Poor old Jon Snow. Always trying to do the right thing when he often didn’t completely understand what was going on around him or why people behave as they do. He accepted his place in the world even after it was revealed it wasn’t actually his place in the world. Except he did actually know from the very start what he wanted. It is revealed in the books in his very first chapter. And one casual line (but not of dialogue seen on screen) in the script from the final episode confirms things were always heading to one place only.
The HBO show is up for a record-breaking number of Emmy Awards for its final season and has submitted the script for ‘The Iron Throne.’
Not only dioe it give fans a chance to read through all the dialogue, it is packed with directions and comments about the interior thoughts of the characters.
Jon was always one of the most enigmatic characters but his final conversations with Arya, Daenerys and Tyrion finally express all his doubts and struggles about what was happening – and what to do about it.
But one almost throwaway line reveals there was only ever one ending for the secret Targaryen.
In the powerful montage scene where Jon, Arya and Sansa walk out to meet their fates – Jon at Castle Black, Sansa at Winterfell and Arya aboard her ship – the script puts it perfectly.
It says: “Once again, he wears all black. It was always his colour.”
Black isn’t just a colour. “To take the black” means to join the Night’s Watch. It was always Jon’s fate.
It was also what he himself most wanted from the very start of the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire. It is the entire focus of his first point of view chapter.
Benjen Stark’s visit to Winterfell coincided with the arrival of Robert Baratheon and the Lannisters. Everyone else was concerned with how the royal visit would impact on the Starks, with thoughts of their place in the wider world south of their stronghold.
Only Jon was already looking North. He begged his uncle to take him with him to Castle Black.
But it is Tyrion who made the most perceptive (and prophetic) comment when he told the young boy: “I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers.”
With hindsight it is also fun to notice how Tyrion did not mention the Stark girls, including the eventual Queen in the North.
Jon, it seems, was always heading even further North.
