Kit Harington understands why the Game of Thrones series finale left fans less than thrilled.
“I understand some people thought it was rushed and I might agree with them,” Harington, 37, told GQ Hype on Monday, August 12. “But I’m not sure there was any alternative.”
Harington recalled being more than ready to part ways with the show, adding, “I think if there was any fault with the end of Game of Thrones, is that we were all so f–king tired, we couldn’t have gone on longer. … 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.”
The overwhelming negativity toward the last episode ultimately makes sense to Harington.
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“Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe,” he added. “I think there were some interesting choices that didn’t quite work.”
Game of Thrones, which aired from 2011 to 2019, was an adaptation of a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin titled A Song of Ice and Fire. After eight seasons, the show ended with Bran Stark becoming king and banning Jon Snow (Harington) to the Night’s Watch after he killed Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). Sansa (Sophie Turner) was crowned Queen of the North, Arya (Maisie Williams) decided to travel west and King’s Landing went up in flames, which left many viewers less than thrilled.
Harington was subsequently attached to a sequel series centered on fan-favorite character Jon Snow. Both Martin and HBO CEO Casey Bloys confirmed that the spinoff was in the works, but Harington revealed earlier this year that the show is no longer happening.
“I don’t really want to say, because it starts a whole thing,” Harington explained on Monday about why he “backed out” of the project. “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.”
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The end result wasn’t what Harington was hoping for, which led to them pulling the plug.
“We spent a couple of years back and forth developing it. And it just didn’t — nothing got us excited enough,” he continued. “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.’”
The actor admitted that he wasn’t as excited to return as he thought, adding, “There’s a lot of baggage that goes with it, and I think that was part of the problem. In some ways, you need to divorce completely from this previous thing, and we’re only a few years after it. The role will always be just such a significant factor of my life. It might very well be the biggest, most important piece of work I do.”
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Harington ultimately concluded that he needed to step away from the world of Westeros.
“[But] it was also working against what I’m trying to do, which is separate myself from [the show],” he concluded. “By still being with it, it [would be] very hard to ask people to see you as something else. And it’s kind of essential to do my job, for people to come and see me and not see Jon Snow.”
Fans of the fantasy world have since shifted their focus to HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon. The prequel, which debuted its first season in 2022, took inspiration from Martin’s 2018 novel Fire & Blood. House of the Dragon is set hundreds of years before the events of GoT and focuses on the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen.
