Game of Thrones seemingly brought Jon Snow’s story to an end with its series finale back in 2019 when he headed north with the Free Folk after being exiled from the kingdom, but it turns out that Kit Harington wasn’t necessarily finished with playing his iconic role after all. A spinoff centering on Harington’s Jon Snow is currently in development at HBO, and now his former co-star and on-screen sister Maisie Williams has shared her thoughts on the spinoff.
Maisie Williams (who has moved on from Game of Thrones with a variety of projects, most recently including FX on Hulu’s Pistol), spoke with People about the big news regarding her former on-screen brother, saying:
I think it's really exciting, and I think that Kit is such a phenomenal actor. Him playing Jon Snow was just like a cultural reset. I think everything that he touches is magic, and I'm excited to see what it's going to be.
Jon Snow turned out to be one of the most notable characters of Game of Thrones, and not just because he managed to survive all eight seasons without being killed off… permanently, anyway! The original series seemed to wrap up a lot of his storylines, to the point that he seemed fairly content to be heading up to the far north with the Free Folk.
Fans will likely always be divided about his ending (other than his long-awaited reunion with Ghost) and the separation of the Starks, but now his GOT ending (which you can revisit streaming with an HBO Max subscription) won’t necessarily be the last that we see of him, and Maisie Williams is already excited about this next chapter for Kit Harington.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the project will indeed become a TV show, but George R.R. Martin dropped some intriguing details, and it’s hard to imagine that a Jon Snow-centric series bringing back Kit Harington in live-action wouldn’t be a priority for HBO. Maisie Williams summed up the idea of the story continuing with Harington getting a spinoff:
Everything surrounding the story [of GOT] is very exciting. We had such a rich show, and there's still so much story to tell.
According to George R.R. Martin in his latest website update (which did not involve a release date for The Winds of Winter), the working title for the project is Snow, and it has been in development under wraps for quite some time now. It’s also not a project that had to go the extra mile to recruit Harington back to the role, as the A Song of Ice and Fire author revealed that the show was the actor’s idea, and he brought in the writers and showrunners as his own team.
Martin also confirmed that he’s involved for Snow just as he is in for the other developing spinoffs and animated shows, so book fans may want to resign themselves now that the author has revealed another non-Winds of Winter project on his plate.
Maisie Williams hasn’t confirmed one way or the other whether she would ever reprise her role as Arya Stark, who also managed to survive all eight seasons of Game of Thrones, but fans can always hope. She still speaks about the series, including recently sharing why she was shocked by Arya’s sex scene with Gendry before the Battle of Winterfell in Season 8.
Whether or not Snow does move forward and become a series, fans have a different Game of Thrones spinoff to look forward to in the much nearer future. House of the Dragon, set many years before the events of Game of Thrones and during the Targaryen dynasty, will premiere on HBO on Sunday, August 21 as part of the 2022 fall TV schedule.
