It’s taken just over five years for him to speak out on the topic, but Kit Harington finally acknowledges the criticism and agrees with the consensus of television viewers everywhere:
The Game of Thrones series finale was really pretty terrible.
Kit Harrington as the beloved character of Jon Snow. (HBO)
“I think if there was any fault with the end of Thrones, is that we were all so f-cking tired, we couldn’t have gone on longer,” Harington told GQ in a new interview.
“And so I understand some people thought it was rushed and I might agree with them. But I’m not sure there was any alternative.”
The final Game of Thrones episode aired on May 19, 2019.
It crowned Bran Stark as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, an unexpected and disappointing resolution to basically everyone who had followed the legendary series for eight seasons.
Kit Harington attends the HBO’s “Industry” Season 3 Premiere at Metrograph on August 5, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
When asked by the aforementioned publication about this letdown of episode, which was somehow the lowest-rated of the entire drama, Harington said he understood where critics were coming from with their frustrations.
“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” he said. “I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe. I think there were some interesting choices that didn’t quite work.”
Despite this admission, Harington delved into a bit of detail with GQ about the proposed Game of Thrones spinoff that would have featured his character, Jon Snow.
“What I can tell you is it was HBO that came to me and said, ‘Would you consider this?’ My first reaction was ‘no,’” he said.
“And then I thought there could be an interesting and important story about the soldier after the war. I felt that there might be something left to say and a story left to tell in a pretty limited way.”
Kit Harington attends the Apple Original Series “Extrapolations” red carpet premiere event at Hammer Museum on March 14, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)
The spinoff advanced through production and a couple of years were spent developing it… but Harington just didn’t see the upside.
“In the end, I kind of backed out and said, ‘I think if we push this any further and keep developing it we could end up with something that’s not good. And that’s the last thing we all want,’” he told GQ.
The British star — who plays a critical role on Industry Season 3 — also said he didn’t want to be known to audiences just as Jon Snow.
He was also satisfied with the way this soldier was written off on Game of Thrones.
“Seeing him go beyond the Wall back to something true, something honest, something pure with these people, he was always told he belongs with — the Free Folk — it felt to me like he was finally free,” Harington said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019.
“It was a really sweet ending. As much as he had done a horrible thing [in killing Daenerys], as much as he had felt that pain, the actual ending for him was finally being released.”
Kit Harington: Yes, the Game of Thrones Finale Sucked! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.