New ‘Game Of Thrones’ Poster Features Jon Snow’s Bloodied Face; Is A Masterclass In Trolling

In her recap of the season five finale, Junkee’s Mel Campbell questioned the finality of death on a show like Game of Thrones. There are too many ways for dead characters to stay alive, or be brought back: Remembering; symbolic haunting; straight-up resurrection.

“I really don’t think Jon [Snow] is dead,” she wrote, after the character was left for dead by his Night’s Watch brothers in the finale. “He’s just mostly dead.”

The sixth season will mark the first time that the readers of George RR Martin’s books and the watchers of the show that’s based on them are at the same point of the story, unsure of what happens next. Martin himself has hinted at the fate of Snow a few times — “Oh, you think he’s dead do you?” he asked an EW journalist in 2011, before refusing to comment the next year — but the folk behind the show are spouting another, far more definitive story.

“Dead is dead as dead as dead. He be dead. Yes,” said HBO programming president Michael Lombardo, fairly conclusively. “Dead is dead,” repeated showrunner Dan Weiss to EW. “I’ve been told I’m dead,” said the actor Kit Harrington himself. Meanwhile, the director of the finale, David Nutter, had a personal audience with President Obama, in which he told him, “Jon Snow is deader than dead”. You don’t lie to the president.

So sure, the evidence we have is overwhelmingly pointing in one direction — but never underestimate the tenacity of a Game of Thrones fan to doggedly cast doubt upon a thing.

The poster for series six was released overnight after premiering across billboards in America, and many are using it as evidence that the bloodied Jon Snow featured therein — who to be honest looks fairly dead to me — is in fact alive.

APRIL. #GoTSeason6 #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/DSK2xZi9i9

— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) November 23, 2015

 

“No! Look, he’s right here, a little bloody, but basically as morose and glowering as ever,” writes Nate Jones in Vulture. He’s “looking pretty not dead”, writes Sage Lazzaro in the Observer. According to the Daily Mail, the poster “seems to tease Snow’s return”, featuring him “looking down, revealing a face covered in blood”. He’s “bloody, but SEEMINGLY ALIVE”, writes Buzzfeed, in ALL CAPS.

The second piece of information contained within that tweet is a more definitive one: the series release date of April. You’ll have a better idea of what that poster means in over five months time.

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