John Bradley on how Sam killed Jon Snow, and why Sam really left for Oldtown

It’s best if Sam never does anything for anybody, because it never turns out well for them! Maybe he shouldn’t be a maester. He’s an absolute walking disaster. Everybody he tried to help ends up dead, or very nearly dead.

So said Jon Bradley in a recent interview with Vulture about this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones season finale. He was probably exaggerating a bit—in fact, Bradley was pretty jokey throughout the entire interview, which is well worth reading. He did have a point, though. In “Hardhome,” Sam has a conversation with Olly where he impresses upon the younger man the importance of sticking to one’s guns when it comes to making hard choices. Of course, Sam was trying to get Olly to understand the difficult position Jon was in, but all it did was inspire Olly to join the Jon Snow assassination squad. As far as Bradley is concerned, Sam put “the final nail in Jon’s coffin” during that talk.

Or maybe not. As we try to break down just who’s responsible for Jon Snow’s murder—Sam, Olly, Alliser Thorne, Jon himself, etc.—it bears remembering that it was a team effort. After all, as Bradley points out, Olly probably wasn’t going to sympathize with Jon’s decision to help the wildlings no matter what Sam said. “People try to appeal to other characters all the time to try to get them to think, but so many characters just feel, and Olly really feels, in his gut, what happened to his family,” Bradley said. “These feelings are deep-rooted. He probably made up his mind a long time ago.”

Bradley also discussed Sam’s relationship with Gilly, which took a few important steps this season. For one thing, Sam lost his virginity to Gilly in “The Gift,” a scene Bradley put into context.

I’m very reluctant to call it a sex scene. I think it’s a love scene. There’s a difference, and I think sex can be treated on the show in almost animalistic terms…But when you see a love scene on the show, there’s a difference in tone. It’s treated with more respect, and that’s where the layers come from in that scene. You’re seeing two people physically demonstrating their love for each other. Gilly’s changed him. She saved him. Sam saved Gilly’s life, in a very literal sense, but Gilly has saved Sam’s spirit. They saved each other.

It certainly was one of the more tender sexual encounters we’ve seen on Game of Thrones, something the show needed considering it’s come under fire of late for its callous depictions of rape. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that the Sam and Gilly’s sex scene was immediately preceded by a scene in which Gilly was nearly raped, which led Bradley to another talking point.

If Bradley can be believed, most of Sam’s actions this season can be traced back to his desire to get Gilly away from Castle Black to somewhere she wouldn’t be in constant danger of rape. That includes Sam’s speech to get Jon elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, which he gave way back in “The House of Black and White.” Bradley expounded:

On the surface of it, he was putting Jon Snow forward because he believes he’s the best man, with the subtext being that if Jon is the Lord Commander, that’s the best chance Sam, Gilly, and baby Sam have to be happy…And it follows from the scene where Sam talks about if Ser Alliser Thorne becomes Lord Commander, how that would be bad for them because he hates wildlings, so he’ll hate Gilly and he’ll hate baby Sam, and from that moment on, Sam’s whole season is orchestrated in a way to get him and Gilly and the baby out of Castle Black.

Presumably, Sam was following this line of logic when he asked Jon to let him, Gilly, and Little Sam travel to Oldtown so he could become a maester, a request he made in “Mother’s Mercy,” the fifth season finale. This is a change from the books, where Jon dispatched Sam to Oldtown without much in the way of input from Sam himself. It would seem that, on the show at least, Sam’s relationship with Gilly is giving him a new confidence he’ll hopefully put to use when he travels south.

Before signing off, however, Bradley offered one more alternative explanation for Sam’s decision to leave: people around the Wall were getting tired of hearing Sam tell the story of how he’d killed a White Walker, a story that became even more pointless when Jon returned from Hardhome having duplicated Sam’s feat.

He’s not the only person who’s done it! That’s why he has to leave in the end. [Laughs.] “You look like that, you’ve got amazing hair, and you’ve killed a White Walker. There’s no point in me being here. I might as well go to Oldtown and lie about myself.”

See? Jokey.

• Published on 06/18/2015 at 4:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 06/19/2015 at 5:25 AM CDT