It’s not terribly often that you get major plot spoilers for a show like HBO’s Game of Thrones just from looking at one person’s haircut, but Kit Harrington might have just dropped a big one. The actor that portrays Jon Snow on Game of Thrones chopped off his locks, and that could mean big spoilers not just for the fifth season, but for the books as well.
Today, nerd news sites in the vein of Polygon and io9 were reporting on fare usually reserved for, say, Just Jared and TMZ: Kit Harrington, Game of Thrones ‘ Jon Snow, has gotten a haircut . Why the sudden focus on Snow’s jet black locks? It appears that the fact that Harrington has chosen to lop them off might give us some insight into just what we can expect from this season of Game of Thrones .
As io9 points out , Harrington’s contract with HBO stipulates that, so long as he is a cast member on Game of Thrones , he can’t cut his hair. Stepping out to the premiere of his movie Testament yesterday, though, Harrington was looking quite a bit more shorn than he has in the past. He didn’t go the full Varys or anything, but there’s quite a bit of difference in what we saw on Game of Thrones and what we see now.
So that raises the question: If Harrington couldn’t cut his hair until he was done with Game of Thrones , and Harrington has cut his hair, then by transitive property, does that mean Game of Thrones fans can say goodbye to Jon Snow for good? Is that even a correct usage of transitive property?
Now, it could be that Harrington’s Jon Snow is just going to get a haircut at some point in Game of Thrones , but readers of the books know that there might be a bit more afoot with the lopped locks than just a change in the character’s look on the show. At the end of A Dance with Dragons , the most recent book in the Song of Ice and Fire series that inspired Game of Thrones , we know that Jon Snow finds himself in dire straits. Without going into too much detail, Jon makes a few decisions here and there, and he winds up having to deal with the consequences — “for the Watch.”
It’s something of a question whether Snow is dead, alive, or on death’s door at the end of the book, and the fact that Harrington now feels he can cut his hair with impunity has some thinking that Snow might have really bought the big one in not just the Game of Thrones television series, but the books as well.
Of course, it could just be a haircut. Many times with Game of Thrones , it turns out that we, like Jon Snow, know nothing .
[Lead images via io9 ]