Kit Harington will never bend the knee to fans’ campaign to overthrow the Game of Thrones finale.
In a new interview with the New York Times published January 11 via Entertainment Weekly, the actor — who famously portrayed Jon Snow on the hit HBO series — admitted he was “genuinely angered” by the viral petition that called for the show’s eighth and final season to be remade “with competent writers.”
The petition, which was signed by more than two million fans, did not sit well with Harington “That genuinely angered me,” the 39-year-old said. “Like, how dare you? Sorry, that’s just how I feel.”
He went on to defend showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, emphasising how much work went into finishing the series after it outpaced George R.R. Martin’s unfinished novels. “I think it was a level of idiocy that can only come about through social media,” he added.
The backlash hit Harington at a particularly vulnerable time. The final season aired while he was in rehab for alcohol addiction and stress in 2019, making the reaction even more jarring when he returned. “I went in and everyone loved Thrones; I came out and everyone hated it,” he previously said in April 2024.
At the time, Harington acknowledged some criticism but said exhaustion played a major role. “I think if there was any fault with the end of Thrones, is that we were all so f***ing tired,” he said, explaining that he simply did not have another season in him.
