Editor’s Note: This story contains “Game of Thrones” spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know.
Story highlights
Show runners and star say the season four finale is the best yet
It will have to answer a lot of questions after episode nine
One thing is clear: the actor playing Jon Snow is headed for season five
“Game of Thrones” is heading into its season four finale with some pretty large expectations.
Show runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have already promised that Sunday’s season closer will be the series’ best yet, and Kit Harington – aka Jon Snow – is making that same bet.
“I think this could be one of the best episodes of ‘Thrones’ we’ve done,” Harington said at a June 11 screening of his new movie, “How To Train Your Dragon 2.” “Usually the big impact episode is (the ninth), and then we wrap everything up in the 10th. But this show doesn’t like doing what people think is going to happen; we like changing things up, and it’s a lot that happens in this episode. It’s going to throw a lot of people, it’s going to be very exciting.”
On “Game of Thrones,” “exciting” can also be a stand-in for “bloody” and “heartbreaking,” and chances are Harington’s tease will just make fans more nervous for season four’s final hour.
Eerily titled “The Children,” the 10th episode has a lot to wrap up. The penultimate episode, June 8’s action-packed “The Watchers on the Wall,” was focused entirely on Castle Black up at the Wall, making room for several questions leading into the finale.
To begin with, most fans want to know what will happen to Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion, who’s going into episode 10 staring down a death sentence. As one of the series’ most essential characters – both for his centrality to the story and because of the welcome balance he brings – it’s hard to imagine Tyrion meeting this unjust fate, but “men meeting unjust fates” could be another tagline for “Game of Thrones.”
There’s also the question of where Arya Stark and the Hound will go from here, now that they’ve learned the woman they’ve been searching for this season is dead. (Cue poor orphaned Arya’s giggle-fit.) Will they continue their strange mentor-mentee relationship, and if so, what’s their next destination?
Meanwhile in Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen is now without her most-trusted adviser, Jorah Mormont, but she still has those dragons – so what’s the next step in her game plan?
The promo for the season finale hints that at least Bran will find what he’s been searching for on his (seemingly endless) vision quest, but reveals little else about what’s to come for the rest of the crew. (There is another hint that Arya and the Hound may have a face-off with some unwelcome visitors, which might not bode well for the Hound and his neck wound.)
As for Jon Snow, he’s “focused on being a leader” when episode 10 picks up, Harington teased to Elle magazine. After losing his wildling love, Ygritte, in episode nine, Snow is “a much colder person after this. He loses a lot of whatever warmth he had, which, let’s face it, wasn’t a lot. There’s a lot of lessons he’s learned in this last episode about doing what you need to do to survive and surviving past losing your love is one of those things. At the beginning of episode 10 you see a very broken man.”
And, contrary to popular belief, Snow does know something, the actor added. “He’s not naïve. He knew there was the possibility of seeing her die or her seeing him die at the battle. You know that thing when you break up with someone and you’re walking around the town where you both live and you’re just really hoping to see them? You know that you’re not supposed to see them, but there’s nothing you want more.”
Basically, Jon Snow couldn’t quit Ygritte, kind of like how we can’t quit “Game of Thrones” no matter how many heads explode.
Yet it doesn’t seem we have to worry about the “traitor bastard’s” head being on the chopping block. Next up for Harington, the actor said, is “doing ‘Thrones’ season five.”
CNN’s Joan Yeam contributed to this report.