again. It will keep plugging along just fine without me, albeit without one of its heroes making a return.

There was a time when a Jon Snow show was promised by George R. R. Martin and Snow actor Kit Harington back in 2022. Snow (as it was to be called) would have focused on the titular character living with trauma and guilt from the actions he’d taken during the original show. At the time, Martin said that Harington and his team were developing it. Then, in April of this year, it was announced that the show had been shelved. Harington is finally revealing why.

Kit Harington sat down with GQ, and the canceled spinoff came up. The actor was pretty open about being apprehensive at first, saying, “What I can tell you is it was HBO that came to me and said, ‘Would you consider this?’ My first reaction was no,” Harington told the outlet. “And then I thought there could be an interesting and important story about the soldier after the war. I felt that there might be something left to say and a story left to tell in a pretty limited way.”

While Harington did begin to get on board with the idea, the longer it took to make happen, the less into it he was. “We spent a couple of years back and forth developing it. And it just didn’t… nothing got us excited enough. In the end, I kind of backed out and said, ‘I think if we push this any further and keep developing it we could end up with something that’s not good. And that’s the last thing we all want.’” Canceling something because you don’t think it will be good is not the worst thing in the world.

Corporations are constantly pumping IP for whatever sweet, gooey money they can slurp. An actor not taking what would probably be a very lucrative deal because the juice wasn’t there is commendable.

Despite the show being shelved, Harington isn’t giving away any secrets. When asked for details about the potential/abandoned plot, Harington wouldn’t budge. “I don’t really want to say … because it starts a whole thing.” Do I think that he is being sincere in his response? Yes. Do I also think he may be keeping the detail a secret in case he wants to return to it down the road? Absolutely.