Everybody needs to stop complaining about Jon Snow spoilers
This week’s Game of Thrones featured a certain shocking moment—which pretty much anyone could have seen coming from a mile away. The next morning, millions took to social media to discuss their reactions and comment on the scene. Sadly, it seems like just as many people jumped into the comments to chastise anyone who revealed this “spoiler” and complain that knowing about the last two minutes of the show ruined the entire episode (and in some cases, the entire series) for them. I was reading the comments just rolling my eyes. It’s 2016, people. If you go on social media the morning after Game of Thrones, you waive your right to bitch about spoilers. *Needless to say, I’m going to be talking about what happened on the episode, so spoiler warning to all the whiny people who feel that knowing Jon Snow’s fate will ruin their viewing.
I know we’re only two episodes in, but so far this has been one of the better seasons of Thrones since the early years. The plot seems to be moving by leaps and bounds in each scene and they’ve avoided the constant rape or brutalization of their female characters, for the most part. Yes, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) is still a terrifying monster, perhaps even more than we previously thought, but the vast majority of the first two episodes has been spent getting the characters where they need to be to keep things moving instead of the drawn-out drag of previous seasons.
But the big topic of conversation this season has all centered around Jon Snow (Kit Harington), the Lord Commander at Castle Black who was stabbed Julius-Caesar-style by his fellow Night’s Watch brothers at the end of last season. Seeing as Jon Snow is a huge fan favorite and they’ve featured Harington prominently in so many promotional materials for previous seasons, Jon Snow’s death was one of season five’s biggest shockers. Still, pretty much everyone knew Jon Snow would be coming back from the dead, and the convenient arrival of Melisandre (Carice van Houten) at Castle Black in the scene prior to Jon Snow’s demise certainly set the stage for his resurrection. Nobody is more dedicated to the Lord of Light than Melisandre, and we’ve seen devout followers bring people back from the dead before.
So it was really no surprise at all when Davos (Liam Cunningham) asked Melisandre to work some of her famous Red Woman magic on the stabbed-and-frozen Jon Snow. Even though she’d totally lost her faith (which was a really fascinating and compelling turn for someone who was previously so dedicated that she burned a little girl alive) she offered to give it a try, and lo and behold, Jon Snow opened his eyes and gasped for breath.
It would be hard to argue that we didn’t see this coming. While it was a huge cheer-out-loud-at-the-screen moment, it wasn’t exactly a shocker. Jon Snow is too important to the story, especially if the much-discussed R+L=J theory turns out to be true. We all knew he wouldn’t stay dead for long.
Naturally, people went on social media to celebrate the resurrection of this fan fave. Twitter and Facebook were overflowing with posts about the show, and everyone was chatting about what happened. Then, of course, because people are babies and love to complain, came the wave of whiners who decried the “spoilers” and even made idle threats to the people and publications who posted them.
You guys, it’s time to get over spoilers. The Jon Snow resurrection is barely a spoiler because literally everybody who’s watched even a single episode of the show knew it was going to happen. Knowing the answer to a simple yes or no question (“Is Jon Snow coming back?”) does not “ruin” the show for anybody, especially when it was almost certain that the answer would be yes. I’m just not sure how knowing what happens in a two or three-minute scene of an hour-long show has destroyed the entire watching experience for anyone. You can still watch to see how it happened and what will happen next. We live in a world where there’s genocide and famine and the thing you choose to freak out about is somebody’s Facebook post about what happens on a TV show?!
On top of that, it’s not like social media was invented the second the credits started rolling on Game of Thrones. If you’ve been on Twitter and Facebook for even a couple weeks, you know that people post about movies and TV shows, and those posts sometimes include spoilers. If you truly believe that knowing what happens on a show will destroy your entire life, perhaps it’s best for you to avoid social media (and probably society in general) until you’ve seen the episode.
So in short, if you’re one of those people who spent the better part of your morning posting “OMG! How about a spoiler warning? People who post spoilers should die!” all over every single Facebook post or tweet about Jon Snow, you really need to grow up. People posting about Game of Thrones on social media is just about as inevitable as Jon Snow coming back from the dead.
