The Game of Thrones crowd, book readers and show watchers alike, feel as if their skin has been repeatedly flayed for the past week after He has risen in possibly the show’s least spectacular plot reveal.
No one can blame them.
Everyone’s favorite character – an assumed untouchable – was treated as a poor plot device for a season cliff hanger.
Jon Snow’s resurrection seemed so effortless by the red enchantress that it could not possibly satisfy the craving show watchers have had for months and book readers have had for years. It all seemed so unMartin-like. King George does not write like that, they cried. He is edgy and outside the box. Yet it was as old fashioned schlock as old fashioned schlock can get – predictable, rushed and pointless.
Try to understand why the audience was mad. It wasn’t because Jon Snow wasn’t dead – we all knew that – it was just we were expecting something more imaginative to have taken place.
Yet when it comes to storytelling, the fault was not in the resolution of the plot. It was the origin of the plot itself. (Forgive me for attempting to provide logic in a world of dragons and demon smoke babies.) Jon Snow’s resurrection didn’t make sense because his assassination didn’t make any sense. The Night’s Watch commitment to their sacred code of honor to wage war with the wildlings simply does not hold water politically once the wildlings had already crossed into Castle Black.
