Remember earlier this year when four episodes of Game of Thrones were leaked online before the season even aired? Unfortunately, the security breaches keep coming for the HBO mega-hit, as, not even a week after the show’s season finale, a supposedly leaked script for next year’s premiere has revealed the fate of at least one fan favourite character.
The leaked document, which HBO has yet to comment on the authenticity of, includes a scene where bastard son Jon Snow has his right hand sliced off and his stump of an arm crammed into his mouth, causing him to choke on his own blood, all before he is slowly lowered into a vat of mystical acid, which not only burns through flesh and bone but also incinerates a person’s soul, ensuring an eternity of hell in the afterlife.
Fan reaction to the script’s leak has been overwhelmingly negative, with many criticising the showrunners for digressing too far from George R.R. Martin’s source material, the book series A Song of Ice and Fire. At the end of A Dance With Dragons (spoiler alert), Jon Snow only gets three of his fingers cut off before being lowered into the cauldron of boiling mystical acid, a much tamer send-off than the one HBO has allegedly cooked up for the character.
In fact, many fans have been posting online since the leak, threatening to boycott the show unless HBO changes the script to be more representative of Snow’s fate in the novel.
“I get that it’s a violent show,” one reviewer for TVLine said in response, having read the season six premiere script, “and I know the showrunners have been deviating further and further from the books, but they’re ruining the character of Jon Snow for me. The way he goes out in the novel is poetic and so heroic; what the show does is just torture porn, plain and simple.”
While the show has never shied away from controversial topics like violence against women, last season was particularly brutal with the rape of Sansa Stark in the sixth episode and Stannis Baratheon sacrificing his only daughter to be burned at the stake in the season’s penultimate episode.
However, some fans are pleased with this new supposed development, if only because it’s a male character being put through such torturous events.
“I’m sad we won’t get to see Kit Harington’s beautiful, bearded baby face anymore,” commented Jezebel columnist Sarah Ranger, “but whether or not the showrunners are aware of it, the death of Jon Snow has a lot of feminist undertones to it. His character is literally left to simmer and boil in the broth of patriarchy and he pays the ultimate price because of it. Perhaps the most surprising part of this latest twist is how progressive Snow’s mutilation is.”
It’s unlikely we’ll find out anytime soon if the leaked script is real or not, but one thing’s for certain: Game of Thrones fans sure like to complain about stuff.
