At the end of A Dance with Dragons, and of Season 5 of Game of Thrones, Jon Snow is stabbed
and seemingly killed by men of the Night’s Watch. The men do this because Jon, as Lord
Commander, brings thousands of wildlings south of the Wall. He tries to unite with them
against the white walkers, and to save them from being killed and added to the army of
the dead. But the Watch has been fighting wildlings for thousands of years and many
brothers have deep personal grudges. They see wildlings as “savages”, and fear
they’ll destroy the Watch, or at eat all their precious food come winter. Upset with
the bold changes Jon makes at the Wall, they whisper that Jon is “A rebel”, “a turncloak”
and a traitor. The last straw, in the books, is when Jon announces a plan to “ride south”
against Ramsay Bolton in Winterfell to rescue his half-sister. That’s when the brothers
stab him, “For the Watch”. So it looks like Jon Snow is dead, and apparently
not coming back. Game of Thrones is repeating a lesson they’ve taught us before. Good
guys die. Ned gets beheaded, Robb gets Red Wedded, Cat gets her throat cut. It seems
like whenever someone tries to do the right thing in Westeros, they get screwed over,
by people like Littlefinger and Roose Bolton. This has been a pretty bleak season. King’s
Landing is run by bigoted zealots, creepy necromancers and fools, and Cersei is ruthlessly
humiliated. Sansa is set up to be all empowered, but she just gets beaten down by the Boltons.
Arya sets off for grand adventure and becomes a vicious faceless assassin. Jaime tries to
rescue Myrcella, but he fails and she dies. Brienne tries to rescue Sansa, but she fails,
and all she achieves is the death of Stannis, who himself is kind of a good guy until he
burns his daughter. Bran is forgotten, beyond the Wall, becoming a psychic tree-boy or something
and gods know where Rickon is. It’s not all bad with Daenerys, when she’s not burning
innocent men alive – but she’s still in Essos, with no sign of going west any time
soon. In Westeros, it’s like we’re all out of heroes, all out of hope. The white
walkers look unstoppable, and at this point some may welcome our new ice demon overlords.
They’re probably preferable to people like Littlefinger and the Boltons. Some people
think Jon Snow’s corpse will be added to the army of the dead, or be converted into
a white walker, to lead it against the living. It feels like the bad guys have won. Game
over. But Game of Thrones is not just a story of
death and loss. The book series is titled A Song of Ice and Fire – there are two sides
in this story, there is balance, there’s hope, and in many ways Jon Snow embodies it.
In the show he’s been clearly set up in opposition to the darkness, to the leader
of the white walkers, apparently called the Night King. Surely you don’t have an awesome
standoff like this without a payoff later on. And Jon is central to many of the unresolved
mysteries and prophesies of the series. R+L=J, a very popular and well-supported theory,
claims that Jon Snow’s parents are not Ned Stark and an unknown woman, but Ned’s sister
Lyanna Stark and the Targaryen prince, Rhaegar, which has a lot of big implications
including maybe giving Jon a claim on the Iron Throne. The prophecy of Azor Ahai states
that certain signs herald the coming of a hero of the Lord of Light, someone to drive
back the white walkers and the long night. Melisandre believes that Stannis is this hero,
but evidence suggests it may actually be Jon. However you look at it, Jon Snow has
unfinished business in Westeros, he may be this hope that seems to be missing from the
story. So is there any way he can come back and finish what he’s started?
The answer may be Melisandre. We know from Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr that red
priests can bring the dead back to life. We’ve never seen Melisandre resurrect anyone, but
in the books she says her magic is becoming “stronger at the Wall”, and that “she
[can] do things that she ha[s] never done before”. And in the show, Melisandre visits
Thoros of Myr, maybe comparing notes on resurrection. So it’s totally reasonable to think that
Melisandre may be capable of bringing the dead back to life. And she does take a definite
interest in Jon. In the books, Melisandre foresees his stabbing, warning Jon of “daggers
in the dark”, and telling him that he’ll have “grave need” of her, that she’s
his “only hope”. In the show, she says some interesting things about her “joining”
[with Jon having] power [to] make life [and] light”, and she turns up at the Wall conveniently
in time for his stabbing. Melisandre’s actress, Carise Van Houten, has strongly hinted that
“something’s going to happen” between Melisandre and Jon after Jon’s stabbing.
All this evidence makes it seem very likely that Melisandre resurrects Jon Snow – but there may be a cost.
We’re told over and over that “only death can pay for life”, and Dance specifically
emphasises that Melisandre needs king’s blood to perform her magic. There’s this
whole subplot about Jon sending Aemon Targaryen and Mance Rayder’s son with Sam and Gilly
down to Oldtown, because Aemon has the blood of Targaryen kings, and Mance’s son has
the blood of the king-beyond-the-wall, so Jon fears Melisandre will want to burn them.
But there’s still someone left at the Wall with kingsblood – Shireen Baratheon, daughter
of King Stannis. Melisandre might burn Shireen to resurrect Jon. In the show, Melisandre
has already burned Shireen, to clear the snows slowing Stannis. She comes to the Wall soon
after, so maybe in the show she’s still juiced up with kingsblood magic child sacrifice
power. In the books, at least, it seems pretty likely that Melisandre will use the sacrifice
of Shireen to resurrect Jon Snow. Jon’s resurrection may also involve skinchanging,
which the show calls warging. Warging is the ability to “enter the mind of [an] animal”,
like Bran enters the mind of his direwolf Summer. The three-eyed crow tells Bran that
if he dies, “part of [him] would remain in Summer”. In the prologue of Dance, a
wildling warg, Varamyr Sixskins, tells us that when a warg dies, they can live a “second
life” by warging into their animal after death, and in the prologue, Varamyr does this
– he dies, but lives on in his wolf. Varamyr also specifically tells us that Jon Snow is
a powerful warg, and that living on in Jon’s direwolf, Ghost, would be “a second life worthy
of a king”. Jon definitely is a warg, though he resists it – he accidently enters the
mind of Ghost a bunch of times and this connection with his wolf grows stronger in Dance – Jon
says Ghost is a “part of him”, that he and Ghost are “one”, just like Bran says
he and Summer are “one”. Melisandre urges Jon to “embrace” this “power”, and
tells him he’d “do well to keep [his] wolf close beside” him. At the end of the
book, after Jon is stabbed, his last word is “Ghost”. Finally, Melisandre has a
vision of Jon changing from “a man, [to] a wolf, [to] a man again”. In the show,
Ghost hasn’t been seen for a while, and there’s been none of this skinchanging foreshadowing,
so maybe in the show Jon will just be straight-up resurrected by Melisandre. But in the books,
at least, this evidence strongly suggests that on his death Jon wargs into his direwolf
Ghost, and later becomes “a man once more”, probably via resurrection by Melisandre with
the sacrifice of Shireen. This resurrection fits really well with the
mysteries and prophecies surrounding Jon Snow. If R+L=J is true, and Jon is the son of Prince
Rhaegar Targaryen, Jon has some claim on the Iron Throne. In his vow to the Night’s Watch,
Jon swears to “wear no crown”, but his vow says his watch ends with his death. Jon
does die, so he’s surely freed of this oath, allowing him, after his resurrection, to once
more take part in the politics of Westeros, and perhaps to make a claim on the throne. This
gives new meaning to Varamyr’s statement that a “second life” in Ghost would be
“worthy of a king”. Jon’s resurrection also fits with the prophecy of Azor Ahai.
Melisandre is starting to realise that the prophesied hero of the Lord of Light is not
Stannis – it’s Jon. There’s this moment in the show where you can see it in her face,
when she realises she’s been supporting the wrong guy all this time. In Dance, Melisandre “pray[s]
for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and [her god] R’hllor [repeatedly] shows [her Jon] Snow”.
It looks like Jon is Azor Ahai, and this resurrection helps him fit the prophesied
signs. It’s said that sacrifice may be required for the rebirth of Azor Ahai, and the sacrifice
of Shireen could fulfil that. Other signs of Azor Ahai include smoke and salt, which
may be provided by the smoke and the tears of Shireen’s burning. Further, Melisandre
goes on and on about using kingsblood to wake dragons from stone. Maybe the kingsblood
is Shireen’s, the stone is Shireen’s greyscale, her stone-like skin condition, and the dragon
is Jon Targaryen. You might think that’s kind of a lame symbolic fulfilment of Mel’s
waking dragons from stone, but it’s actually very very similar to something George R. R.
Martin has done before, in his novella The Mystery Knight. In this story, there’s a
prediction that a dragon will be born, and what this ends up referring to is the symbolic
emergence of the young boy Egg as a true Targaryen, Prince Aegon. And when you also consider
that Melisandre admits that she sometimes misinterprets her prophecies and visions, and
that they can often be symbolic in nature, it seems totally possible that Melisandre’s
talk of waking dragons from stone means the rebirth of Jon as a Targaryen with the sacrifice
of Shireen. Some people go further with this idea, suggesting that, after being resurrected,
Jon will sentence Melisandre to death for the crime of killing Shireen. We know that
Ned always told his sons, and Jon, “that the man who passes the sentence should swing
the blade”, so Jon would kill the fire priestess with his Valyrian steel sword Longclaw.
Maybe, if he does this, the sword will take on her flame, becoming Azor Ahai’s prophesied
flaming sword, Lightbringer. This is just speculation, but if it all happens, it would
fulfil almost every sign of the prophecy of Azor Ahai, and would neatly tie together a
whole bunch of plot threads. One more possibility is that when Jon dies
and his spirit enters Ghost, he will have a vision that reveals R+L=J, the truth of
his parentage. In the Dance With Dragons prologue, when Varamyr is dying and about to begin his
second life in his wolf, he has this moment where his “spirit” becomes one with nature,
and he looks out through the eyes of a weirwood tree. Maybe Jon will have a similar experience
when he dies and begins his second life in his wolf. The reason why this is important
is that Bran Stark is taught by the “three-eyed crow” to do the same thing – to leave
his body and become one with nature, and to see through the eyes of weirwood trees. When
Bran does this, he has visions of the past – of Ned, and other Starks, and others further
back in the past. So if, when Jon dies, he experiences being one with nature and the
weirwoods, as Varamyr does, Bran, who is also on the weirwood network, might share with
Jon his visions. This might sound unlikely, but it’s actually already happened. In A
Clash of Kings, Jon has a “wolf dream”, a warging dream, featuring a “weirwood [with]
his brother’s face”. This tree-boy figure, representing Bran, gives Jon a vision of Mance
Rayder’s wildling army. So yeah we’ve got a bit of an Inception visions-within-dreams
plus possible time travel sorta thing happening here, but the important point is that Bran
can give Jon visions by connecting with him through the warging / greensight / weirwood
network thing. So if Jon becomes one with the weirwoods when he dies and enters his
wolf, just as Varamyr does, it would totally be possible for Bran to give Jon a vision,
like he does in Clash. And since Bran’s visions can see into the past, maybe Bran
will give Jon a vision of his real parents, Rhaegar and Lyanna, possibly of the secret
marriage they may have had at the weirwood grove at the Isle of Faces. With Jon’s death,
he may learn the truth of his birth. Again, this is just speculation, just an idea, but
it would a lot of sense. It would explain why George R. R. Martin has Jon enter the
mind of his direwolf before returning to his body, instead of just being resurrected by
Melisandre, and it would give a plot purpose to all this weird entering-the-weirwoods stuff
that’s associated with the “second li[ves]” of wargs, and it would finally reveal R+L=J,
which doesn’t really have any other way of being revealed unless Howland Reed decides
to finally arrive. And how cool would it be? This guy not only gets brought back from dead,
released from his vows, fulfilling an ancient prophecy of the rebirth of a hero, but is
born again with the knowledge of his true identity – as Jon Targaryen. It’s all
very biblical – a man of kinda mysterious birth goes around saying some sensible things
about loving thy neighbour – like – making peace with the wildlings – but he gets betrayed
and killed by his friends before a cross – like don’t tell me that’s not a cross – and
he stays dead for a bit, but then is reborn as a divine hero. So, yeah, in conclusion, Jon
Snow is Game of Thrones Jesus. Or at least, there’s evidence that Jon Snow will return, and
that the next book is gonna be a helluva read. Let’s end there. For the evidence that Jon
is the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, check out the R+L=J video. For a discussion
of the Azor Ahai prophecy, check out the Azor Ahai video. For an explanation of magnetoencephalography,
check out the MEG video, cause, ah, yeah, why not, right? It’s about brain imaging, it’s
got mind reading and robo-hands in it, you might like it. Thank you for watching, feel
free to comment what you think will happen to Jon Snow, and what topic you’d like to
see splained next.