Hey guys, Pete here. Today's Game of Thrones Season 8 video will be about the
ending of Jon Snow's story. there were some hints in episode 4 that might be
important and fans have been jumping all over them. before the season started I
made some videos looking at the problems that come up related to characters and
the way their stories would play out in the end. the big problem I ran into when
thinking about Jon was figuring out where he would be a good fit after the
wars ended. this is tied to my opinion that he wouldn't make a good or fitting
ruler and the fact that we know he has the strongest claim to be that if there
still is an Iron Throne to sit on at the end of the series. sure people follow him,
he was able to bring the necessary forces together to defeat the knight
king, but I've always hoped that Westeros would end up being changed for the
better as a result of what we've seen unfold in the series and Jon ruling the
Seven Kingdoms as its King doesn't work well for me in that scenario. even if you
don't agree with that I think we can agree that Jon wouldn't want to rule and
that will certainly have implications for the future of his story. so that's
where I'm starting from, what do you do with a guy like Jon Snow after the wars
are over when he doesn't want to take the role of leader. in season 8 episode 4
Jon says goodbye before leaving to fight against Cersei in the south in a show
where so much happens off screen at this point in the story you can't help but
focus on every bit of character interaction that we do see. Jon's goodbye
with Ghost and Tormund stands out because a) he sends his direwolf away and
b) Tormund tells him that he has the north in him - the real north. this stood
out to me right away on the first watching. when I made my video yesterday I
mentioned it along with the reasoning behind Jon not giving Ghost the goodbye
that most fans were hoping to see. I think this may very well be hinting that
Jon will go north at the end of the story. based on the comments I got a lot
of other people are thinking about it too so let's look at the idea and see
where it takes us. before we talk about the episode itself it should be noted
that there have been several theories over the years that involve Jon leaving
things behind at the end of the story some of those involve Jon having to
sacrifice himself to protect mankind, i.e. becoming the new
King or something along those lines. others I've read go in a Frodo from
Lord of the Rings sort of direction where he is so affected by what he's
been through he's never really able to return to normal life and then decides
to leave. in the post-White Walker Game of Thrones we now inhabit this second
idea starts to make a little bit of sense. in Episode four we get the scene
with Tormund, see that he sends Ghost north, and a couple of other scenes that
could definitely fit in with this idea. the interactions with Jon and Daenerys
seemed to hint at them not ending up together.
she sees the way people look at him at the celebration and brings this up in
the scene where they're alone together. she professes her love, things get steamy,
but then reality sets in for John and he has to stop. we see there's real conflict
with him and the fact that she's his aunt. she asks him to keep a secret she
feels that they could have the relationship that they had before they
found out if they just don't tell anybody. if he will get Sam and Bran to
swear to secrecy everything can get back to the way things were. Jon feels like
he needs to tell his family though. that's consistent from what we know
about John and even though it's probably a bad idea we can see where he's coming
from. but, she's not really wrong either coming from her perspective. what she's
saying is true when people find out that he has a better claim there's a pretty
high likelihood that some people are gonna want him to press that and that's
going to drive them apart. later we see Jon brought to the godswood with Arya,
Sansa, and Bran. they basically want to tell Jon they don't trust Daenerys,
they don't want him to go along with her and do what she wants. Jon points out
that they needed Daenerys or they would all be corpses and they would be in an
army that was marching south and Arya actually backs him up on this. the talk
then turns to family. the importance of the fact that they're the only four
Starks the last of the Starks. Jon says he has to tell them something and makes
them swear they won't tell anyone else. Sansa and Arya are both a little taken
aback by this but they both eventually swear that they won't give up whatever
it is that Jon's about to tell them. he emphasizes here because we're family
that's why they need to do this for him and I think that's probably the most
important thing that we need to remember. from that point after they swear he
turns it over to Bran to explain to them the whole situation. later on we see
a scene with Sansa and Tyrion and she basically betrays John by telling Tyrion
the truth. I say it's a betrayal because she knows that this is not going to stay
between her and Tyrion. it's going to get out there and the truth will weaken Daenerys'
position and that's part of why she does it.
of course she says she's trying to protect Jon. traditionally it doesn't go
well for Stark men who travel south. while that might be part of the reason why
she's doing it I don't think that's going to be enough for Jon when he
finds out what happened. I think this really undermines John's connection to
her, to the Starks, and to Winterfell altogether.
Jon's a guy who cares about honor, he's honest to a fault. he didn't tell his
family about his secret and make them swear and not expect that they wouldn't
keep the secret. so I feel like this kind of severs his connection to them or at
least is going to have a negative impact on that in the future. after that we see
Jon in the courtyard saying his goodbyes. he decides that he wouldn't
take Ghost along with him and technically that's not a bad idea. when
he travelled south before he didn't take Ghost and yeah I mean it's not a
fan-favorite idea, I think everyone would like to see Ghost by Jon's side at all
times, they're definitely CGI considerations
and so on. so it's not that weird that John wouldn't take Ghost with him but I
do think it stands out that he decides to give Ghost to Tormund to take north
because he could just leave Ghost at Winterfell
Sansa obviously knows the direwolf everyone else there obviously does so
there's no problem with just leaving him there instead he decides that Ghost will
be happier north of the wall for whatever reason
and asked Tormund to do that for him Tormund then tells Jon that he would be
happier in the north as well and Jon does respond that he wishes he was going
with him. traveling the Dragonstone with Tyrion Varts points out correctly that
word of Jon's claim will spread. Tyrion says that Jon wouldn't want the throne
he wouldn't want to rule and Varys echoes Daenerys by saying I'm not sure
it matters what he wants. this part of the argument is a little bit weak in my
opinion, I told you where I was coming from. on the one hand I don't really
think Jon has shown up to be a better ruler or a more favorable ruler than
Daenerys, but I won't jump into all of that in this video because at the end of
the day Daenerys isn't exactly a perfect fit for being a ruler either. I just
think the motivations are a little bit muddy
I do get what he's saying about the fact that John being a man and having the
better claim that that works better with the Lords of Westeros that they have to
work with, but it feels like they're making a comparison based on how
dangerous Daenerys might be which I don't think they've really done a great
job of setting up. either way Varys is moving in the direction of supporting
Jon over Daenerys. Tyrion brings up the idea that they could be married instead.
Varys seems to think that she would overpower him in that situation
basically bend him to her will and he's probably not wrong. I mean John not
really being interested in being a ruler kind of fits into that you could kind of
imagine him just sitting back and being like do whatever you want with that I'm
just going to you know hang out and go practice sword fighting in the yard or
something. so by the end of the episode we can see that Cersei has provoked
Daenerys in a way that there's no turning back as far as removing her from the
iron chair or dying trying. Jon is there ready to fight he's honoring his pledge
and he still believes in Daenerys as the leader but there's a lot of dissent
going on behind the scenes. the outcome of the actual battle for King's Landing
is not exactly clear. I don't expect that Cersei is gonna win at the end but I
also don't expect that we can guarantee that both Jon
and Daenerys will survive. we can speculate on that in another video that
I'll do later this week, but where things are left there's a lot of hints here
that could point to John walking away. his romantic relationship but Daenerys
doesn't seem to be working out, I don't really like the idea of them ruling
together but it seems less likely since nobody is really jumping on that when
Tyrions bringing it up. to this point Daenerys hasn't said well hey maybe it's
a good idea if you just go out there and rule and take your claim and I'll back
you up. like she still kind of has that idea in
her mind that she wants to rule and even if she dies and John's the one man left
standing who has a claim I think that he would actually walk away from that
rather than sit on the throne as the king. I do think the way things went down
with Sansa telling Tyrion about what Jon swore her to not tell will play
a part. plus we know Arya left Winterfell at the end of the episode as well with
no real plans to come back so I don't think Winterfell is where Jon will go
at the end. of course I've left a magical side of the story out because I'm really
just keeping my expectations down about that coming back into play in the last
two episodes. it's certainly possible that there's a reason why Jon might go
there, it's possible that they could get an idea that there's a potential threat
from new White Walkers or some different incarnation of the knight King through
Bran or something like that, but I don't have high hopes that that's gonna be
involved in the rest of the story that we're gonna see play out. so what do you
guys think? can you see this as foreshadowing to what Jon's fate might
be? do you see him walking away at the end and heading up north to
reunite what Ghost? there are a lot of ideas and theories over the years about
the direwolves and how their names and their fates and what they do affects the
Stark children while I think there are some interesting parallels there I don't
think it's written out in the way that you know George RR Martin was like hey
I'm gonna put the whole thing in the names of the direwolves and if you just
crack that code you're gonna know what's gonna happen in the story. but, I mean
there are some really interesting parallel
the bonds are a lot closer in the book so I think it would be a lot weirder in
the books if Jon sent Ghost away, it would be like wait hold on because they
have an actual connection that they don't have on the show but there still
may be something to that right? when I think about it it sort of comes down to
out of all the possible solutions I like this one better than the others. it's not
the sexiest reason to push the theory or jump on the bandwagon but I could
actually see this happening and I could live with it if that's the way it turns
out. so let me know what you guys think. will they go north? will he sit on the
Iron Throne? will he die? does any of the stuff that you saw convince you that
they're telegraphing his fate? let me know in the comments. please like this video
if you enjoyed. it please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. that's it
for today I do want to thank you for watching as I appreciate that and I will
talk to you soon