Kit Harington on the execution of Janos Slynt, Barack Obama, and Jon Snow’s parents

On “High Sparrow,” last Sunday’s new episode of Game of Thrones, the show adapted one of the most notable chapters from A Dance with Dragons, the one where Jon Snow beheads an insubordinate Janos Slynt for refusing to obey a direct order. As Cameron White pointed out in our Review Roundup, few critics had a problem with Jon’s decision—Slynt wasn’t exactly beloved, after all. Still, the scene offered plenty of other things to unpack, and Kit Harington was up to the challenge in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Harington, who’s gone on record about how he’s read most of the books, began by saying that beheading Slynt served as a way for Jon to get justice for his father. Slynt, for those might have forgotten, was the commander of King’s Landings’ City Watch back in the first season of the show. After pledging support for Ned Stark’s plan to kick the bastard Joffrey Baratheon off the Iron Throne, Slynt betrayed Ned by killing his men and arresting him. There’s a good possibility that Jon Snow, who was at the Wall at the time, never heard about this, but according to Harington, he knew on an instinctual level. “I feel like somehow Jon knows, somehow deep down, that Slynt is an unjust man who’s done bad things and that’s what gives him the power to do that,” he said.

Harington also drew a clever parallel to another beheading scene from Season 2.

“There’s a great juxtaposition there from when [in season 2] Jon’s captured Ygritte and he knows he should kill her but he can’t do it because he’s too good of a person. He had that moment again here. He’s thinking: ‘Can I kill a man in cold blood?’ And this time he does it. That’s a big change for Jon.”

WARNING: VEILED SPOILERS FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS FOLLOW

Apparently, Jon will go through a lot of changes this season, most of which are brought on as a result of his being elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch in “The House of Black and White.” Harington talked about what’s in store for Jon generally this year in a different interview with The Daily Beast.

“How he goes about being a politician is something we’re going to see this year. Does he force people to go his way, or does he ask them to? That’s what this whole season is for him—he’s deeply involved in politics in a way he hasn’t been before, and he’s too young for it, in a way. He doesn’t understand other men well enough to play the politician.”

This is good news for fans of the books, as it sounds like the show will be diving into the material from A Dance with Dragons, which saw Jon walk a tight-rope between reaching out to the defeated wildlings and pacifying the many Night’s Watchmen who have “little love for the free folk.” It might be bad news for Jon himself, however, depending on how much you want to read into the bit about Jon being unprepared for the role. The final pages of A Dance with Dragons see Jon’s controversial decisions come back to haunt him in a big way, and Harington’s comments could be interpreted to mean that those pages will be adapted this season. Also, there’s this ominous quote from Harington.

As [Jon] climbs the rungs of becoming a commander and leading other men, he starts to realize how isolated it makes him, and there’s a point at the end of the season where we see that very clearly. It’s the lowest place he’s ever been, and that’s going to push him to do quite extreme things in the future.”

Take that as you will. Here are some other highlights from the interviews:

• Janos Slynt’s execution scene was filmed around the same time that videos of prisoners being beheaded by ISIS members were being heavily circulated in the media. This made filming the scene very uncomfortable, and Harington considers it “the most controversial bit this season.”
• In The Daily Beast interview, Harington suggests that Jon Snow’s divisive decisions make him a little like a well-known American politician, although he stops short of naming one. Nevertheless, when The Daily Beast asked if he was going to name Barack Obama, Harington came clean. “You know what, I was going to… and now I’m going to not!”
• Finally, The Daily Beast got Harinton to share his theories regarding Jon Snow’s parentage, although it ends up that he’s playing it safe. “Well, I think it’s Ned, isn’t it?” he said. “I’m pretty sure it is. But, yeah, I’m just assuming until proven otherwise!”

• Published on 04/29/2015 at 1:25 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:05 PM CDT