Kit Harington reflects on the divisive last season of Game of Thrones

Last Updated on August 31, 2024

With House of the Dragon unleashing season 2 on audiences, HBO had planned to stay in the Game of Thrones world for several outings. The upcoming spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is moving forward with newly announced cast members. However, not everything in HBO’s plan would stay on track as Kit Harington revealed earlier this year that his Jon Snow spin-off would not proceed as of now. “Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough,” Harington said. “So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being. There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf.“

Harington would also recently reflect on the controversial last season of Game of Thrones in a new profile from GQ. Harington brought some context to the filming of that last year, saying, “I think if there was any fault with the end of Thrones, is that we were all so f*cking tired, we couldn’t have gone on longer. And so I understand some people thought it was rushed and I might agree with them. But I’m not sure there was any alternative. I look at pictures of me in that final season and I look exhausted. I look spent. I didn’t have another season in me.” He would also respond to the backlash of the final episode by explaining, “Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe. I think there were some interesting choices that didn’t quite work.”

Now that the Jon Snow show has been shelved, GQ attempted to at least find out what the story to the series might have been. But Harington would not comply, “I don’t really want to say. because it starts a whole thing.” The Eternals star then spilled a little bit about the thought process behind it, “What I can tell you is it was HBO that came to me and said, ‘Would you consider this?’ My first reaction was no. 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. 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.’”