Guess who else is still alive?

Really, though, this one has always been obvious. The first teaser for Game of Thrones season six has arrived in the form of a poster of none other than Lord Crow himself, Jon Snow. There’s blood on his eye, even though he was stabbed in the stomach, so I think that theory about his eyes may hold some water. It’s entirely possible HBO and DB Weiss and David Benioff are just yanking our chains with this, as they have done all along regarding Jon Snow’s fate, but it’s far more likely this is the tacit admission that yes, Jon Snow lives—again.

I wrote about this a little yesterday in regards to Glenn’s fate on The Walking Dead, and to my mind there’s never been any question of Jon Snow’s ultimate survival. What drives me crazy about the Jon Snow situation is not that resurrection is a plot point on his narrative arc, it’s that everyone affiliated with the show engaged in elaborate bullsh*t to try and trick us into believing otherwise. 1) We’re not that stupid and we can read the subtext in the show about Jon’s destiny, and 2) it’s impossible to keep a secret like that in this day and age anyway, because set photos will inevitably land online and blow your secrety secrets out of the water.

Lainey thinks the sanctioned lying that surrounded Jon Snow’s fate was/is about creating a cliffhanger, since usually the big sh*t goes down in episode nine, and this time they did it in episode ten and ended on a gut punch moment. That’s probably some of it—they wanted this to be a big huge thing everyone talked about all year between seasons, and in that regard, they got their wish. But I think we would have talked either way. If they didn’t waste everyone’s time with lies, we’d still be discussing it. How? Why? When? WHO? All along, they’ve been adamant that “Jon Snow” is dead for real, but that doesn’t preclude Kit Harington coming back to play a dude with Jon’s face and a new name. Like, say, Azor Ahai. Or something that rhymes with Blarbarian. Or both. See? You can know someone is returning the next season and still have plenty to speculate.