The “Game of Thrones” ending was never going to satisfy everyone -- we know that, right? Luckily, those who were disappointed can wait around for author George R.R. Martin to finish up the series on his terms, so maybe things will play out differently on the page.
Among fan contention was Bran Stark’s rise to ruler and Cersei’s lame demise, but can we at least all agree that the other Starks ended up doing OK? We know Arya’s kicking butt on the other side of the world, and Sophie Turner recently commented on what Sansa would be up to these days: “No wars, no battles. I see her leading until she's very old. I don't see her getting married or having children. I think it would be a democratic kind of kingdom. She'd die of old age, very happy,” Turner told the LA Times.
Which I agree with -- Sansa dealt with way too many trash men during the events of “Game of Thrones.”
Jon Snow, meanwhile, was “banished” (not really, since no one was really going to go check on him) to the Wall for killing Daenerys before she could murder the rest of the world in the name of saving it. Instead of sitting at a sad, broken Wall that didn’t need protecting anymore, though, he took Ghost and followed Tormund and the Free Folk out beyond the wall to start a new life. It wasn’t the best ending we could have imagined for our broody hero, but it was fine. Actor Kit Harington, though, found it suitable for the outcasted Stark.
“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,” Harington told The Hollywood Reporter as part of their pre-Emmys coverage. “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.”
While that’s all well and good, the biggest problem viewers had with Jon Snow’s story was the way, they thought, that his Targaryen bloodline didn’t end up meaning much to the bigger picture of the narrative. At the end of the seventh season, we find out that Jon Snow wasn’t Ned Stark’s bastard son, after all, but the legitimate son of Lyanna Stark (Ned’s sister) and Rhaegar Targaryen (Daenerys’ brother). So, not only were the former Lord Commander and the former Khaleesi related, but the revelation gave Jon a better claim to rule the Seven Kingdoms.
Fans thought that the implications of that fact weren’t fleshed out -- at all. Harington, though, offered up an alternative view to the point of that storyline; it, he thought, provided Jon Snow with a choice not about whether or not to seek out power, but about what family means to him. Rather than serving as a point of conflict for the Iron Throne, his Targaryen bloodline instead played into what “Game of Thrones” has always been about: family bonds and breaks.
“It was said a long time ago, and I agree with it, that ‘Thrones’ really is about dysfunctional families. It's about mothers, brothers and sisters, but it's also about how far your blood will stretch in your decision-making,” Harington said. “That's the ultimate choice Jon is left with. He's 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.”
“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,” he continued.
So, for all you crybabies saying that the showrunners didn’t do anything with the “Aejon” information -- put it to bed.