Ser Jorah Mormont Wasn't Originally Going To Meet The Same Fate In Game Of Thrones

We're all still reeling from the end of Game of Thrones. Some fans took the ending well, and then some (even segment of the cast) noticed their characters' endings palatable. Others took to the world wide web to create a petition demanding a do-over for Season 8.


Several preference characters were unceremoniously lost, with some massive surprises that shook the fanbase. As it turns out, yet, it looks like at least one of those was originally supposed to survive up until the very end.


Warning: this blog post contains major spoilers for the series finale of Game of Thrones.


According to writer Dave Hill, it wasn't Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) who was originally supposed to survive, yet her trusted advisor and friend, Ser Jorah Mormont. Any time the writers started to plan out season 8, they originally wanted Jorah hanging back with Jon Snow in back of The Wall in the final scene of the show. As a substitute, they changed their minds.


"For a long time we wanted Ser Jorah to be there at The Wall in the end,” mentioned Hill in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “The three coming out of the tunnel could be Jon and Jorah and Tormund. Nevertheless 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."


With that in mind, we know Jorah would have had to suffer through seeing Daenerys's seemingly instantaneous turn into "madness," as some theorized immediately after she burned King's Landing to the ground. Entertainment Weekly asked the actor who played Jorah himself, Iain Glen, what the character would have thought about seeing his beloved carrying out such actions.


"There’s a sweetness in that because Jorah will never know what she did," mentioned Glen. "That’s probably best. It’s a blessing for him that he never noticed out what happened to her. And from a pragmatic story point of view, his death served a greater purpose. Where could we have taken Jorah from then on? Fuck if I know."


We don't know either, yet it would have been nice to get several more moments with Jorah all of the same.