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What the fuck was he thinking?
At the end of the Battle of Winterfell, all was (fairly) well with the world of Westeros. After an intense battle which saw a couple of likeable though ultimately (plot-wise) unnecessary characters pass away, Winterfell is left standing.
The Night King, who proved himself to be impervious to dragon fire, was vanquished at the hands of the one and only Arya Stark, who struck a Valerian steel dagger into the exact spot where the Children of the Forrest put the dragonglass blade to create him in the first place. Like so many angry teenagers, he didn’t ask to be born, but now he is gone.
With him felled, so too are his minions the White Walkers and the wights, who are now left to melt on the ground like a million dropped Calippos.
With the Night King dead, everything he ever created has died, so that means that Viserion – Daenerys’ dragon that died before being reanimated by the Night King in Season 7, has also passed away.
This is all good news for the living, and everyone will now want to look forward to a life devoid of the living dead, but neither the people in Westeros, nor us, should ever forget that Jon Snow tried to shout Viserion to death.
The bad dragon had been erratically chucking blue fire about Winterfell during the battle, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. He’s a dragon, he’s fucking angry as all hell, all of the time.
The focus of this anger appeared to be Jon, who ran from doorway to doorway to avoid being obliterated by the flames.
At the episode’s end, however, Jon made the interesting decision to stand up from the wall that he was crouching behind.
Viewers will have seen this and thought – like I did – ‘Sweet God, he’s going to do it – he’s going to use his Targaryen blood to actually command this dragon – this dead dragon – to stand down and join the side of the living’.
My heart was pounding, my palms were sweaty; here Jon was going to do potentially the coolest thing that we have ever seen in the history of Game of Thrones.
Then he does this.
Jon Snow. The man who killed one of the White Walkers in hand-to-hand combat. The man who is one of only two living humans in Westeros to fly an actual dragon. The man who was killed and came back to life for God’s sake.
He is faced with death, with scorching blue flames, and his decision, his buzzer beater shot, is to stand with his arms by his side and scream in the dragon’s face like someone who has just shat themselves.
Were it not for his younger sister, he would now be a pile of cold ash, with only the echoes of his screams remaining, but somehow this stupid asshole is still alive.
What happens now is anyone’s guess. Jon (the rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms) may help Dany fight Cersei and they may live happily ever after in King’s Landing, but he will always be the dumb fuck who tried to stop a dragon by shouting at it.
Like someone who has shat themselves, he should never be allowed to forget it.
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