On Game of Thrones, resurrection, and coming back wrong 

. The series has been praised for grounding itself in real-world scenarios, but it still involves dragons, unstoppable ice monsters, and men who are killed and come back from the dead.

It’s that last one that’s been on a lot of people’s minds lately. George R.R. Martin has firmly established that resurrection is possible in his world, with Beric Dondarrion being Exhibit A. Dondarrion, a knight, is sent out by Ned Stark in 

to arrest Gregor Clegane, who’s rampaging through the Riverlands. The next time we see Dondarrion is in 

, where we learn that Clegane killed him. Twice. He was also killed several more times in battle, and dies at the hands of the Hound before our eyes. Each time, he is resurrected through the intervention of Thoros of Myr, who calls upon the Lord of Light to raise his fallen friend.

Resurrection can be a tricky business in fiction. It has an impact, certainly—seeing a dead man walk is going to get people’s attention, even if he’s made up. It can also provide a way around plot issues. If you kill a character for impact but still want to use that character, resurrection can come in handy. The problem is that readers, or watchers, can feel cheated if a character they thought was dead comes back. Look no further than what happened to the character of Glenn on this past half-season of 

for an example of when fans can feel jerked around by a death—the character was shown being torn apart by zombies in one episodes, but turned up several episodes later quite alive, and people were

So how does a storyteller pull off a resurrection without making it feel cheap? It’s something George R.R. Martin has thought about, as he revealed in an interview with 

I do think that if you’re bringing a character back, that a character has gone through death, that’s a transformative experience… Even back in those days of Wonder Man and all that, I loved the fact that he died, and although I liked the character in later years, I wasn’t so thrilled when he came back because that sort of undid the power of it. Much as I admire Tolkien, I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, “Fly, you fools.”

What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he’s sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they’re not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they’ve lost something. One of the characters who has come back repeatedly from death is Beric Dondarrion, The Lightning Lord. Each time he’s revived he loses a little more of himself. He was sent on a mission before his first death. He was sent on a mission to do something, and it’s like, that’s what he’s clinging to. He’s forgetting other things, he’s forgetting who he is, or where he lived. He’s forgotten the woman who he was once supposed to marry. Bits of his humanity are lost every time he comes back from death; he remembers that mission. His flesh is falling away from him, but this one thing, this purpose that he had is part of what’s animating him and bringing him back to death. I think you see echoes of that with some of the other characters who have come back from death.

So Martin uses resurrection, but tries to justify it by making his characters come back different. This is a strategy that has worked before. Consider the example of 

—the producers killed her in the Season 5 finale but brought her back in the Season 6 premiere. She spent the entirety of the sixth season dealing with the emotional fallout of her resurrection, and the entirety of the seventh with the metaphysical fallout. By and large, people seemed to agree that the show had earned her return.

Martin makes it clear that Beric Dondarrion is out of sorts after his resurrection. Here’s what he says on the subject in 

Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman’s hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros?

And Beric’s problems are nothing to compared to those of Catelyn Stark, who is resurrected as the implacable Lady Stoneheart after being murdered at the Red Wedding. Dondarrion seems to have retained some measure of human feeling, at least, but Stoneheart wants to do nothing but go around the Riverlands killing her enemies. She even turns on Brienne, whose actions seem to be at odds with what Catelyn asked her to do when she was alive but who has a good explanation for her behavior. Stoneheart, however, is not interested in shades of grey. She is all vengeance.

Martin disapproves of resurrection generally, but believes that his use of it is justified by bringing characters back from the dead much changed. Is he right? Stoneheart is a popular character, so fans seem to be on his side. However, I appreciate how HBO’s 

has backed away from the resurrections—they’ve included Dondarrion, but there’s no sign of Stoneheart. I think this is for the best—it keeps the world of the show more grounded.

 has also been less inclined to do fake-out deaths. For example, in 

, Martin leads us to believe that both Mance Rayder and Davos Seaworth have died, only to reveal them alive later—the show cut these events. Again, this is a good thing—the less the show jerks me around regarding death, the happier I’ll be. I think that Martin, by and large, gets away with using resurrections in his books, but cuts it a little close for my liking sometimes.

And Martin may need that room to maneuver very soon, because those who have been following the goings-on behind the scenes of 

Season 6 know that there’s another resurrection coming very soon. Jon Snow, who was murdered at the end of Season 5, is coming back. The evidence, which includes a photograph of actor Kit Harington in costume on set, is pretty insurmountable, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for it to happen.

But considering Martin’s comments above, it’s worth it to ask ourselves: is Jon Snow going to come back different? And if so, how different?

It’s unlikely that Jon will be as far gone as Lady Stoneheart. Melisandre, who is the person best equipped to bring Jon back from the dead (on the show, she even knows about Dondarrion’s resurrection), is at Castle Black when Jon Snow dies, so she’ll probably be on the case quickly. Catelyn Stark was resurrected days after her murder, Dondarrion only moments. Like Dondarrion, we can expect Jon Snow to maintain most of his basic faculties.

But then again, his resurrection has to be earned, and we know how Martin earns his resurrection. Will Jon, like Dondarrion, struggle to remember where he came from? Will he lose the ability to take pleasure in his favorite foods? Some fans have theorized that, freed from his obligations to the Night’s Watch by death, Jon will take up the mantle of Jon Stark, or Jon Targaryen, assuming other theories about his past are true. They see him defeating the Boltons at Winterfell, fighting off the White Walkers, maybe even becoming king! But what if the resurrected Jon, a shade of his living self, doesn’t see the point in these things? Or what if they all come to pass, but Jon is unable to find meaning or pleasure in them?

Frankly, that’s the kind of cruel, ironic twist of the knife I’d expect from an author like George R.R. Martin. Jon Snow is coming back—that much is certain. But it may not work out how we expect.

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Aye, this is what I’ve been thinking all this time. Fans almost treat him coming back to life as the best thing that happens to him as it frees him of his vows to the Watch, and throw in the theory of his birth being true and it’s like he becomes more powerful for it. Martin can’t criticise Tolkien for bringing back Gandalf with more power and authority only to do the same with Jon Snow. There’s got to be more to it than that.

So, Jon would probably not resurrect as Azor Ahai and/or The Prince That Was Promised or whatever.

It’s worth remembering that Azor Ahai is a kind of fairytale within the story, the stuff of legend. Personally I would think GRRM plays with this to mirror religious prophecies in the real world. To put it bluntly, a prophecy in the world of ice and fire is pretty fucking far from reliable.

Yes to this. People go overboard with ‘Who will be Jon’s Nissa Nissa?’ and the like, IMO. Myth and religion are metaphorically, not literally, true.

Supposedly the resurrection of Jon Snow is based on seeing a picture of someone who looks sort of like him from a distance.

He could be there in a flashback. He could have been standing around after a scene where he was buried.

Of course, I hope he does return. But will he still be Jon Snow? Reborn, can he be considered a bastard?

Sorry, but with all the evidence that has been gathered by various fan sites and the amount of filming that Kit has been doing in Northern Ireland, the evidence is just irrefutable. He’ll be back (and not just in a flashback).

Some of the questions that remain are how will he get resurrected and how will he be changed.

Come on. This whole flashback idea needs to die more than Joffrey did. Also, the picture wasn’t from that great a distance, and didn’t look “sort of like him,” it most definitely was. Lastly, the idea that e was standing around after a burial scene is almost as stupid as the flashback theory.

In which flashback was Jon in Stark attire? This is surely in the future, possibly as Jon Stark, King in the North.

We may see some “stoneheart” in Jon when he’s back. I can never see him as a “bad guy” but it would make sense then when they say Jon Snow is dead. The honorable do right good guy Jon is gone maybe? But isn’t he supposed to be Azor Ahai? Damn can’t wait for next season !! 👑

Oh I don’t want to start worrying again. Jon will be ok. He has to be.

I always liked Berric Dondarrion, poor bloke. So if Lady Stoneheart isn’t going to be in the series does that mean that Berric is still alive? Well sort of alive. Maybe we might see him again. I do hope so.

See, this is precisely why I think that the viewers who expect Jon to come back all badass and immediately start avenging himself on Thorne, Olly et alia may be way off-base. When you’ve seen what lies on the other side (and you haven’t been rotting in the water for days), maybe stuff like personal grudges appear unimportant compared to some bigger picture. He may come back very unemotional and ‘above it all.’

For better or worse, he is likely to seem somewhat less human. But that doesn’t mean that turning into a singleminded revenge machine like LSH is the only way he could go.

I think Jon becomes exactly what House Stark needs, a ruthless revenge machine, claiming the righteous justice we’ve all been waiting to see since season one. On a personal level, Jon will unfortunately suffer. And even though he restores his house from the brink of extinction, Who watches the watchman?

Not all of us define ‘righteous justice’ as ‘killing anybody who has done you harm.’ As Gandhi said, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’

Yeah yeah. But if someone does wrong by you and your family, don’t be weak, get em back! Revenge is sweet. Being weak is cowardly and annoying.

Revenge is sweet…for about a minute and a half, until you start thinking about what you’ve done. It takes more strength not to lower yourself to your enemy’s level.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to dismantle your enemy before they attack again. Sentimental or morally correct decisions doesn’t always have to be the right decisions.

Thinking about what you have done would only make that revenge even sweeter. If you only have about a minute and a half left to live after you got your revenge then I guess you are right. Revenge is never anything but gratifying at all times. Gandhi was wrong when he said that btw because just like everything else there are people who are better at playing that game and only those who lose would be blind.

Sorry Firannion, I like a lot of your posts and what you have to say. But, I really don’t agree with you regarding this whole ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘don’t lower yourself to their level’ mentality.

Quiet simply, if someone f?cks you over, f?ck em back worse. Nobody needs to take other people’s sh!t. Screw that! Especially when someone screws with your family.

The ‘fakeout deaths’ don’t bother me at all, because they’re all of a piece with one of GRRM’s overarching themes: that appearances are deceiving and no perceived ‘truth’ should immediately be taken at face value. One of the first things that his narrative does, right from the first chapters of AGoT, is to point the reader toward believing that the Lannister twins have orchestrated every bad thing that happens. Then he deconstructs that, one piece at a time, until we realize that it’s all waaay more complicated than that.

The rotating PoVs, the unreliable narrators, the false conventional wisdom…all are painstakingly orchestrated to teach us to be wary and skeptical of what any character says or sees or hears. That approach more than anything else is what makes the books so rewarding to reread multiple times. I love it when GRRM pulls the wool over my eyes! It teaches me to be a more attentive reader.

Maybe they throw a curve ball and Melesandre seen Jon being stabbed by the watch in the flames and it didn’t really happen. She warns him before it does. Don’t know if that theory has ever been tossed out there before. What we do know is she’s at the wall for a reason.

[spoiler] In book she sees things, Jon is also told by her to keep his wolf close [/spoiler]

Love that point! When she was with stannis in Winterfell, she saw something that make her turn back to the Wall!

That would be a massive cop out. The “it was all a dream” technique. The fandom would be irate if that happens.

Since I read Melisandra’s POV chapter in ADWD I have wondered if she was brought back from the dead at some point. The red eyes like LSH , she doesn’t need to sleep or eat or drink as much most people and works to keep that fact secret. She also seems to have some sort of traumatic memories that she is avoiding. Has anyone else noticed that?

But in the TV Show, Melissandre was extremely surprised by the resurrection of Beric, so I don’t think so, at least for the show.

I think I’ve seen that idea tossed around before, but… Upon learning about Beric, she says something like “That’s not possible,” so I don’t think that’s the case. There is definitely something fishy about her, though. Maybe she’s the reincarnation of Nissa Nissa, immortal until killed by Azor once again? I don’t know, I pulled that out of my arse.

I also liked Gandalf the Grey more than Gandalf the White but his reappearance was such a watershed moment in the books that I loved – I for one am happy at Tolkien’s choice to bring him back. As for Jon – we shall see…

Jon has more help with Ghost and Bran to maintain his identity and memories than Beric and the latter didn’t change much with the first resurrection. I’m pretty sure Jon will be resurrected and he won’t change much or forget the Starks.

Maybe when he comes back he is a vengeful machine (and kill some traitors) … , but with the help of Bran he will become the same person.

True Beric was resurrected 7 times? He lost more of his original self each time. Do one time shortly after death wouldn’t be the same. Plus LSH was resurrected days or weeks after her death. That’s why she’s so fucked up.

Plus LSH was resurrected days or weeks after her death. That’s why she’s so fucked up.

Is it actually sated anywhere in the book or by Martin himself that the reason she’s like that is because she was dead for a long time? If so, can you point me to it?

If not, please stop stating your speculation as though it is fact.

How bout you go eat a roach covered lolliipop and I’ll state what I want.

Roach covered lollipop lmao 😂 I have to remember to use that one

So, I just reread the chapter where She’s found by Nymeria after the Red wedding. It states she was in the water dead for 3 days before Nymeria found her and dragged her out. Then the BWOB had to find her for Beric to resurrect her.So a minimum of 3 days.

Three days total. It was the Brotherhood that made Nymeria and her wolves leave. And Thoros tells Brienne that she was 3 days dead when they found her and revived her.

Something the article didn’t point out: Jon is at least a warg, possibly a skin changer, and likely a very powerful one. He might be able to keep his consciousness or spirit or whatever you want to call it more intact than Beric or Catelyn by transferring it to Ghost before being resurrected in body (“now a man, now a wolf, now a man again” – Melisandre I). Or maybe it still changes him, but in a different way due to the layover in Ghost (per Varamyr’s thoughts about what happens to the spirit of a warg after the body dies).

Nothing I hate more then typing out a very long and complicated thought on the article above only to have the site NOT post it after you hit “post comment”… is it just me or is this and WoTW having issues lately? So frustrating…

uh oh…. well then there are going to be TWO posts from me that say the same thing but in different ways…. sigh

It seems a shame to waste the royal blood of Shireen and Stannis (and Selyse?). Maybe their deaths were preordained to transform Jon into Azor Ahai. Wait, Stannis is still alive in the books…

The directors said before season 5 that they’ll spoiler a few stuff from TWoW. :) For example:

Stannis’s death, Myrcella’s death, Barristan’s death, Mance’s eventual death, Shireen’s death.

George RR Martin said that many chapter at the end of Dance happens later than the Theon chapter from Winds where Stannis still alive. Son in Winds we will learn how Stannis really failed.

Martin also said that there are characters that the show has killed off that will survive to the end of the series.

But not said that they will survive the whole story. ;)

”Just consider. Mago, Irri, Rakharo, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Pyat Pree, Pyp, Grenn, Ser Barristan Selmy, Queen Selyse, Princess Shireen, Princess Myrcella, Mance Rayder, and King Stannis are all dead in the show, alive in the books. Some of them will die in the books as well, yes… but not all of them, and some may die at different times in different ways. ”

But of course he said this. He don’t want to spoil. Imagine if he would say this ”yes…all of them will die in the books…surprise, surprise”.

My thought is that Im hoping JS stays true to his “old” self once he is back. His empathy and actions towards others who are disadvantaged/less fortunate is what makes him so likable and I am for one not ready for him to leave that part of him and turn into a “vengeance machine”. However the creators D&D bring him back and in what capacity Im sure it will be riveting. I just will wait and watch and HOPE it’s along the vein of his prior characteristics just with more power/knowledge. I know I know GRRM said that he didn’t like Gandolf brought back in that capacity but that is exactly what Im hoping for… not that I will get it!! Just keep his appearance the same …. I mean we need our eye candy too!! (Yes I kinda paraphrased what I had intended to write in first post).

Jon did not just appear once on set in Stark Costume. He was spotted and photographed dozens of times, from June through November coming and going to the set, or hanging out in the evenings with fellow cast mates. First with cast mates from the Castle Black scenario, then with cast mates in the Winterfell scenario. He was included in much storyline time out there this year. and Like Bran says… “They have no idea what’s going to happen.” GRRM prides himself in creating surprise twists and so do D&D! I can’t wait!!!

Destroying the Boltons is more important to me then revenge on Thorne or Olly.

I think he will be reborn either through fire or ice, I wonder if the Walkers will have involvement, if not for their own purpose. The Night King may have been a Stark and they can change the babies into their kind, why not Jon Snow? Not as a wright but as one of them, no one knows why they are coming so Martin must have a story behind them. Daenerys is reborn from fire, Jon Snow reborn from ice? Just a theory.

I like the thought of him being reborn of Ice.. and he will ride the Ice Dragon….. smile… I know.. cheesy but hey I had to say it!!

We have only seen a pic of Kit from the back . Jon Snow can easily take over LSH’s storyline albeit in a different way . the way LSH terrorized the Riverlands , Jon can terrorize the North

The Show has been known to merge storylines before by eliminating characters and putting others in their shoes

For all we know Jon Snow could have Red Eyes and a Zombie like screen appearance

But then the whole AA/PTWP plot can’t be about Jon, and if Jon is The Walking dead there is really no point having done the TOJ scene.

the whole article says that its impossible to comeback the way u died in a GRRM world. U will change

A Badass John can still carry a lot of significance and the TOJ is not there to portray a Goody-Goody John. His birth history is relevant even if he is “Lord Evil Snow”

Phil Necro on On Game of Thrones, resurrection, and coming back wrong

Golladan on On Game of Thrones, resurrection, and coming back wrong