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23rd Aug 2017

Game of Thrones director confirms what the hell was going on with Jon Snow’s sword

There was no intention.

Alan Loughnane

It attracted a lot of attention in Monday’s episode.

You know the drill. This post is dark and full of spoilers yada yada yada…

The dust is just about settling on in the aftermath of that explosive episode of Game of Thrones. First we thought Tormund was dust, then he fought his way back with the help of the Hound.

Then we thought Jon’s ship had sailed, his race run, his journey over. But he emerged from the depths of the water and pulled himself from the breach.

On some level we expected he’d survive, but my God was it tense while we waited to see if he’d resurface.

Yesterday, we spoke about how many people had noticed a small but very cool detail about Jon Snow’s sword as he pulled himself from the water.

In a recent interview with Insider, ‘Beyond the Wall’ director Alan Taylor spoke about the moment which had him perplexed as well.

“That is so funny, somebody else mentioned that to me and I haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about,” Taylor said. “So either this sword is magic and it’s doing stuff on its own or something happened. I’m going to have to go back and watch that moment close up and in slow motion to see what’s going on there. I can say that there was no intention for that to be the case.”

The interviewer gave their two cents on the moment claiming that frost had developed on the blade and when Job emerged from the water, he splashed water on the sword, clearing the frost and causing the appearance that the wolf opened its eyes.

“That sounds very likely because there was a lot of conversation about frost because he climbs out of the water and collapses on the ice and there’s a slight time cut, so when we see him staggering to shore he’s frosted up and not wet anymore because everything freezes that fast,” said Taylor.

“So I know there was discussion about starting to show that process, and so they probably amped it up and used whatever they could to show the shift. So I think that’s a very good theory and I’m gonna go with that one until I look at it more closely and see if I can figure out what’s going on. But I spoke to somebody earlier and he was convinced it was a really loaded symbolic moment of Longclaw,” Taylor finished.

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