One 'Game of Thrones' Character Almost Survived Season 8, According to Writer [SPOILERS]
By Hannah Wigandt
This article contains spoilers for ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8.
Game of Thrones fans knew that this final season would bring about a lot of blood, ultimately having to endure a whopping 17 deaths of some of the main characters. But that number could have been shorter, because apparently one person was originally supposed to live.
Entertainment Weekly reports that Ser Jorah Mormont wasn't actually supposed to die. In the initial drafts for Season 8, writers wanted the character to be Jon Snow's companion in his exile to the Night's Watch, but instead he died heroically protecting his Khaleesi against a group of wights in the Battle of Winterfell.
“For a long time we wanted Ser Jorah to be there at The Wall in the end,” writer Dave Hill told EW. “The three coming out of the tunnel would be Jon and Jonah and Tormund. But the amount to logic we’d have to bend to get Jorah up to The Wall and get him to leave Dany’s side right before [the events in the finale] … there’s no way to do that blithely. And Jorah should have the noble death he craves defending the woman he loves.”
It's interesting to think about what Jorah would have done in the events of the last two episodes. If the writers had gone with their first idea, he seemingly would have had to follow Jon in betraying Daenerys for him to be with the Night's Watch in the end. But somehow we don't think that would have been plausible given his intense love for her.
EW got the chance to ask Iain Glen, who played Jorah, what he thought his character would do if he knew about Daenerys' genocide of King's Landing.
“There’s a sweetness in that because Jorah will never know what she did,” Glen replied. “That’s probably best. It’s a blessing for him that he never found out what happened to her. And from a pragmatic story point of view, his death served a greater purpose. Where could we have taken Jonah from there? F— if I know.”
Jorah's death, along with Missandei's, was a major blow for Daenerys, and one could argue it was instrumental in her breaking down and destroying King's Landing. At that point there was no one who could've stopped her, however, not even Jorah.